TL;DR: In a culture increasingly shaped by cynicism, despair, and a sense that our institutions are beyond repair, Christian hope can seem naïve or even foolish. Drawing from Romans 5, this sermon explores Paul’s surprising claim that suffering can produce endurance, character, and ultimately hope. Far from being blind optimism, Christian hope is the trust that God is at work even in the midst of pain, injustice, and disappointment. Through the witness of Paul, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Gene Robinson, and others, we see that hope is not the denial of suffering but the conviction that God can bring life, renewal, and redemption from it. The resurrection of Jesus stands as God’s declaration that evil, suffering, and death do not have the final word. Hope does not disappoint—not because circumstances always improve, but because God’s promises endure.
What follows is the actual transcript of my sermon, delivered June 14 in at First Congregational Church in Loveland, CO, formatted for substack. Audio is available at the bottom.
“Dark Woke”
Perhaps you’ve heard the term before.
And for those unfamiliar, the term comes from a social media phenomenon and political messaging strategy that emerged following the president’s second inauguration in 2025.
The New York Times described it as an attempt to step outside the bounds of political correctness.
Examples offered feature dark humor, sarcasm, and a willingness to mock or demean opponents in ways that would have been unacceptable to previous generations.
Basically, it’s an abrupt U-turn from the old “when they go low, we go high” approach.
Instead, the mood is often closer to:
When they go low, we go lower.
Now, before we dismiss such thinking too quickly, we should acknowledge why it resonates with so many people.
Younger generations have come of age amid economic uncertainty, climate anxiety, political polarization, and a growing sense that the institutions around them are irreparably broken.
In many ways, we can understand why we got here.
Why people feel this way.
But perhaps what’s most troubling about such an approach is that it’s far deeper than anger and outrage.
As one source noted, younger generations have already tried anger and outrage.
But when they repeatedly saw little, if any, change while watching unjust systems burrow themselves deeper into power and oppression, the mood shifted toward something darker:
Despair.
Nihilism.
A “why even try?” mentality.
A very much “burn it all down” attitude.
Whereas previous generations often worked within institutions to bring about reform, many younger people have become convinced that these institutions—such as the church—are themselves the problem.
Why reform them?
Why not just tear it all down and start over?
But perhaps the most significant shift is this:
Suffering itself has increasingly come to be seen as irredeemable.
Whereas past generations might have seen oppression, persecution, or sacrifice as the cost of pursuing justice—or even something that could move the needle toward change—increasingly suffering is viewed as having no tangible benefit.
Nothing good can come from it.
Nothing can be learned from it.
Nothing can emerge except more pain.
And if suffering has no meaning, then hope itself becomes quite foolish.
Why suffer?
Why sacrifice?
Why risk more disappointment?
Why not simply protect yourself?
After all, if the world is burning and you’ve tried putting out the fire only to get burned yourself, why keep risking your own health and well-being while others are simply fanning the flames?
You might as well grab some chocolate and marshmallows and make some s’mores while everything burns.
Nothing wrong with s’mores, by the way.
It’s obviously a dark and dystopian vision.
But not entirely illogical.
The problem, however, is that it simply produces more of what we might expect:
More disillusionment.
More despondency.
More despair.
And neither human history nor experience suggests that despair has ever built a better future.
So what can we offer instead?
I would posit this morning that we can offer hope.
Christian hope.
Paul’s Radical Alternative
In his letter to the church at Rome, the Apostle Paul offers a radically different approach.
Hope.
In chapter five, Paul is telling his readers that because of Jesus, they have access to God’s grace and therefore have peace with God.
But Paul makes a bit of an aside, a bit of a parenthetical reference, as one commentator said.
And from this, two things stand out to me almost immediately.
The first is somewhat shocking:
Paul says that he and his colleagues take pride in their problems.
Other Bible translations say that they boast or even rejoice in their suffering.
The second is that Paul believes all the problems, all the suffering, actually produce hope.
From another Bible translation we read:
“We also boast in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint us.”
Paul is saying, as silly as this sounds:
Hope does not make us foolish.
Now this sounds quite silly when we think about all the bad things in our world.
So bad that many have presumed that hope is not simply impractical.
It’s foolish.
It’s flat-out wrong.
Paul Knew Something About Suffering
But lest we think Paul to be some privileged person immune to pain and suffering, he writes elsewhere in the Bible that he’s encountered quite a bit of suffering himself:
“I’ve been imprisoned and beaten more times than I can count. I faced death many times. I’ve been brutally whipped five times. I was beaten with rods three times. I was stoned once. I was shipwrecked three times. I spent a day and a night in the open sea.
I faced dangers from rivers, robbers, people of all kinds, dangers in the city, dangers in the desert, dangers on the sea.
I faced these dangers with hard work and heavy labor, many sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, often without food and in the cold, without enough clothes.”
This is quite clearly a guy who has encountered his fair share of challenge and suffering—or as we might say today, systemic abuse and oppression.
And yet he acknowledges how silly, how foolish he sounds in boasting of all this.
What If Paul Was Right?
But the question, I think, for us to consider this morning:
What if Paul was onto something?
What if he was right?
What if he knew deep down that God could bring life and renewal from even the most painful experiences?
And of course then we might wonder:
How?
How did he know it?
Paul says he knew it because God’s love had been poured into his heart because of the Holy Spirit.
