John Claypool Repentance and Hopefulness First air date January 24, 1999

The Rev. Dr. John Claypool is Rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham, Alabama. John made his first appearance on this program in 1978, and has been a regular speaker almost every season since then. A native of Kentucky, John was ordained in the Southern Baptist denomination in 1953, and served churches in Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. In 1986, he was ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church, and has been rector of St. Luke’s since 1987. John Claypool is one of America’s great preachers. His sermons have been widely published in books, journals and magazines, and he’s in great demand as a speaker at gatherings across the U.S.

Like so many people of my generation, I felt very called back in the 1950’s and 1960’s to become involved in the Civil Rights struggle that was gripping our country after World War II had come to an end. As you can probably tell from my voice, all of my family roots are in the deep South. All of my forebears were slave owners. My mother is a Mississippian. My father is from Kentucky. So as I came of age and began to read history from a Christian point of view, I had a deep sense that I needed to be part of the answer to what I felt was a problem that my kind had created. I very much wanted to help set right what I felt was a terrible historic wrong and, therefore, I threw myself with great vigor and with great enthusiasm into trying to find a way to be redemptive in that very turbulent time in our nation’s history.

I recall one afternoon going to a meeting of people who shared similar concerns. The difficulties, as those of you who were living through that era remember, were very, very great. Certain habits were so ingrained — economically, psychologically — that any kind of radical change was very, very slow and filled with disappointment. I remember that afternoon, as I went to the meeting, nothing seemed to go right. We could not agree on a strategy. There was lots of mistrust on all sides. The meeting ended in a great sense of confusion, and because I was young and idealistic and very vulnerable to disappointment, I left the meeting with a great, great sagging spirit.

One of the other participants in that meeting was an older rabbi and we happened to be meeting in his synagogue. I remember saying to him as I walked out, “You know, there are times I just feel like its hopeless.”

And he said, “If you have a few minutes, come into my study. I would love to talk to you about that.”

And so we went in. I still remember he quietly took out his pipe, packed it, lit it and disappeared in a cloud of smoke. He kind of reminded me of Moses upon Mount Sinai. As the smoke began to clear, he said in that measured sense of one who had had so much experience with life, “I need to tell you that to a Jew there is only one unforgivable sin and that is the sin of despair. To say of any situation that it is hopeless, to say that there is nothing redemptive that can possibly be done, that is simply not a position that we considerable to be tenable.” He said, “Humanly speaking, despair is presumptuous. It is saying something about reality that we finite human beings have no right to say because we don’t know everything.”

“Think of the times that you have been surprised when it looked like to you, from your perspective, that there was no hope. Then realities that you didn’t even know existed either bubbled up from within or came in from the side or intervened from above. Think of the times that you have been surprised at the mysterious unfolding of events.”

“Therefore,” he said, “we don’t know enough to embrace despair as an absolutism. By the same token, theological despair is downright heretical because it is saying something about that mystery that stands behind all reality that we really have no right to say. We believe that this God of ours can make the things that are out of the things that are not. We believe that this God can even make dead things come alive again. Therefore, to say that there is any situation that is out of reach of that kind of power and that kind of mercy, that is downright heretical.”

He said, “I know when most people think about sin, they think in terms of the abusive power or the neglect of power and, of course, that’s part of the story. But to us Jews, the deepest dimension of sin is despair. It is embracing that kind of hopelessness that cuts one off from the kinds of energies that can make a difference in any situation.”

“Therefore,” he said, “I don’t think there is anything about our present situation that should be regarded with despair. As difficult as it is, there is always a reason to hope.”

That was over thirty years ago that I had that conversation and those words of his made a deep impression on me. Obviously they did because here I am three decades later sharing these things with you. As I’ve thought about those words, that despair is presumptuous, that despair is heretical, I realize that that is not only true from a Jewish perspective, it is also profoundly true for those of us who see life through a Christian lens. In fact, as I think about Jesus, the quintessential Jew, it occurs to me that Jesus had that same sense of hopefulness when He began His public ministry in Galilee. The very first thing He said was, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, repent and believe the Good News.”

