“Comings and Goings”

Soooo, in the last 2 months, we have had a baby, had a graduation, ended one job, moved, and started a new job.  I am in my second week as a pastor of a small church in Eastern NC and things are starting to get settled down.  I am going to try and post my sermon each week, and once I get through some more boxes, maybe I will get around to some other stuff, too.  Here is last week’s sermon:

“Comings and Goings”

Matthew 11:28 – 30   

Well, there are certainly a lot of things going on today.  It was hard to know where to begin in preparing a sermon.  First of all, and I believe most importantly, we have this passage from Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus makes some startling claims about the burdens, or lack thereof, of being his disciple.  Secondly, this is my first sermon as your pastor, something I hope you are as excited about as I am.  Third, it is Homecoming, and I want to celebrate the ministry and witness of our church.  Fourth, today is a Communion Sunday, and I don’t want to overlook that important fact.  And if that were not enough, this is Independence Day weekend!

So, where to begin?  Let’s read these words of Jesus.  I invite you to open your
Bibles to Matthew 11:28 – 30.  It is found on page 993 of your pew Bibles.  I will be reading from the Revised Standard Version:

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give
you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

At some point before I got here, someone gave a title to our Homecoming
celebration this year: “Comings and Goings.” “Comings,” because, not only have friends and family gathered here to celebrate the wonderful history of First Baptist Smithton, but, obviously, because this is my family’s first Sunday with you.  And “Goings,” , among other things, we want to make sure we thank Burke Holland for all the wonderful work he has done as your interim pastor over the last few months.  I, for one, am glad he isn’t actually going anywhere, but will still be here serving with us for the time being. He has already proven to be an invaluable help to me as I learn about this congregation and this community.

The title, “Comings and Goings” gives us a sense of the impermanence of life.  All of us can think of people we love who are no longer with us.  The slideshow we just watched showed us many faces of people who were important to the life of this church, but they have either moved on to another location, or gone to be with God.  In the words of Shakespeare,
“Tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in its petty pace from day to day.”  Time passes, things change, and there is nothing we can do about it.  As the old saying goes, you can never step in the same stream twice.

And so, we must be careful to avoid reducing the Christian life to a simple equation of where we’ve come from plus where we’re going in the end.  Our salvation experience and the hope of heaven are important, but if our faith is only defined by a singular event in the past or the future, we risk being found irrelevant by a world where life is seemingly swirling by at a quicker and quicker pace every day.  No, life has many comings and many goings and the Christian life is no different.

Some of you may know that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrote many letters to one
another, especially in their later life.  These letters are a treasure trove of insight into what these two founding fathers really thought during the events leading to and following July
4^th, 1776.  In one letter, Adams writes to Jefferson that he wonders what people of subsequent generations will think of when they think of the American Revolution.  “What do we mean by the Revolution?” Adams asks. “The war?  That was no part of the Revolution.  It was only an effect and a consequence of it.  The Revolution was in
the minds of the people.  And this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of 15 years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.”  “The Revolution was in the minds of the people,” he says.  In the same way, being a disciple of Jesus is about more than a decision
we’ve made in the past.  It is a decision we make every day.  Every day we must, as
Paul says “be transformed by the renewing of our mind.”  Every day, we must choose to take the yoke that Jesus is offering us.

To wear a yoke is to be an ox.  And to be a yoked ox is to be plowing a field.  As those oxen come down one row and go back up another row, it might not seem like they are making much progress.  And sometimes, it seems like the church isn’t making much progress, either.  Every week, we come to worship, we go to meetings, we help the same people with the same problems. Coming and going, coming and going.  We are tempted to think it all so boring and repetitive.  But what are we doing as we plow these rows? Are we loving and welcoming everyone who comes into this building?  Are we going from this building to seek out the least and the lost?  If so, when we look back on what we’ve done, little by little, we have plowed a field.  And at harvest time, that field will be white with grain.

But it seems to me that the difficulty in Jesus’ words here is that he is talking
about both working and resting at the same time.  Plowing a field with a team of oxen and a wooden plow over the dry rocky soil of Galilee doesn’t seem very easy.  It definitely isn’t my definition of rest.  What in the world is Jesus talking about?  In fact, in the verses just
before what we read today, Jesus is explaining how no one understands him at all.  And in the end, his plowing field becomes a killing field and his furrow leads straight up a hill called Calvary.  He is betrayed, beaten, abandoned by his friends and killed by his enemies.  If that’s not a tough row to hoe I don’t know what is.  Who is Jesus kidding here? What kind of trick is he trying to pull on us?