As Christians celebrated a few weeks back at Pentecost and the arrival of the Holy Spirit, Paul also took comfort in the lasting and abiding presence of the Spirit and God’s love made known through the Spirit.
But as one commentator notes, rather than being destroyed by challenges and experiences, for Paul these instead strengthened his hope.
And he realized that this hope in God does not disappoint.
Rather, he already had a measure of it in the Holy Spirit.
For Paul, he saw the Holy Spirit as a reminder that the same God who gave Jesus life from the dead will give us life too.
And for him, that gave Paul a measure of trust that God is at work amidst all of this.
That God can bring life and renewal from even the most broken, unjust, and painful parts of our lives.
God can bring renewal and life.
I mean, it’s no wonder, right?
It’s no wonder that Paul recognizes the foolishness in all of this.
As another commentator notes:
It is at the place of social failure and ostracism that God is present and active, transforming victims.
The Mystery and Gift of the Cross
See, if I can be so bold this morning, the problem in our culture and in our world today is that we tend to think that pain, suffering, and brokenness are irredeemable.
The mystery and gift of the cross, I believe, is that in the resurrection of Jesus, God said to all that is oppressive, unjust, and evil:
Give me your best shot.
Not only can I take it, but I can actually transform it and bring new and renewed life.
I mean, that’s good news.
Now, to be clear:
Paul is not saying that suffering itself is good.
He’s not saying injustice is good.
He is not saying that we should seek suffering or ignore injustice or allow others to suffer.
Rather, Paul is making a more surprising claim:
Even in the midst of suffering, God can bring about endurance, character, and hope.
Because of this then, let’s live with hope.
Not in our neighbors, ourselves, or our ability to change things.
Rather, let’s hope in God.
Because Paul says God’s hope will not disappoint us.
It will not prove us a fool.
Optimism Is Not Hope
Now again, I want to differentiate between optimism and hope because they’re not the same thing.
I recently spoke to one pastor who described herself as a:
Pessimistic hopeful.
She understood that God’s hope is not about some kind of blind optimism or Pollyanna attitude.
I’m reminded of this poem from Henry Nouwen:
Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes.
Optimism is the expectation that things will get better.
Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God’s promises in ways that lead to true freedom.
The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future.
The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in God’s hands.
All great leaders, all great spiritual leaders, were people of hope.
Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Gandhi, Dorothy Day.
They all lived with a promise in their heart that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like.
Optimism expects circumstances to improve.
Hope trusts God will fulfill God’s promises.
Hope Does Not Disappoint
You know what a powerful thing happens when we begin to live into God’s hope?
God’s love becomes our central and determining motive.
No longer are we dependent on our own ingenuity or efforts.
We’re simply content to share the love and grace of God, as foolish as it may be.
Because we root ourselves, we ground ourselves in God’s love and God’s promise that:
Hope does not disappoint.
There are many in life today who would presume that living with hope is foolish, naive, or even privileged.
Friends, if I may be so bold, I do not believe that is a recipe for hope and well-being.
But hope—that groundedness—that’s what guided so many of the faithful and prophetic leaders of our time.
The Witness of Hope
I’m reminded of Martin Luther King Jr.
The famous civil rights leader had every reason to be cynical.
Churches were segregated.
Laws were unjust.
Racial violence was commonplace.
Yet he continued to hope that the moral arc of the universe was long and bent toward justice.
God’s hope did not disappoint Martin Luther King Jr.
Nelson Mandela, the post-apartheid president of South Africa, had every reason to be cynical.
Twenty-seven years in prison might do that to a person.
Yet he emerged believing that reconciliation was possible.
God’s hope did not disappoint Nelson Mandela.
Gene Robinson, the Episcopal clergy person who was the first gay man to be consecrated as a bishop within the Christian church, had every reason to be cynical.
He endured criticism, rejection, and controversy from fellow Christians, even within his own church.
Yet he stayed believing that the church could be more faithful than it was.
God’s hope did not disappoint Gene Robinson.
The Promise
Now again, let me be clear on this.
The inauguration or fulfillment of our hope may not come on our own timeline and as quickly or immediately as we want it to.
Martin Luther King Jr., even after many victories, still faced an assassin’s bullet that ended his life.
Robinson, even after his historic election, still faced much criticism and prejudice.
And lest we forget, Nelson Mandela sat in prison for twenty-seven years.
We cannot presume that living with hope means everything will be fixed right now or even in the foreseeable future.
Rather, living with hope means trusting that God, even in the midst of pain and suffering, is making things right.
And more, that when we ourselves go through pain and suffering, that suffering will produce endurance, which then produces character, which ultimately produces hope.
God’s hope within us.
I think it’s a bit like Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he referenced the promissory note of the Declaration of Independence.
He said:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed—that all men are created equal.”
King trusted in the promise.
The promise that guaranteed unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans.
He trusted that promise would ultimately be fulfilled despite generations of injustice and broken promises.
Truth be told, in some ways Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is still yet unfulfilled.
There is more hoping and dreaming to be done.
But King himself warned against satisfying our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
Our Hope Is Jesus
Our hope as followers of Jesus, as Christians, is in Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified and is now resurrected.
That same God who raised Jesus from the dead will give us life and can bring redemption and renewal to even the most broken, painful, and unjust systems within our own lives and communities.
That’s good news, friends.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
This was just what I needed today, thanks