Hope Not Ashamed

Rome, in the late fifties, and two people in one congregation hearing this letter read out. The first is a Jewish believer recently back in the city; Claudius had expelled the Jews some years earlier, and those returning found a church that had carried on without them. The second is a Gentile who joined during those years and does not much see why the newcomers should reset anything. Paul is writing partly to keep those two in one room.

The verse reaches them differently. For the first, hope maketh not ashamed is about a track record. Everything he hoped for as a Jew has been through a political catastrophe, and being publicly wrong about God is a live humiliation; Paul's word for shame here is the shame of a hope that fails in front of witnesses. For the second the danger runs the other way. A man whose hopes have mostly worked out does not think of hoping as risky at all, and Paul has just spent three verses on tribulation, and patience, and experience.

And the reason he gives is a pep talk to neither of them. Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. Shed abroad is a word for lavish pouring, the verb used of wine and of blood, not a trickle. And it is in the past tense. The evidence for the hope is not in tomorrow's outcome, for the returning exile or for the settled Roman. It is in something already done to both of them, before either one knows how anything ends.

So, a blessing over you, whichever of the two you resemble this morning. May the hope you are afraid to say aloud not put you to shame. May the love already poured into you be more real to you than the outcome you are waiting on. And when you are exposed for having hoped, may you find you are standing beside somebody who hoped differently and is being held up by the same thing.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 192 is All Her Living (Mark 12:44).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna