Friends of mine visited Auschwitz
a few years ago; they showed us their pictures and shared some of the stories
from that evil time. The realities of the Holocaust are chilling, horrific, gut
wrenching. I can almost hear these sufferers praying their ancient Psalm: I say
to God, my rock: Why have you forgotten me?!
How did they
hold on to hope in such a time?
The Jews of the Exile for whom
Jeremiah wrote lived far from their homes as captives in Babylon. Their Temple
was destroyed, their holy city lay in ruins; every family had lost someone in
the war and the memories of destruction and defeat continued to break their
hearts.
How
did they hold on to hope in such a time?
The Christians of Asia to whom John wrote The Revelation lived in constant fear
within the Roman Empire. Denying the emperor as Lord and confessing Jesus as
the Christ instead labeled them as traitors and subversives. We’ve all heard of
the atrocities, the economic persecutions and even the martyrdom of many who refused
to deny their faith.
How
did they hold on to hope in such a time?
Lately I have felt so discouraged by
the current events of our own world; discouraged and powerless and hopeless. I
can hardly bear to read the news: horrible stories of war, torture and
inhumanity across the globe; depressing stories about the antics of our United
States Congress; heart breaking stories about police brutality and America’s
entrenched racism; painful stories about too many of my friends who, every single
day of their life, walk an economic tightrope between security and disaster.
How
do any of us hold on to hope
when
everything around us seems completely hopeless?
A few years ago, one
of my pastoral counseling professors from seminary wrote an important book about
hope. Every now and again, I open this book from Dr. Andrew Lester and re-read
it so that I can find my center again. Dr. Lester teaches that lived hope is
grounded in reality, is oriented toward possibility and is made possible within
community.
Hope is deeply
connected to
Reality,
Possibility,
Community.
When hope is grounded
in reality, our eyes are wide open. Reality allows us to name our situation
honestly and to recognize the challenges unambiguously. Hope doesn’t see the
world through rose-colored-glasses; it is not wishful thinking; it knows how
hard this is. But hope also sees a larger reality, a bigger picture than that
which is available to our human eyes. Hope counts on this other invisible reality
that exists simply because God exists.
Christian Hope is
grounded in the alternative reality that came into being through the action of
God in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Even when everything we see and
experience appears to be hopeless, hope taps into the other reality of God’s
presence in the world, God’s movement in and with creation.
When we learn to
see both the visible and the invisible realities, we can look at the facts of
our situation and say: “yes – but.” We can look at all the evidence and say:
“nevertheless” - something else is true besides our obvious circumstances. We are
enabled to see the bigger picture of what God has done and what God is doing in
the possibilities of the future.
People of faith
have always been pointed toward the future. The very definition of “faith” is
movement toward something that cannot be seen; stepping out on a path even when
we don’t know where it will lead; heading in a direction that may be completely
irrational and unreasonable. People of faith can live with this kind of
confidence because people of faith are deeply and irrevocably people of hope.
“Our hope is
[grounded] in our relationship with a trustworthy God whose character is marked
by a faithful, steadfast love for us,” Dr. Lester says. “As the Lord told
Jeremiah: Surely I know the plans I have
for you…plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope”
(Jeremiah 29:11). For Christians, the quintessential “future with hope” is
revealed and made real in the incarnation: Jesus Christ, the embodied
expression of God’s faithfulness is the reason we can hope in the “not-yet-ness”
of our future. For Christians, it is in Christ that God’s “new covenant”
promised by Jeremiah is coming into being. “They shall all know me, from the
least of them to the greatest, says the Lord…”
The goal, the future, the Christian hope, the impossible possibility: God in
Christ is forever bringing all things together in wholeness and shalom.
There is one final leg in this
three-legged stool of hope that Andy Lester talks about:
lived hope is
grounded in reality,
is oriented toward
future possibility
and is made
possible within community.
As a matter of fact, hope cannot be
lived in isolation; it is community that creates and nurtures hope.
Christians of the
First Century experienced immense oppression by the institutional powers of
their day; the Empire had, after all, crucified their Christ. As Christian
theologians reflected on the true nature of power and as communities of
believers re-told the story, they came to understand “the Lamb that had been slaughtered” as the powerful
Risen Lord. The One who entered into the rending violence of the world is the
One who is bringing all creation together in perfect unity and harmony. People
who had no obvious reason to hope gathered within communities of hope and held
on to hope with and for one another. Lived hope lived out in community served as
antidote to the fears that surrounded them whenever they walked out their front
door.
Madeline L’Engle tells
of a time when she held onto life by a thread and could not pray; her community
of faith prayed and held on to hope for her, she says. Jean Estes experienced
the death of her beloved grandson and gives thanks for a community that “held
her hope for her” in the days when she could not hold onto hope for herself.
That’s a powerful
image: holding on to hope for one another. We are woven together, knit
together, connected together in a fabric of humanity, each of us individually a
significant part of the whole. All of us together bound up in the mystery of
mutuality and community.
Andy Lester says
because of this deep connection there can be a kind of “contagious hope” that wells
up within a community; seeds of hope can take root and grow into a lush,
fruitful garden of hopeful expectation.
But there is a
flip side: there also is an “infectious hopelessness” that can take hold within
a community. Sometimes a people will despair over their current circumstances,
cannot imagine an alternative, become so fixated by their past that they become
closed off to the future. In these dark days, even a few persistent people who
keep themselves grounded in the reality of God’s past and present work of faithfulness
and who keep themselves oriented to God’s future with hope can spark a contagious
optimism within an entire community.
There is much to
be discouraged about in today’s world; I don’t know what will come out of our
current social and political situations. Sometimes I feel hopeless and
powerless; sometimes the anger wells up, the tears flow and I’m afraid it will
get worse before it gets better.
But then again, I
remember that today’s world is really not so different from the world into
which the Christ Child was born. We tend to romanticize the baby in the manger
and downplay the poverty, oppression, prejudice and danger that permeated the
lives of so many people in the First Century of the Roman Empire. But the point
of the Christmas story is that God-in-Christ chose to enter into the hopelessness
of humanity by becoming the incarnation of hope.
Ultimately, the
love-peace-joy-hope we celebrate during the Christmas season is the startling
and undeserved action of the Divine in a dark and broken world. The presence of
the Holy within and among us is God’s Christmas Gift to “every tribe and language and
people and nation.”
And so, in our own
evil time, during these dark days, this may be ours to do: live gracefully in love,
grow boldly into peace, discover repeatedly this joy, hold on stubbornly to
this hope … each of us individually and all of us together embodying yet again
God’s impossible possibilities.
A Reading from Psalm 42
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
My tears have been my food day and night,
while people say to me continually: Where is your God?
I say to God, my rock: Why have you forgotten me?!
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, my soul;
God is my Help; the Lord is my God.
Jeremiah 31:31-34
The days are
surely coming, says the Lord, when
I will make a new covenant … This is the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and
I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my
people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from
the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord;
for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
Revelation 5:6-14
Then I saw between the throne and
the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had
been slaughtered…He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who
was seated on the throne. When he had taken the scroll, the four living
creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp
and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. They
sing a new song:
You are worthy to take the scroll
and
to open its seals,
for
you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God
saints
from every tribe and language and people and nation…
Andrew D. Lester, Hope
in Pastoral Care and Counseling (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press,
1995).
Madeleine L’Engle writes about her brush with death and long
recovery because of a 1991 automobile accident in her book The Rock That is Higher (2002).
Find Jean Estes’ powerful interview in the important
ministry of The Work of the People.
Apache Virgin with Child courtesy of freshworship.org
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