A sermon delivered by the Rev. Dr. Patrick H. Wrisley on Sunday, June 15, 2025.
Several years ago, Netflix came out with a successful TV series about a group of young teenagers in a small town who explore strange happenings in their community. Entitled, Stranger Things, it is a story about a world referred to as “The Upside Down” where things that should be up are down and those that should be down are up. It is a world where everything is cattywampus to some degree. It reminds me of the world we are living in at the moment. It feels like we are living in a world of stranger things.
A Boeing Dreamliner takes off in India, clears the runway and then drops like a rock killing 263 people onboard with dozens more on the ground.
The IDF has taken upon itself the need to bomb Iran and now missiles are flying all over the Middle East and it appears the United States risks getting pulled into another armed conflict.
American military personnel have been called up to police other US citizens for protesting while convicted folks in the January 6 capital riot are summarily pardoned.
Hundreds of drones attacked Kyiv several nights this week while Putin says he will broker a peace deal between Israel and Iran.
Politicians in Minnesota are assassinated while they slept peacefully in their own beds Friday night.
The tensions and anxieties are palpable in our nation and world right now. I heard a firecracker go off late yesterday afternoon downtown in the midst of all the crowds and at once thought, “Was that a gunshot?” Folks are jumpy. Nervous.
It is for times such as these the Church is to be a steady, pastoral voice to the larger culture. We, members of the Church, are called on during this season of political, economic, and cultural cacophony to sound a consistent, steady tone of promise to a disoriented world. This is what we are spiritually wired up to do, isn’t it? Our basic calling is to be a people of hope in a hopeless world. Isn’t that what Jesus was for us? Today, we are going to dig down into this whole concept of hope. Turn in your Bible to Paul’s letter to the Roman church. We are going to pick up with Romans 5:1-5.
Romans 5:1-5
5.1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 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.[1]
Let Paul’s words marinate a bit. He is telling the Roman church that it is not through following the rules of Law and tradition we have access to God; no, because God comes to us in Jesus, whose own life and death opened the door for us to access the grace and love of God. We do not earn grace; we simply reach out and accept it with hearts of faith. What is it that God offers us? Paul says we are given peace with God. There is shalom between God and his beloved.
What does this shalom, this peace look like? It does not mean a cessation of conflict per se; peace, shalom, is the peace, contentment, and well-being God feels within Godself. Our faith in Jesus Christ gives you and me access to that peace. What a gift! It is this gift, my friends, that provides the foundation for our being Church to the swirly world around us. You see, when the Church, when her members, live with a Spirit of shalom, we become the beacons of hope others reach out for and grab. As Christians, we know the end of the proverbial Story. The access to God’s shalom now allows us to hold on and hope for the time when we shall reside in God’s full glory and presence.
Paul is not being Pollyannaish; he too lived in a world dominated by Pax Romana which was Caesar’s way of exacting peace by force. And though Paul and the church in Rome lived under the present Pax Romana, they also currently lived under the already accessible peace of God in Christ while they wait in hope for the culmination of time. Paul describes it this way:
3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 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.
The Peace of Rome came through the tip of a sword. It was a sword of violence, fear, and shame. Paul and the others lived during this violence, fear, and shame. It is the basis of their suffering. And then Paul makes the radical claim that he boasts in his sufferings. The ancient language used by Paul literally means “rejoice” in his sufferings. How can Paul say this? He says this because he knows that Christian suffering is not meaningless; rather, our suffering is a part of a Christian’s spiritual formation process. Paul says, “suffering produces, endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope which does not make us ashamed.”
The swirly time we are living through does not have to define us. The suffering each of us are dealing with – whether spiritual, physical, financial, or emotional – does not have the last word on how we experience this life until we come into the next. Suffering does not define us; what we do with our suffering does.
Suffering can make us a victim of our circumstances, or it can be an engine for transformation. Paul understands suffering as an engine that propels us forward and that engine’s energy is fueled by hope. Hope is the energy that carries our suffering to endurance, and that endurance produces character, and that character in turn produces more hope. You see, hope is a centrifugal force that propels outward in ever-larger circles of grace. Let me provide a real-life example.
I went to high school with a young man named Scotty and little did I realize, much less did he, the lesson about hope he taught me. When Scotty was in elementary school, he was cutting the lawn when he slipped and the lawn mower rolled back over his leg. He lost his leg from the knee down.
Scotty suffered his leg getting cut off. He endured the pain of healing and had to learn to function with one limb and a prosthesis. Without him really knowing it, his character was getting shaped and formed. He learned to be tenacious. He learned that it did not help to sit back and feel sorry for himself. He learned not to be a victim. He learned perseverance. He learned how to walk and then run again; indeed, we wrestled and played football together. He learned the life lesson that you can do whatever you set your mind to do. This is in turn generated in him a spirit that, “Nothing can stop me; if I can get through this, I know I have the resources to get through anything.” This “knowing”, my friends, is called hope.
I watched Scotty wrestle in the regional meet in high school. Some guy made a move and grabbed Scotty leg for a take down; little did he know that Scotty wore a prosthesis and when he grabbed Scotty’s leg, he pulled it off and he froze in shock. Scotty quickly turned around and pinned the guy winning the match! It was classic.
Suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character. And character produces hope which does not disappoint us or make us ashamed.
Think for a moment. What suffering have you undergone? How did, or how can that suffering make you stronger and give you endurance and strength?
How did, or how does, your enduring create in you a strong, developed Christian character? Has it or are you stuck? If you are stuck, let’s you and I chat a bit.
What does that character of yours look like to someone in the swirly world we live in?
Finally, how does your character produce the fly-wheel effect of hope that spins outward in circles of grace shimmering with a peace – a shalom – you experience with God? Remember, beloved, our suffering does not shape who we are, our resting in the peace of God who gives us hope does. Let us pray.
© 2025 Patrick H. Wrisley, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, 8 West Notre Dame Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, New York and shall not be altered, re-purposed, published or preached without permission. All rights reserved.
[1] New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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