Trusting in God in the Days that Lie Ahead
Program 4604
First air date October 27, 2002
[Transcribed from tape and edited for clarity.]
In Hebrews, the eleventh chapter, the first verse, we read these words: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen."
When people say they have faith it means much more than just believing some propositional truths. It’s a whole attitude about the future. It’s a whole attitude of hope. That’s what I’m talking about today. Human beings, as any social scientist will tell you, are unique among all the creatures on the planet. We are the only ones who are capable of imagining the future; of looking ahead. It’s both a bane and a blessing of our existence. It’s the bane of our existence because we are able to conceptualize death. Animals don’t think about dying and, therefore, they don’t suffer from anxiety. You don’t see a squirrel hopping along in a state of existential angst worrying about death. He just hops and hops and hops, and one day he drops over dead. Not like human beings who are afraid of death.
As we look forward to the future, we often see death in very dismal terms. It’s this that Jesus came to change. He called upon us to believe that after death there would be resurrection, there will be newness of life. "Who so ever believeth and trusteth in me, saith the Lord, though he/she be dead, yet that person will live." That’s the good news of the Gospel: death does not have the final say. As you look to the future, know this: that in Christ there is newness of life beyond the grave.
I belong to a black church in West Philadelphia. I grew up in that church. I’m the only white member of this 2,500 member congregation. I remember when I went to my first black funeral. I was seventeen years old. A friend of mine, Clarence, had died. The minister was magnificent. He preached about the Resurrection and he talked about life after death in such glowing terms that I have to tell you, even at seventeen I wished I was dead just listening to him! He came down from the pulpit. Then he went over to the family and spoke words of comfort to them. Last of all, he went over to the open casket and for the last twenty minutes, he preached to the corpse. Can you imagine that? He just yelled at the corpse. "Clarence! Clarence!" he yelled. He said it with such authority. I would not have been surprised had there been an answer.
"Well," he said, "Clarence, you died too fast. You got away without us thanking you." He went down this litany of beautiful, wonderful things that Clarence had done for people. Then he said, "That’s it, Clarence. When there’s nothin’ more to say, there’s only one thing to say, good night!" Now this is drama. White preachers can’t do this! He grabbed the lid of the casket and he slammed it shut and he yelled, "Good night, Clarence! Good night, Clarence!" As he slammed that lid shut he pointed to the casket and he said, "Good night, Clarence, cause I know, yes, I know that God is going to give you a good morning!" Then the choir stood and started singing "On that great gettin’ up Morning we shall rise, we shall rise." People were up on their feet and they were in the aisles hugging and kissing each other and dancing. I was up dancing and hugging people. I knew I was in the right church, the kind of church that can take a funeral and turn it into a celebration. That’s what the faith is about. It’s about the promise of eternal life. Even in the midst of this life. Thus death doesn’t threaten us any more.
The fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians says this: "Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory? Praise be to God that giveth us the victory." The good news of the Gospel is that death doesn’t have to threaten us. Most people are threatened by death. Woody Allen once said, "I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens." What a good line! None of us want to be there when it happens. But I know what happens beyond death and that’s what the Gospel is about. So the fear—source of the phobias as Freud once said—drains the joy out of life. That fear can be destroyed through faith in the Lord. Trust in the Lord, lean on him.
It’s not only the bane of our existence, but it’s also the blessing of our existence. Being able to see into the future means that we are not controlled by the past. Most social scientists believe that what human beings are is nothing more than the product of past experiences. You’ve heard them. What happened in childhood molds you, what happened in your past determines who you are in the present. I believe that the past influences us. I do not believe that the past determines who we are. I would give up tomorrow morning with inner-city kids if I really believed that people were determined by the past because for most of the young people I work with armies have marched over them. They’ve been through hell and back. They’ve seen brothers and sisters reduced to prostitution and drugs. They’ve known evil in its worst form. But I’ve got to tell you, when I talk to those kids, I tell them this: as important as your past may have been, it’s not as important as the future. It’s the future that matters.
"Let me tell you this," I say to the kids. "It’s not as important where you came from as it is in terms of where you’re going." "What are you dreams?" I ask them, "What are you visions for the future?" Because I am here to tell you that people are more influenced by their dreams and their visions than anything that has happened in their yesterdays.
My son, when he was a little kid, went out shooting basketballs through a hoop. Why? Was he having his behavior positively enforced by rewards? Every time the ball went into the hoop we gave him a biscuit? No. It wasn’t the past that influenced him and got him out there hour after hour shooting that basketball. It was this: he imagined going out for the basketball team in high school, some day in the future. It was what he hoped would happen in the future that determined what he was and did in the present. And that’s the good news of the Gospel. You are not a prisoner of the past. The Scripture says you are a prisoner of hope. What you hope for will influence, condition, and make you into the person that you want to be. What are you dreams? What are your visions? The Bible says that without hopes, without dreams, without visions people perish. So I ask you to get down on your knees and say, "God, give me visions, give me dreams. Help me to imagine what I could be, what I could accomplish with your grace." And it’s never too late.
