A Trinitarian Hope

In today’s reading from the Letter to the Romans, Paul speaks of faith, peace, grace—and above all of hope.

It’s been a tough week. Protests and a parade. A political assassination. War spreading in the Middle East. Already dark times that seem to be growing darker. “Hope” might not be the first word that comes into your mind. At least it isn’t the first word that comes into my own mind.

But still today, Paul speaks of hope. And I think we should listen.

Hope to Paul isn’t some false optimism—stuffing your fingers in your ears, closing your eyes, and humming to yourself as the world burns. It’s not a cheerful “it’ll all be fine” painted over anxiety.

Paul knows better. He knows hardship deeply. Yet still he insists that “hope does not disappoint us.”

That’s the good news. The bad news is that hope doesn’t always come easily. Paul says plainly that suffering comes first.

That can be hard to hear, but maybe it’s also a bit of a relief that Scripture doesn’t pretend that God will swoop in and solve all our problems. There’s nothing cheap about the sort of hope Paul speaks of. It’s a hope that emerges from struggle. “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

In better times, this might sound a bit like good advice about going to the gym: “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

But I hear it differently today. Maybe you do too. For Paul, hope isn’t found by avoiding trouble. Hope comes precisely because we face trouble head on.

We can sometimes be tempted to think that the fact that things are going badly means that God isn’t with us. But that has it exactly backwards. The letter to the Romans promises that God is with us in suffering, and it is precisely in the crucible of suffering where hope is to be found.

But are these just empty words? Is there anything solid here to hold on to? I think there is.

Today is Trinity Sunday. It’s the only day on the Church calendar dedicated to a doctrine, and it can be a tricky doctrine to get your head around. One God. Three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Theologians have wrestled with the doctrine of the Trinity for two thousand years. When I was in the ordination process and facing what seemed like an endless stream of interviews, I decided that if anyone asked me what I thought about the Trinity, I’d just say that I was in favor of it. That seemed like the only safe answer. Fortunately, no one ever asked.

The Trinity can be hard to understand. But one thing the Trinity definitely is is a community. God is relationship itself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all part of a dance that our faith allows us to enter into. The Trinity reminds us that we were made for connection, for love, and for community.

God’s love—and Paul’s hope—are reflected in Creation itself, the work of the Father. Today’s psalm sings of the wonder of Creation and the wonder that God cares specifically for us. “What is man that you should be mindful of him? the son of man that you should seek him out? You have made him but little lower than the angels; you adorn him with glory and honor; You give him mastery over the works of your hands; you put all things under his feet.”

Just “a little lower than the angels.” You and me. Even now. Even in the chaos that surrounds us. Even amidst all the terrible things we’re doing to one another.

God’s love—and Paul’s hope—are reflected in Jesus’s humanity, in his life, death, and resurrection, in the promise that death is never the end of our story. In Christ, hope takes flesh. In his teaching, we hear that mercy is stronger than judgment. In his crucifixion, we see that God enters into suffering and does not look away. And in his resurrection, we find the boldest hope of all: that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God.

God’s love—and Paul’s hope—are reflected in the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst, pouring God’s love into our hearts, guiding us, strengthening us. The Spirit is the breath that still stirs among us when words fail. The quiet companion in grief, the fire in our bones when justice calls. The Spirit empowers us to endure, to forgive, to begin again.

The hope we have in God, the hope Paul speaks of, is a hope that’s grounded in reality, in the reality that life is hard. But it’s a hope that allows no place for fear. In the face of despair, God calls us still to hope—stubbornly and outrageously. God calls us not to ignore reality, but to transform it. To love boldly. To choose community—the same sort of community modeled by the Trinity itself.

“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 the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

Paul was right. Hope does not disappoint us. May we claim that hope as our own—today and always—even if at times we can’t quite see its shape.