Real Hope

[This was a presentation I gave to cancer survivors and cancer care givers during the Hocking County American Cancer Society Relay for Life on June 7, 2008.]

I’ve been asked to focus my thoughts today on hope. I’m happy to do that. Napoleon once said that a leader is “a dealer in hope.” That’s especially true for we leaders called pastors. If I’m not dealing in hope, I fail to do my job.

The need for hope for cancer patients, cancer survivors, and their families and friends is obvious. Both the need and the impact of hopefulness is well-documented. People with hope, countless studies have shown, live longer and better, stave off illness more readily, and weather life’s storms with greater facility than do those without hope.

But as a “dealer in hope,” I must tell you that I don’t believe that all hope is equal. In the commercial world, there are things that dealers sell that are useful and helpful, everything from toothbrushes to cars, from groceries to electric fans, a really useful commodity today. But there are other dealers whose products are hurtful, things like illegal drugs, loans with extortionist interest rates, or inferior products they know will break down almost as soon as customers get them home. Similarly, there are people who deal in and believe in false hope. False hope is more destructive than illegal drugs, high interest loans, or inferior products.

Admiral James Stockdale was the highest-ranking prisoner of war during the Vietnamese conflict. He was held, often in solitary confinement, for years. I read the report of an interview with him once. “How did he survive?” the interviewer wondered. “I decided to allow it to be the most important experience of my life, the lessons from which I wouldn’t trade for anything,” he said. The interviewer let that remarkable statement sink in for a second and then asked, “Who was it that didn’t survive their POW ordeal so readily?” “That’s easy,” Stockdale said, “the optimists.” That didn’t make sense to the interviewer. So, he asked Stockdale to explain. The optimists, the admiral said, were those who would say, “We’ll be out by the end of summer” and summer would come and go. Then they might say, “We’ll be out by Christmas” and Christmas wouldn’t bring their release. You see, the people Stockdale identified as “optimists” were those who bought into “false hopes,” hopes with no basis in fact, hopes they just talked themselves into.*

You all know that’s not the kind of hope you need to sustain you through the gravest challenges of life. I’m sure that most of the cancer survivors you and I know have been sustained by authentic hope, real hope.

In my former congregation in Cincinnati is a woman I’ll call Dottie. Dottie is the most fun-loving person you’ll ever meet. She also loves to do things for others. When a teenager from our congregation there suffered third degree burns and severed his thumb while using a microwave torch and had to be hospitalized for months, it was Dottie who organized the families of the congregation to take prepared food to the young man’s household so that his family could have good meals in spite of the hours spent away from the house and in waiting rooms. Only after people got to know her well would Dottie reveal that she was a cancer survivor, twice over, from two unrelated cancers. Whenever a member of our church or a member of their extended family was diagnosed with cancer, I immediately sent Dottie to be with them. Why? Because Dottie, this fun, tough, loving ball of fire, was the best “dealer in hope” I ever met. She helped people face the reality of their diagnoses and also helped them to see that those diagnoses were not death sentences, that their fights with cancer could, as was true for her, become tremendous growth experiences, even in the midst of the pain. Dottie showed them that there is hope, real hope for all of us, irrespective of the circumstances of our lives.

It won’t surprise you to know what the source of Dottie’s hope was. It was the God Who conquered death in Jesus Christ. You see, I believe that only a hope that holds out the authentic promise of life beyond this one can sustain us, encourage us, and embolden us in this life. That is real hope! Dottie had it.

In the New Testament, Paul, a man well-acquainted with sufferings of all kinds said that through Jesus Christ, he and his fellow believers could boast of the peace they had with God and of the resurrection they one day would experience. But they could boast of something else, he said. “And not only that, but we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through [God’s] Holy Spirit…” given to all believers. (See here.)

I am humbled and honored to be with you. You know better than I about this hope I’m dealing today. I ask you, like Dottie, to be dealers and believers in authentic hope, hope that is ours here and for all eternity, hope that comes from a tough and tender God Who gave His life on a cross so that we might live with Him forever and Who loves and sustains us always. Let the God ultimately revealed in Jesus Christ give you a hope that never dies. Thank you for allowing me to be here today.

*Here I paraphrase Jim Collins' discussion of his interview with Stockdale as reported in his book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't.