Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary
Time/ Sacrament of the Lord's Supper
“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these
three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13). We hear a lot
about love and faith in the Christian life, but what about hope? What is this hope? What are we hoping for?
Let’s start by paying attention to how we use the
word today. We say, “I hope you had a
good vacation.” “I hope to tour China
one day.” “I hope everything will turn out okay.” “I hope to have grandchildren.” “I hope all the best for you.” There’s a kind of wishful element to the word. Hope or hoping for something to happen means
having a positive outlook or being optimistic about the future, a future that
is unknown.
For many, though, hope is out of reach. It’s difficult to have faith in the future when
you can’t imagine a way out of present circumstances or you’re stuck in the
past, caught by tragedy or trauma or painful loss. Sometimes it’s tough to break out from the
past or the present; it’s easy to drop into despair. Our attitudes toward hope are directly connected
to how we understand the flow of time.
In our age, we believe firmly in time flowing from the past to the
present and into the future. Because we
place so much trust in the law of cause and effect—if this, then that; if p then q—we’ve come to believe that our experience of the past is a pretty
good indicator of what will happen tomorrow. We study past patterns to plan for
what will happen next. Wall Street runs
on this assumption. The past informs the
present which helps us predict the future.
So, then, what happens to hope? Hope seems hollow if our ability to be hopeful
about tomorrow is solely contingent upon what happened yesterday or what is
happening today. Can we realistically hope for a different outcome, for
something new and unexpected to emerge, given what we know of the past and present? To hold out the possibility of alternative
outcomes seems ludicrous, irrational, odd.
You can see why it’s easy to get stuck in the past or present or fall
into despair.
And, yet, look closely at the Bible and you’ll
find an orientation to time that, from our perspective in 2018, appears
ludicrous, irrational, and odd. We might
configure time moving out of the past, shaping the present, informing the
future, we might believe in the grinding, deterministic laws of cause and
effect, but our experience with the Living God suggests that something else it
at work. What we find throughout
scripture is God continually breaking into the present and confronting us in
surprising and startling ways from the future.
God is not bound by the flow of time but holds time and relates to time
in an entirely different way, to redeem time.
Look closely and you’ll see that God approaches us from the future to do
something new, something unexpected and surprising that disrupts the order of
things, breaks the cycle of cause and effect, and brings about an entirely
different future not determined by the past.
God prepares a way when there is no way.
When the Israelites were running
from Pharaoh and were pushed up against the shores of the Red Sea, there was
nowhere to go. There was nothing in their past or present experience to suggest
that there was a way out—an exodus—from what had become a dead end. But then
the seas part. God prepares a way when
there is no way.
When the disciples went to Jesus’
tomb—another dead end, both for Jesus and for the Jesus movement—there was
nothing in their experience to suggest that there was any other option for
their future, no way out of their despair, no exodus for them. But God prepared a way where there was no
way. That’s what resurrection is. Resurrection is God’s inbreaking into the natural
process of life and decay to bring about a radically new future, a future that
is not contingent upon what happens in the past, a future that is not the
result of the natural flow of things, the flow of history, the linear sequence of
the past and the present, the movement of time, cause and effect, if-then, if p then q. “The
future is the realm of open possibilities…from which the genuinely and
unpredictably new can arise.”[1]
This is God’s “style,” the way God
likes to act. God said to Isaiah, “Do
not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs
forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers
in the desert” (Is. 43:19. And the
resurrection is the most radical, even disturbing demonstration of God’s desire
to bring about startling, surprising new outcomes, thus offering a new future. This,
then, becomes the foundation of hope. This is how we think theologically about
hope.
In Peter’s Pentecost sermon, in Acts, citing
the Psalms, he says, “I saw the Lord is always before me, for he is at my right
hand so that I will not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue
rejoiced; moreover my flesh will live in hope” (Acts 2:25; Psalm 16:2). Did you hear that? Always before me, therefore, I will live in hope.
And Paul, who never expected to
encounter the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, in the flesh, became the
preacher of hope: Christ was the embodiment of God’s hope—for Paul and for us.
Throughout his letters we find Paul celebrating hope, boasting in hope, trusting
in hope, knowing that hope never disappoints.
When hope is joined with love, love “hopes all things” (1 Cor.
13:7). And there’s probably no better
expression of this hope than the soaring, sublime vision that we have in Romans
8. It’s often read at funerals as it
offers tremendous comfort about the life to come. But it’s also a radical and profound articulation
of the Christian life here and now—for what can separate us from the love of
Christ? Here? Now? Nothing! Nothing! Because
in Christ’s resurrection we have been given a glimpse of the future, we are
already participating in the power of resurrection, now. This is what grounds
our hope. I touch upon these themes a lot on Thursday mornings Bible
Study. Several weeks ago, we were again
discussing these ideas when Wylene Davies said, “So, in the end there’s hope.” Precisely.
Because we have been given a glimpse of the end or purpose all things,
there is hope. It’s not wishful thinking or baseless
optimism. God doing a new thing is the foundation of our hope.
This is why hope, then, becomes one
of the most unsettling and even radical dimensions of the Christian life. Christian hope is active when it trusts in
God’s future breaking into this life with resurrection and restoration and
wholeness and justice and healing. This
hope becomes active in us when we orient our vision and hopes for God’s
children with what God desires, with what is coming toward us from the future.
In 1965, German theologian Jürgen
Moltmann
published what has become a classic work, Theology
of Hope. (Moltmann’s theology
profoundly shaped my own theological outlook and faith.) He knows that hope is never a passive thing,
but always active in the Christian life—and it moves us forward into the
future. Christian hope is restless and unsettling. “Faith,” he says, “wherever it develops into hope, causes not
rest but unrest, not patience but impatience.
It does not calm the unquiet [human] heart…. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as
it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world,
for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every
unfulfilled present.”[2]
Hope, then, actually heightens our
disappointment and frustration with things as they are in the “unfulfilled
present,” because we have a glimpse of what the world should be and can
be. This hope then stirs us to act. Christian hope places us in the world with a distinctive
outlook. We can never, ever accept the
injustices of our present reality and the suffering and brokenness of the human
condition. We can never, ever be passive.
We suffer to contradict. We push
against injustice, resist it. We live with hope into hope, even “hoping against
hope” (Rom. 4:18), like Abraham, waiting for the fulfillment of the promise
given to him. With the Holy Spirit, we groan deep in our guts, yearning for
that new creation to break into our lives.
“With sighs too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26), we struggle and pray with
the Spirit, and move boldly into God’s future knowing that “all things work
together for good” (Rom. 8:28).
Through it all we remain hopeful
because we are already participating in God’s new creation. Where?
Is this just wishful thinking on my part? Baseless optimism? It might be difficult to see these days. Many places. Many situations. Especially here,
at the Communion table. This is so much more than a memorial meal, remembering
what took place long ago. Hope is
uniquely embodied whenever we break bread and share the cup of the Risen
Christ. This meal is a foretaste of what is to come. A sure sign that Christ is
present with us, here and now. The Greek
verb “to hope,” elpo, means to
anticipate, but also to welcome, as we welcome what is coming our way. In this
meal, we anticipate and welcome what and who is always coming toward us. With
open hearts, with open arms, here in this meal, let us welcome the real
presence of the Living Christ, the Christ who says to us, “Behold, I am making
all things new” (Rev. 21:6). Thanks be to
God.
[1]Richard Bauckham and Trevor
Hart, Hope Against Hope: Christian
Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999),
43.
[2] Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the
Implications of a Christian Eschatology (New York: Harper & Row, 1967),
22. See also Bauckham and Hart,
which is dedicated to Moltmann.
