Joint Worship Service East Moline/Milan/Rock Island
First Presbyterian Church, Milan, IL
June 14, 2026
Hope In...
I had a little bit of online dialogue several years ago with a seminary classmate who was preaching on this same passage, and this subject of “hope” and just what kind of hope we’re talking about here. She was making the point that for us, far too often, hope (despite what Paul says in verse 5) really does disappoint us, or at least it sure seems like it.
And the thing is, she’s right. Hope does disappoint, most of the time.
We hope our loved ones will recover and continue to live among us, and they don’t. We hope the institutions of our society will seek justice instead of merely enforcing order, and our daily headlines make it clear they do not. We hope that we ourselves will truly live up to our best dreams, and we do not.
And Paul still says, right there in verse 5, “hope does not disappoint.” And he’s still right too.
The question is, are you hoping for, or are you hoping in?
We know what it is to hope for – whether it’s the child hoping for a new bicycle for Christmas or me hoping for a clean result every time I go for a cancer screening, we hope for some thing, usually something fairly specific, something good or beneficial or at least not harmful. Sometimes our hopes are fulfilled – sometimes the child gets the bicycle, and my cancer screenings keep being clear after thirteen years – but painfully often we are disappointed. The new job doesn’t come, or it turns out to be a horror show when it does. We send our child into the world and things don’t go well. Maybe they end up back home in disappointment. Our own health fails.
When we hope for, inevitably we will be disappointed. Bodies fail us. Other people fail us.
But we hope in God. And that hope does not disappoint, because God does not disappoint.
God doesn’t promise us a bicycle or a perfect new job or perfect health. What God promises us is God, God’s own self, the love that is God.
As Paul points out, we already know that love because God has shown us that love in dying for us. So, we know God’s love, and that does not disappoint. When others around us disappoint and harm and murder and commit gross injustice, God’s love does not disappoint. When our very world spins recklessly off its axis and the very fabric of our basic living together is trashed and torn by purveyors of hatred, God’s love does not disappoint.
In Matthew’s gospel Jesus warned his disciples that his coming to them was no guarantee of peace; he did “not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10:34). But here’s the thing; even when the sword has come, even when we are set child against parent, when we are beset by those who mockingly call us brothers and sisters … God’s love does not disappoint.
It may not seem like much; it might not seem like anything more than survival at times, as my pastor friend said, but God’s love is there, holding us up when we don’t even realize it. And that hope, that undying love of God, is where we are not disappointed.
And for that, Thanks be to God. Amen.
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