And interestingly enough, when most of us hear that verb “repent,” our tendency is to regard it negatively. We think of repentance as somebody putting an accusing finger in our faces and saying, “Look, you’ve got to face up to your imperfection. You’ve made a mess of your life and you need to get down on your knees and grovel.” That is very, very difficult for most of us to do.

But if you will think about it from a deeper level, the word “repent” which literally means to change direction, you start moving in another way. Perhaps a U-turn is the best modern analogy for repentance. If you look at repentance deeply, it comes as a profound sense of hopefulness.

Jesus would never have invited people to repent if He had not believed that change was possible. If there wasn’t such a thing as hope in any given situation, He would never have tantalizingly said to us that repentance was something that we need to do. Therefore, my sense is that Jesus would say the same thing as my old rabbi said. That if we are honest, if we are honest about our situation, we don’t know enough as human beings to be absolutely negative and absolute because surprise and mystery is the structure of reality. The kind of God that we have come to see in the face of Jesus, this God who can make the things that are out of the things that are not, is one who can call creation to come out of nothing and is one who can even take the worst of human wreckage, death itself, and bring life out of it. If that is the mystery who stands behind all things, because it is the nature of God as we have come to know Him in Jesus Christ, then to say of any situation that it is absolutely hopeless is not only presumptuous but also heretical.

I do believe that our greatest human temptation is the temptation to despair. This was brought home to me very powerfully a few years ago. I was going through a busy airport in a large southern city and I bumped into a lady who had been a friend of mine decades before. I had served a church of which she and her family were members. As we chatted there, since we hadn’t seen each other for some time, I did what we always do. I asked her, “How is your husband? How is your family?”

And when I said “husband,” a terrible look of anguish came over her face and she said, “You don’t know, do you?”

And I said, “Know what.”

And she said, “He took his own life six month ago.”

Well, I was absolutely shocked because I had known this man years before. He was filled with promise. He came from an achieving family. He had gone to the law school at his state university and he graduated number one in his class. He was invited to join a very prestigious law firm in a large city and because of his ability, he had risen quickly to become a senior partner. In fact, I recall that people would say this young man has a potential of being the governor of this state, or maybe even a United States senator. Therefore, I could not imagine that all that promise had come to such a tragic end.

But she told me that the problem began very, very innocently. He began to social drink in the many occasions that make up life in his social class. She said it became the old, old story of a man taking a drink and then drink taking the man. She said he began to depend increasingly on alcohol. It began to take its toll on his health and his ability to function in the office and she said, “As it got worse and worse, he put up the two defenses that people with those kinds of addictions usually put up. The defenses of denial and of blaming.”

People would say to him, “You’re having a problem with drinking too much.” He would get very angry and say, “I don’t have a problem. If you think I have a problem, you have a problem.”

And then she said “When it was no longer possible to deny because the wreckage was everywhere around him, he then resorted to blaming his parents for having raised him too rigidly, blaming his law partners for putting too much pressure on him, and blaming his clients for being unreasonable. The last straw that broke the camel’s back was when his law partners asked him to resign from the firm and the Bar Association threatened to lift his license. He retreated within himself and began to drink even more heavily. One afternoon he said he was going to take out the garbage. I saw him go through the garage and then I heard that terrible sound of a gunshot and I knew what had happened.”

And then she said, “You know, his deepest problem looking back was not alcohol. His deepest problem was despair. We could never, never get him to believe that there was something redemptive that could be done about his situation. He cut himself off from hope and therefore he cut out of his life those energies that could have been redemptive.”

I do believe that she had put her finger on our deepest human temptation. The ultimate, ultimate problem any of us face is adopting, embracing a stance of despair which says of any situation, no matter how bad it is, there is nothing that can be done. Things are tremendously hopeless. I believe that what breath is to our physical bodies, hope is to the human spirit.

Therefore, I invite you to remember the words of the old rabbi. We can access hope by ways of humility, by admitting that as finite creatures we don’t know everything and therefore believing that there are things out of the great mystery of life that can bring redemptive energies into our lives. We can also access hope by what we do know about that mystery who stands behind it all. This God who can make the things that are out of the things that are not. This God who can even make dead things come alive again. Who are we to say what that kind of power and that kind of mercy could possibly do with our situation?

