Our Hope—Numbers 21: 4-9; John 3: 14-21
John Newton was a man who was well-acquainted with both wretchedness and grace. Now, some of you may be asking, “Who exactly is John Newton?” You would probably know him best as the man who wrote “Amazing Grace,” the very popular hymn. His life saw a vast change from the depths of wickedness and personal suffering to the power of grace to transform and fill the soul with Christ’s love. Truly, his faith in God was the hope that kept him going, and which led him to truly proclaim Christ. So, this morning, in our Lenten series This Faith is Ours, let us look carefully on these words “for God so loved the world” and at the power of God to move us from understanding wretchedness to understanding the hope found in God’s grace.
Newton had a promising life. As a young man he sailed with his father, who was a shipmaster, and set out on his own after his father retired. Newton, at age nineteen, however, was forced into service by the Royal Navy. He struggled there and ended up being flogged in front of the whole ship for trying to desert his post. He contemplated suicide, murdering the captain, and all manner of evil actions in a sort-of breakdown from the anguish of being punished.
He eventually recovered and found wealth and prominence aboard a slave trade ship. He spent years working as a slave trader making money from dehumanization, torture, and murder of Africans brought to America to be enslaved. His work was cruel, filled with causing wretchedness to others, and robbing these people of their hope in life. For those who found themselves on Newton’s ship, their only hope was to die, for their freedom and humanity were stolen from them.
But Newton soon learned what this suffering was like. The shipmates hated him and left him in the West Africa where he himself was sold off in slavery, mistreated and abused. Even after his rescue and subsequent conversion to Christianity, he continued to invest in the slave trade unwilling to give up his lucrative old life. This changed when he truly found God’s grace and gave up all the wealth of the world in order to preach the Good News of a Gospel that sets people free. By the 1780s he was a priest, and a fierce advocate for the abolition of slavery.
Newton was a man who understood wretchedness and grace, abandonment and hope. And Newton could truly tell us, in sermon and hymn, the power of these words for today, “For this is how God loved the world: [God] gave his one and only son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” I know everyone can quote this verse if you’ve been in church for even two seconds, but look more at the next verses—“God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world” but to save it. And verse 18, “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him.”
Too often we live without hope, under judgment ourselves, or in judgment of others. But God has called us to be a people of grace, of hope, and of love. Writer Anne Lamott says, “Grace meets us exactly where we are. And it doesn’t leave us where it found us.” You see, grace teaches us to have hope, and to make hope in an often-dreary world. John Newton worked in his later years as a force for hope and grace, working to atone for the evil he caused as a slave trader for Britain. Grace found him on the turbulent seas in the 1740s when he was caught in a storm and called out to God, but God’s grace pushed and prodded at him until he gave up the wealthy life baptized in wretchedness, for a life of grace baptized in Christ’s love and redemption. It was there he found his own hope and made hope for others.
So, exactly how did he create hope? Was it in his preaching, his hymns, his teaching? No, it was in his work outside the church. Newton worked with members of Parliament in Britain to abolish slavery and lived just long enough to see the act passed in 1807, nine months before his death. It was not enough to write about the evils he saw. It was not enough to preach and teach, or sing hymns advocating against the evil of the world. Newton put his faith into action. His work speaks to verse 21, “But those who do what is right come to the light so others can that they are doing what God wants.” God called Newton to come out of his darkness and into the light, but also, God called Newton to live and work in the light creating hope for others whose hopes Newton had long stolen in his work.
Theologian James Denney once asked a friend what happened at Calvary. The friend said in essence, if my child went dreadfully wrong, I would never give that child up. But my heart would still break. At Calvary, we see God’s broken heart for us, and the true cost of love. And in seeing that broken heart, we long to be different. Friends, God cannot and will not let us go no matter what level of wretchedness we find in our lives. And in that knowledge that God will never let us go, we find our hope forged in love, refined by mercy and grace.
Like Newton, though we are called to make hope. Slavery is not some issue of the past. There is a modern-day slave trade. Young women and men are subjected to sexual assault and forced into prostitution. There is a new task force in law enforcement to combat labor and work slavery and trafficking (a still-thriving illegal trade) in this state. There are people who live without hope, without a voice, and subject to the cruelty of another, just as Newton lived in this world of the wickedness of business as usual for so long. Poverty is still a problem in our world, and in our own country. Children still go hungry, right here in Macon, and evil is borne out of the misery of poverty and desperation.
But there is hope to fight against the wretchedness we see or sometimes don’t want to see. As we collect food, as we provide care and nurture to others, as we shine the light of Christ’s grace on this evil, we fight for hope. We, and Christ’s followers, fight for Christ’s grace in this world. Every day we see and hear horrible things that could depress even the strongest person. But we are reminded of our call to be creators of hope, to tell everyone that there is love and grace found in the God who never, ever leaves us.
John Newton’s hymn, “Amazing Grace,” talks about navigating the dangers, toils, and snares. It talks about the grace that relieves fears and doubts. It even talks about the hope of grace leading us home, and how grace saves from wretchedness, a place Newton knew so well. But there’s a lesser-known verse which speaks to hope. “The Lord has promised good to me, [God’s] word my hope secures.” As God’s grace takes us from where we are and changes us into Christ’s followers, may we work each and every day to bring hope into this world—the same hope that we have found in God’s amazing grace.
Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/3738897542883952