November 23, 2025: Hope in the Amazing Human Intellect

Old Testament Reading: Jeremiah 23: 1-6
The Gospel:  Luke 1: 68-79

****Note that John the Baptist’s Father Zechariah speaks this prophecy of both his son and Jesus at the time of baby John’s circumcision when his mouth has finally been opened.  He had been mute since the Angel Gabriel told him that his wife Elizabeth would bear a son in her old age and he had questioned that. 

Sermon:      Hope in the Amazing Human Intellect 

How many times throughout history have people struggled: being hungry, thirsty, attacked or persecuted, losing land and homes, family members and friends? This has not happened once, but too many times to count. It understandably brings feelings of despair, yet scriptures and history continually remind us that “this too shall pass”.

As God told the Israelites in the Jeremiah scripture “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they will be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them and they shall not fear any longer…” The scripture goes on to speak of a righteous Branch of the line of David who will be a wise and fair King executing justice. Some think that this was a future king in the land who was much better than their present ruler, others see that the name “the Lord is righteousness” foreshadows the coming of Jesus, God’s son. 

Either way, in this scripture and so many, there is hope even and especially in troubled times. 

Zechariah was old and so was his wife Elizabeth when the angel Gabriel told him they would have a son. I think most of us in our older years would be surprised at such an announcement, just as Zechariah was. When he got his voice back, he shared a prophecy of the amazing role his son John would have, “you child, will be called the prophet of the most high; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of his salvation to the people by the forgiveness of their sins.” 

John’s job was to lay the foundation of hope, Christ built on that foundation, and it is our job, as Christians, to continue building. That is the way to prepare for the advent season: the celebration of the birth of Jesus - to have hope, regardless of your circumstances. Having hope in difficult times is an act of faith.

Renowned naturalist Dr. Jane Goodall shared much about hope and faith in The Book of Hope, published in 2021. About faith she said, “Faith is when you actually believe there is an intellectual power behind the universe, which can be translated into God or Allah or something like that.” 

About hope she said, “Hope is more humble than faith, since no one can know the future…hope requires us to work hard to make what we want to happen to actually happen…you need hope to get you going, but then by taking action, you generate more hope. It’s a circular thing.” 

In other words, we can use faith to fuel our actions of hope and that becomes a catalyst to spread hope and keep it moving. It does not mean there will not be challenges or struggles in life, it means that we deal with those struggles by refilling our tanks with hope so that we keep moving towards solutions, towards better days. 

Goodall said, “we hope, which involves envisioning the future while recognizing the inevitability of challenges. Interestingly, more hopeful people actually anticipate setbacks along the way and work to remove them.”

Goodall listed the amazing human intellect as her first category of hope for the future. She defines human intellect as “the part of our brain that reasons and solves problems”. She cites art and architecture, science and music as examples of intellect, noting the curiosity and creativity that leads to those creations and discoveries. And while there have been times in history when human intellect is used in ways that cause problems, even evil, she also notes “Humans are incredibly adaptive and will do whatever is required to survive in their environment.The environment we create will determine what prevails. In other words, what we nurture and encourage wins.”

Unlike animals, humans are capable of true evil but also true altruism. Religion and our faith helps us to lean away from evil and towards the altruistic. Christ taught us to love our neighbor and our enemy - there is no room for hate, let alone evil in that. 

Goodall saw religion as bringing a new universal moral code. “Every single major religion gives lip service to the Golden Rule - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So it’s easy–there’s our universal moral code. We just have to find a way to persuade people to honor it!”

Despite all the challenges in the world today, Goodall believed that the majority of people are becoming more caring. She notes that enslavement has ended in most of the world, Apartheid is over in South Africa, colonialism has primarily ended, women have attained positions of power around the world and people all over the world speak out and fight against all kinds of injustice. While not perfect, she sees all of these things as signs of hope created by the human intellect. 

“I think it takes a lot of time in our evolution for us to realize that we can never attain our full human potential unless our head and our heart work together,” Goodall emphasized. 

Once the head and heart come together, we can also work together as fellow humans. Goodall noted the four great inter-related challenges that we humans need to use our intellect to solve.

1. We must alleviate poverty - crippling poverty leads to using up all the resources - the last tree or the last fish- to survive.
2. We must reduce the unsustainable lifestyles of the affluent who have too much stuff. 
3. We must eliminate corruption for without good government, we cannot work together to solve societal and environmental challenges. 
4. We must face up to the problems of growing human and livestock populations and the impact that has on the planet.  

Goodall clearly shows the inter-relatedness of our challenges and our solutions. Sharing wealth and resources helps reduce poverty, which also helps the environment as we do not need to take every resource from it to sustain all life on the planet. Good governments work together to promote peace and cooperation for their mutual benefit rather than just thinking of themselves and, working together, we can look at our impact on the planet and find ways to reduce it living more in harmony with our environment rather than dominating it. 

We cannot escape times of struggle, but we can meet them with hope using our God-given human intellect to guide us. Our God emphasized the need and ability to do this by becoming one of us. Jesus was and is the ultimate role model for belief in the goodness in and hope for humanity, “to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Amen.

Pastor Michelle Fountain