I had a hospital chaplain say to me once, “There is only one God. Nothing else is as big.” If you will hold that in your heart and let hope do for you what hope can do, then despair, is presumptuous, it is heretical. Hope is the great gift that gives us life and continues to make life authentic.

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Interview with John Claypool Interviewed by Floyd Brown

Floyd Brown: John, that was just terrific. I really enjoyed what you said and I got a great deal of meaning and could identify with what you were talking about, too-the despair, the hopelessness we had in the late 50’s and into the 60’s when the Civil Rights efforts were so strong. But I think in terms of that along with the despair that must be reigning in various parts of the world. What about people who are being killed-genocide, huge governments that are suppressing people? Is it just overwhelming? Can these people find hope anywhere?

John Claypool: Well, I think it is interesting. Many times people in those circumstances are absolutely shocking in how heroic and how hopeful they are. We make a mistake, I think, we in this country who have so much. We think if I was in the situation of some of those people in Ethiopia, some of those people in Africa, I just couldn’t stand it. If we could live inside the skin of those people, it might be amazing to see that it is not as bleak to them as it would be if we with our background had the experience. I don’t want to be naive. This is a world in which terrible and awful things can happen. By the same token, we have a God who is capable of taking terrible things and bringing good out of them.

I was just looking at the newest Life magazine and Christopher Reave has a piece in there. Now he is the man that three years ago was the Superman actor and now is in a body that is absolutely paralyzed and he has written a whole article about what he has to be thankful for. And it reminded me of what an old mentor of mine said once. He was quite depressed and he was looking at some roses that he had planted in a more hopeful time in his life and he said it suddenly dawned on him, Floyd, that roses grow out of horse manure, that the loveliest and most fragrant of flowers comes out of the most despicable dimension of what we humans don’t like and it snapped him out of his depression.

The point I want to make is that we don’t know enough about the mystery of life to embrace despair absolutely because think of the times that things that have looked hopeless just, lo and behold, have broken open and we have found possibilities we didn’t know were there, and sometimes things that we think are so great carry all kind of hidden problems. My sense is that hope is what gets us up in the morning. Hope is where the energy of life comes from, some lively sense of what lies ahead and for a Christian that involves believing that this life is not the only life. Even death is not the ultimate cause of despair.

Brown: Yes, yes. Let me get a little “how to” here, if we may. Fortunately, some folks have turned on the television and they saw Father John Claypool and this marvelous message, but they are laying in a hospital bed, somebody is dying, somebody is ill, doesn’t seem that they’re going to get well. Give me a little “how to.” Where do they start?

Claypool: You can access hope from two angles, I think. You can do it through humility-St. Paul said, “We know in part, we prophecy in part, we see as through a glass darkly”-and admit that the way I see things is not the whole story. Who knows? A medicine might be discovered. I might be healed miraculously. Who can say about the future? We haven’t gotten there yet. We don’t know all the things that could happen.

The other access is through really listening to the great story of Scripture which is that the One who created the world out of nothing, out of generosity and then we turned against God, lo and behold, He didn’t turn against us. He continued to love us like the father of the prodigal son continued to love that boy. The boy said, “I wish you were dead.” The father said, “I’m going to keep on loving you anyway.” That’s the kind of mystery I think that lies behind this universe and the old desire of alchemy to take lead and find a way to turn it into gold, that’s a wonderful metaphor for the ingenuity of God to take bad things and find a way to help us to grow.

Now I’m not saying that bad things won’t happen to us. I’m not saying that life will be easy. It is my experience that nothing ever happens to us that God can’t use to help us grow and what I have to look for is, in the wreckage of my situation, what is there that I can put together and together with God make some meaning out of? And so I would say to the person lying in the sick bed, lay hold of the fact that you’re still breathing, which means God still wants you to be here. And realize that you don’t know everything, but you do know something, and what you do know is you are everlastingly precious to God and He can take even dead things and bring them to life again. The One who made us can also mend us. The One who gave us life can also give us new life in new shapes.

Brown: Thank you very much. It’s always a pleasure and you’re the reason we have a program like this to bring that message. Thank you.