Hoping Against Hope
Sermon — June 7, 2026
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings
“Hoping against hope, he believed.” (Romans 4:18)
In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity, one God. Amen.
There’s a story told by the Irish writer Frank O’Connor that comes from his childhood wandering through the countryside outside Cork in southern Ireland. If you recognize it, it’s probably because it was popularized by President John F. Kennedy, who re-told it in speeches several times. In his autobiography An Only Child, O’Connor writes, “When as kids we came to an orchard wall that seemed too high to climb, we took off our caps and tossed them over the wall, and then we had no choice but to follow them.” It’s an idyllic image of audacity and determination and the spirit of adventure.
That was the spirit in which JFK declared in 1963 that “This Nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow it.” And while Kennedy himself wouldn’t live to see the greatest successes of the space program—while, in fact, he would be assassinated the very day after this speech—the nation had indeed tossed its cap over the wall, and before the decade was out, the astronauts of the Apollo program would follow that cap all the way to the Moon.
Frank O’Connor’s original telling of this story wasn’t quite so glorious. He was not living in a modern Camelot. In fact, he had just been fired from his railroad job, but on the same night, he had presented his first literary paper. “It was in Irish,” he writes, “and the subject was Goethe… I didn’t know much about Irish, and I knew practically nothing about Goethe, and that little was wrong… I no longer had a job or a penny in the world, or even a home I could go back to without humiliation… Now I realized whatever it might cost me, there was no turning back… I had tossed my cap over the wall of life, and I knew I must follow it, wherever it had fallen.”
This is not audacity so much as foolish optimism, the impulsive act of a young man who’s totally unprepared for what he’s about to do, but who throws his hat over the wall. It’s the act of a man who, hoping against hope, believes.
Perhaps it’s fitting to start with a story from the Emerald Isle as we begin this green season after Pentecost; the season of gradual growth in the world outside and in our lives; the back half of the year when no major holy days occur, in what the Church calls “Ordinary Time.” Over the course of this summer, we’ll be spending time in the Gospel of Matthew, as Jesus preaches his way around Galilee. We’ll be slowly reading through Paul’s Letter to the Romans all the way until September. And we’ll be following along with the Book of Genesis as it tells the stories of the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the ancestors of the people of God. It’s a beautiful and messy story, full of complicated people living in an uncertain world. And the story begins with today’s story from the life of Abraham—still called “Abram” at this point—at the very moment at which he throws his cap over the wall.
This story is essentially the first thing we ever hear about Abraham. The Book of Genesis tells us that Abram is married to Sarai, but has no children; and that they’ve moved with his father Terah from Ur of the Chaldeans, where he’d grown up, to live in Haran. And that Terah had died. (Gen. 11:30-32)
And then, out of nowhere, “the Lord said to Abram, `Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house.’” (12:1) God offers Abram a three-part promise: Go, and I will 1) make of you a great nation, and I will 2) bless you, and I will 3) make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. (12:2) God will transform this small, wandering clan into a great nation, a family through whom all the families of the earth will be blessed. “To your offspring I will give this land,” God says. (12:7) And Abram believes him, and he goes.
But here’s the thing. Abram is, at this point, 75 years old. His wife Sarai is 65. They have no children. There are no offspring to whom God can give this land. There is no family that God can make into a great nation. And at this point, it seems unlikely that will happen.
But Abram believes God, as crazy as it seems. As Paul says, “he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old)” (Romans 4:19) and that’s not actually a rude remark about seventy-five year olds, as you might think. No, Paul knows how the rest of the story goes. It will in fact be another 25 years before that promised child Isaac is born. Abraham will be 99 years old before three angels appear to him and tell him that, finally, his wife Sarah (aged 89) will conceive and bear a son.
When God calls Abram, it makes about as much sense to believe that Abram will start a family, as it would to believe that Frank O’Connor would become a great Irish writer on that first night, when he knew very little about either Irish or writing (and most of what he did know was wrong).
But just as Frank throws his cap over the wall, Abram builds an altar to the Lord. This seems like a minor detail of the story. But in a way, it’s the most important part. Because the point is not that Abram believes in God, in some philosophical sense. It’s not even that he accepts, in theory, God’s promise. The point is that Abram actually acts as though he trusts what God has said. He spend the time, and the resources, and the strength required to build an altar in a land he’s never been. He’s only passing through, and it will be years until he returns. Building a shrine there is a waste of time until this crazy dream comes true. But “hoping against hope, he believes” what God has promised. He knows that he must follow it, wherever it may lead. And his faith, Paul writes, is “reckoned to him as righteousness.” (Rom. 4:22) (And there will be more to say about that over the course of the summer.)
That’s why Abraham, imperfect as he is, is an example for our faith. From the very beginning, we followers of Jesus have been throwing our caps over the wall. That’s what the tax collector Matthew does, when he leaves everything behind to follow Jesus where he leads, renouncing the safety and the prosperity of collaborating with Rome to embrace an uncertain life among those who scorn him as a traitor for collecting Roman tolls. That’s what this leader of the synagogue does, when he comes to Jesus, hoping against hope, believing that even though his daughter has died, Jesus can restore her to life. That’s what we do when we find ourselves in Frank O’Connor’s shoes, trying to decide whether to take a chance on a new opportunity that comes with great risks: whether to move to a new city, or begin a new relationship; to take a new job, or to take a stand for what we believe.
And in a sense, trying to follow Jesus always involves throwing your cap over the wall. It always involves building an altar in a land we don’t yet inhabit. Because many of the things that Jesus says are counter-cultural, even counter-intuitive. Jesus tells us that the first will be last, and the last will be first. He gives us a commandment to love not only our neighbors or our friends, but our enemies. He tells us that death is not the end of life, but a kind of sleep from which we will one day awake. He invites us to live the rest of our lives as though we will one day be reunited with all those who have loved and cared for us; and with all those who have wronged us; and with all those we have wronged. In the context of our lives in this world, these things don’t make much sense. They ask us to put our hope and trust in the promise of something that we cannot see, and to live as if those promises were true.
Sometimes it feels foolish to live that way. Abram knew that all too well. But hoping against hope, we believe that, as Paul says, these words “were written not for [Abram’s] sake alone, but for ours also.” (Rom. 4:23-24) Hoping against hope, we build our altars in the land of heaven. We know “practically nothing about” what God is doing in our lives “and that little [is] wrong.” And yet, like Abram we throw our caps over the wall, and then we try to follow, wherever they have fallen.
