Things Hoped For
Hebrews 11:1-3. 8-16
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
August 17, 2025
“Is this a Bonhoeffer moment?” That question gets tossed around often in some circles lately. You probably know that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian and pastor who resisted his government when he recognized, very early the dangers of Hitler’s regime. And so people wonder if this moment is another time in history that calls for people to speak up and resist in similar way.
Bonhoeffer wrestled earnestly with the question of how to live faithfully in his time. In his Christmas letter of 1942, he wrote “Have there ever been people in history who in their time, like us, had so little ground under their feet, people to whom every possible alternative open to them at the time appeared equally unbearable, senseless, and contrary to life?”
Twelve years after he became one of the first to publicly oppose the Nazis, they executed him. He is a martyr, someone who was killed for his faith and his example is inspiring.
But, as most people are, he is complicated. Victoria Barnett is a scholar who interviewed more than 60 people who were part of the German Confessing Church. She learned that many of those folks never heard of Bonhoeffer until after the war, even though they were involved in the same movement. Others were critical of him because he was very traditional and did not support the ordination of women. That struggle was going on at the same time. Also “The resistance group in which he was involved consisted of an inner circle of conspirators that had access to Hitler precisely because of their high-ranking positions in the Nazi system. Most had served as loyal civil servants and career military officers who gradually despaired of the evil surrounding them and turned against the regime.”[1]
I share these facts not to diminish him at all, but as a reminder that he was an ordinary human being.
Nowadays, people appeal to Bonhoeffer as an example of faith. The writer of Hebrews offers a list of faithful people including Abraham. We might remember that God told Abraham to move to a land he did not know where he would become the father of multitudes. So Abraham and Sarah packed up and moved to Canaan as directed, but soon after they arrived, there was a drought, so they moved on to Egypt where Abe got in trouble with the king for lying about Sarah being his wife and they had to return to Canaan. Sarah was getting old without getting pregnant, so Abraham had a son with another woman whose name was Hagar. That led to family drama and conflict worthy of a soap opera. Finally, when they were old enough to be grandparents and had given up all hope, Sarah did get pregnant and gave bith to their son Isaac. Isaac grew up and had two sons, one of whom was Jacob. Jacob then had 12 sons and 1 daughter. We know the 12 sons as the leaders of 12 tribes of ancient Israel and more descendants that can be counted.
“By faith,” Hebrews says, “Abraham and Sarah and many many others endured and prevailed.” The long list of heroes might be intimidating. We might aspire to be as courageous, as faithful, as Abraham or Sarah or Bonhoeffer, but not consider ourselves worthy or capable, not in their league. So it is helpful to me to recognize that they were people just like us. They didn’t have super powers or even super faith. They found themselves in tough times, with hard decisions to make and had to try to figure it out just like we do. They made mistakes and took wrong turns and back tracked, just like we do. Some of them suffered for their faith; they died for doing the right thing; they were killed for their obedience to God and it is possible that such may also be required of us. Because we are living in that kind of moment.
Austin Channing Brown is an author and speaker who leads the struggle for racial justice. This week, she wrote this:
“Every now and then, throughout history, the fight for justice is bright and shiny and hopeful. Every now and then, the fight feels like it’s within our reach. Every now and then progress feels inevitable and celebrations are planned ahead of certain victory. But more often, our fight for justice looks like this. Hard. Unforgiving. Filled with sadness. Wondering if we’ll make it at all.”
“The shadow of hope. Working in the dark. Trusting that something new can be formed in the womb of chaos. Hope against hope. Hope when hope’s back is against the wall. When hope is backed into a corner.”
She goes on “We are in the shadow of hope. But this is where creativity thrives. This is where we find our people. This is where we clarify what we believe. This is where our ethics meet our actions. This is where we prepare, plan, meet, engage. This is where we imagine what could be and fight for that reality.”[2]
Channing Brown calls it the shadow of hope. The author of Hebrews connects hope with faith, saying that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Clarence Jordan, Baptist farmer and Greek scholar of the last century translated that verse as “Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds; it is betting your life on the unseen realities.”
I love the poetry of each of those thoughts, but I’m not sure exactly what they mean, in practical terms. ? How do we endure times like these? What do we actually do?
Admiral Jim Stockdale was a naval avaiator held captive for eight long years during the Vietnam War. Tortured more than twenty times, he never had much reason to believe that he would survive the prison camp and return home. Afterwards, he was asked how he lived through such a horrible experience, while others who seemed younger and more fit had died. Stockdale said that the prisoners who were either the most complete optimists or the most complete pessimists had the most trouble. He said that he never lost faith that he would get out someday, but simultaneously he accepted the reality of his situation. Every morning, he woke up to three thoughts:
· I’m still in this horrible place.