Let me tell you this. I was working in Philadelphia. We had seven summer camps in urban neighborhoods with disadvantaged, at-risk kids. In each of the camps we had a basketball team. At the end of the season, I got an all-star team together from all of these respective neighborhoods and we staged a basketball game against the Philadelphia Eagles football team. It was a good public relations thing. I staged it out at Eastern University where I teach. I had them in the dressing room of Eastern University and we were all getting jacked up to go out to play this game against the Philadelphia Eagles. The kids couldn’t believe it. These were the stars they had seen on television and they were going to get to play against them! I said to these kids, "I brought you out here to the college because I want you to imagine yourselves playing on this basketball court someday and with God’s help you can do it."
The coach interrupted me and he said, "Don’t listen to this man. Don’t listen to this man! People like that have told me I could escape from the ghetto, that I could make something of myself. I tried," he said to these kids, "I really tried and look at me. I’m right back where I started from. So don’t let him put fancy dreams into your head. Do you understand? Don’t let him put fancy visions in your skull!"
I hardly knew what to say and then it came to me: a poem by Shel Silverstein. I modified it just a bit. I said to these young, African American kids who I could see were shocked by their coach.
Listen to the mustn’ts, child.
Listen to the don’ts.
Listen to the never could bes.
Listen to the won’ts.
Listen to the never have beens.
Then listen close to me.
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.
"Now let’s go out and play ball." And they did. That’s the good news of the Gospel. Jesus says, "I have a future for you. I don’t care where you are or what condition you’re in, you’re here on this planet because there are good things for you to do. There are great things for you to be. They may not be impressive in the world’s eyes, but they are important. Little things.
I was in an airport in New Mexico. This elderly woman was sitting there, sad as could be. I went over and sat next to her and tried to cheer her up. I got laughing and she laughed so hard that I wondered what would happen. Others in this small airport gathered around and we all got her laughing. She couldn’t stop. Her friend came on this little commuter airplane and she hugged her friend and bade us good-bye. She got into the car and drove away. I was looking out the glass door and the car came back up the lane. She came out, came up to me and said, "Mister, you didn’t know this, but it was three years ago today that my husband of sixty-four years died. I didn’t realize it until I was on the way home that today is the first day since then that I’ve been able to laugh. I wanted to come back and thank you."
People, it may be something like that, that the world doesn’t see as significant, but that may be ultimately significant in the long run. There are good things for you to do and be in the future. Put your future in the hands of God. Remember, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen. Hope. Believe in the future.
Conversation with Tony Campolo
Lydia Talbot: Tony, your compelling message begins with Hebrews: faith is the substance of things unseen, of hope unseen. Have you ever been without hope?
Tony Campolo: There are times when I lose hope and they are times when I need to call upon God to restore that hope. When hope is gone, it’s all gone. Prayer is the instrument for restoring hope when it is destroyed.
Talbot: What are those times that make you teeter on despair?
Campolo: When a good friend with four children gets cancer. I pray for her to be delivered and she dies, I begin to ask, "God, where are you? What are you doing?" I need for God to restore my faith and my hope at that time, for God is going to make it alright. See, I believe in Romans 8:28 that reads: "In the midst of all that happens, God is at work bringing about good." I look at an event like that and say, "What good can possibly come out of that?" I have to turn to God and say that there are things I don’t understand now, so give me the ability to trust you that it’s going to be alright.
Talbot: Your biblical reference to Romans, the connection between suffering and hope. How does hope really come out of suffering?
Campolo: You know, it’s only in the context of suffering that you really know that you have faith. In the Bible story of Job, he’s talking big time faith until the tragedies come, until his children die and disease strikes, and he loses everything. His wife says, "Curse God and die." Then he knows that he has faith in God. As he says about God, "If I am cursed, still will I bless him. I still trust that in the midst of all that is happening, it’s going to work out alright."
Talbot: Trust the journey. You have a story about Nelson Mandela and hope.
Campolo: The one, of course, that I love most of all about Nelson Mandela was when he was released from prison. He’s walking across the courtyard. President Clinton told me this story and he said that the television cameras focused in on Mandela’s face. Clinton said to Mandela, "I had my daughter up to see this with me at three o’clock in the morning. When they focused in on your face, I have never seen such anger, such hatred on a man’s face. That’s not the Nelson Mandela I know today."
Nelson Mandela said to Bill Clinton, "It’s interesting that you should have noted that because as I walked across that courtyard I thought, ‘They’ve taken from me everything. I have nothing to hope for. I have no future. My cause is dead. My family is gone. My friends have been killed. There’s nothing left, there is no hope.’ And I hated them. I hated them for taking everything from me. And then God spoke to me and God said, ‘Nelson, for twenty-seven years you were their prisoner but you were always a free man. Don’t let them turn you into a free man only to make you into their prisoner.’" That’s what God can do.
Talbot: Powerful. We started this program with a poem by Emily Dickinson. Hope in the form of a metaphor of a bird and it ends, "Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me." It’s always there isn’t it?
Campolo: Yes. It takes hold of you. As a matter of fact, it’s not that you generate hope, hope comes from beyond. That’s why God is so important because it’s not something that is generated in the psyche, it’s a gift that comes from God.
Talbot: And you are a gift, Tony Campolo. Than you so much.