· Someday, though, I’m going to get out.
· If that’s so, what should I do and how should I act today?
His mindset has been labeled the Stockdale paradox and applied across other experiences. It says
You must retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties.
AND at the same time…
You must confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.[3]
This resonates with me. Hold tightly to faith for the long haul. Do what you can in today’s circumstances.
In 1942, when Bonhoeffer was speaking out in Germany, President Roosevelt ordered the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-American people. Unlike today, they were not grabbed off the streets by masked members of law enforcement. They were given a little bit of time to prepare. But like today, there was money to be made in the cruelty. While being forced off their land and out of their homes, they were told that they would still have to pay taxes and mortgages. Three families near Sacramento went to Bob Fletcher, whom they knew because he was their state agricultural inspector. Appalled by the injustice, he quit his job and farmed their lands for three years. worked 90 acres of grapes for them. He worked 18-hour days, slept in a bunkhouse for migrant workers and faced deep anti-Japanese sentiment from neighbors which incuded a bullet being fired into the barn on the property where he lived. He used the earnings to pay their taxes and mortgages. They had told him to keep the profits, but he saved half for them. After the war, he returned their land to them with crops well tended and bank balances from the grapes he harvested while they were away.[4] Fletcher did what he could every day they lived through that unjust reality.
Abraham and Sarah were faithful but they did not live to see God’s promise which was fulfilled generations later. Bonhoeffer was courageous. He did more than many others in his time, but still he was executed by the Nazis just a month before the war ended. Bob Fletcher saved three families land and livelihoods, but many Japanese-Americans lost everything. What do we do with that? How does the Stockdale paradox apply?
The Stockdale paradox holds that the individual will prevail, survive and overcome, but our faith and experience teaches otherwise. Our faith says it doesn’t always work that way. Consider Bonhoeffer. Consider Dr. King. Consider Jesus on the cross. All those people of faith and countless others believed not that they were going to prevail, but that God will prevail, that God is working out God’s own purposes. Someday, God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It is that conviction that guides our actions today.
Fifteen years ago, on the third Sunday in August 2010, I preached here for the very first time. On that Sunday, I preached on one of the lectionary texts for the day. Turns out that we’re in the same spot in the lectionary cycle and so today’s passage from Hebrews is the same as that day.
The passage takes a long look back at the history of God’s people. My view is not that long, but it still feels appropriate to do a little bit of remembering. When I came, the pews had been removed, but just a few years before. When I came, children had returned after a long absence and there was Sunday School as well as a separate children’s worship. Across the last 15 years, we converted an old nursery into new restrooms and made a new nursery out of unfinished space under the former balcony and then we saw that new nursery converted into more food pantry space. We evolved as a congregation from people who deliberately refused to consider ever leaving this building to voting to put it on the market. We have dedicated babies and baptized a few new disciples and said good-bye to a host of some of the most faithful people I’ve ever known. We have faced hard decisions and made mistakes and back-tracked. But most importantly, we have sought to respond to God’s call on us in this time. Like the long list of people in Hebrews, we have not spent much time looking back, but facing forward we have asked what is next in the mission of God.
The last fifteen years represents one-fourth of my whole life. I am amazed and grateful to have shared it with you. The last and only time I preached on Hebrews 11 here, I quoted Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch translation in which verse 1reads “Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds; it is betting your life on the unseen realities.”
At the beginning of our journey together, I said
“We don’t know yet what our time together will bring, what adventures and unimagined possibilities for joy will be ours. Getting to this day has not been without cost for either of us, but I have a persistent belief that it will be worth it. In fact, I’m betting my life on that unseen reality. I hope you are too.”
Today, I say “There has never been a time past when God wasn't with us . . .To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift.”[5] And we still don’t know yet what the future will bring, what adventures and joy will be ours. I’m still betting my life on the conviction that God is working God’s purposes within and among us. I hope you are too. Amen.
[1] Victoria Barnett https://www.christiancentury.org/features/there-s-no-such-thing-bonhoeffer-moment
[2] Austin Channing Brown in her Banned newsletter August 15, 2025
[3] https://niall.bio/stockdale-paradox/
[4] https://www.californiasun.co/a-california-agricultural-inspector-quit-his-job-during-wwii-to-tend-the-farms-of-interned-japanese-families/
[5] Frederick Buechner, “A Room Called Remember” in Secrets in the Dark (New York: HarperCollin, 2006) p. 63