Maybe what Jesus is trying to tell us here is that, no matter what, everyone has a field to plow in life.  Everyone has a yoke to wear and a burden to carry.  And whoever we are and whatever we do, as we are reminded by the immortal words of that great 20^th century philosopher Hank Williams, we’ll “never get out of this world alive.” So, what are we plowing for?  Is it money, possessions, status, ourselves?  That is a heavy burden that
will bring us to our knees.  But if we learn from Jesus, if we take the yoke of gentleness and humility, if we plow in the field of eternal significance, we will find that no task is too
wearying.  Only when we have emptied ourselves and given our all in the service of God, do we find rest for our souls.  St. Augustine writes, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

We find rest and refreshment in God’s service because we are not alone.  A plowing ox is not yoked alone; it is yoked with another ox.  We too, are all yoked together in the communion of saints, encouraging one another and lifting one another up.  And again and again we come to this table to be nourished and refreshed by the Lord himself, in breaking the bread and drinking the cup.

Our Christian faith has come from humble beginnings: 13 men gathered around a table
in the upper room of a house celebrating a Passover meal.  And we are ultimately going to the great banquet feast of the Lamb of God.  As important as the Last Supper is, as important as our eternal reward is, the Christian life is not about a single event, be it in the past or the future.  The Revolution was not about the war, remember?  The revolution of God’s kingdom must happen every day in our minds and in our hearts.  Every day, we must take up a yoke.  Every day, we must take up a cross.  Every day, we must die to ourselves and be reborn in Christ.

This table stands in between two realities: the historical memory of the Last Supper and the hope of the heavenly banquet.  And Jesus the Christ sits at the head of both those tables.  So, wherever we’ve come from and wherever we’re going, we can approach this table with the faith that Jesus is here, too.  It is important that we come to this table every month, again and again and again, because we need to experience again and again and again God’s grace and presence in a tangible way.  We come to the table with a world
weary soul and we lay our heavy burdens at the feet of Jesus.  In exchange, he gives up bread for the journey and drink for our parched tongues. He is nourishing us, lightening our load, as together we plow the harvest fields of the Kingdom of God.
Amen.

“To Be The Light”

On March 6th, I preached “in view of a call” at the First Baptist Church of Smithton in Belhaven, NC.  To those non-Baptists out there, this basically means that the church was deciding whether or not to call me as their pastor.  We are excited to announce that this past Sunday the church cast a 100% vote in favor of calling me.  My wife still has a couple of months of school left, and we have a new baby that needs to be born, so we will begin our ministry at FBS on July 1, 2011.  Here is the sermon I preached that Sunday:

“To Be the Light”

John 1:1 – 18

First Baptist Church, Smithton, NC

3.6.11

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, where usually we would read the story of how Jesus and his inner circle of Peter, James and John travel to the top of a mountain.  On that mountain, Jesus’ body is mystically transformed by a holy light so bright that his disciples can only fall to the ground in worship.  This momentous event is made all the more poignant because when Jesus and his disciples descend from that mountain, rejecting Peter’s suggestion that they stay there forever, Jesus “sets his face toward Jerusalem” and the Crucifixion.  The bright light of the Transfiguration is one last revelation of the power of his divinity before the long darkness of his trial, torture and execution reveal the utter frailty of his humanity.

Though we did not read the 17^th chapter of Matthew today, we still find commonalities between it and the 1^st chapter of John.  Light and darkness.  Divine power and creaturely frailty.  Both passages offer up these opposites to us and ask us to locate ourselves, and our stories, amongst them. 

It seems only fair that I offer you a bit of my story.  I had a number of long, fruitful and enjoyable conversations with the members of the search committee, but most of you gathered here today are still strangers to me, as I am to you.  What is my story?  What is my calling?  How has God worked in my life in such a way that I stand in front of you today asking whether or not God is calling us to create a divine story together?  Where does my story with God begin?

Was it that sparsely attended Super Bowl Sunday night service at the First Baptist Church of Lewisville, Texas when I publicly surrendered my life to ministry?

Or, was it another Sunday evening service, this time at the First Baptist Church of Gautier, Mississippi, when my 7 year old self heard God speak so clearly, and I walked down the aisle and knelt at the front of the church while my dad led me in a prayer asking Jesus into my heart?

Or, was it at the Fort Ord Army Hospital in Monterey, California where a young Naval officer and his school teacher bride welcomed a baby boy into the world, and the doctor proclaimed him the longest baby he had ever seen? (If you have been paying attention, you may have noticed I have lived in a lot of different places.)

Or, was it even before I was born?  Was God working towards this day in the history of my ancestors?  Was God calling me in the lives of the tobacco farmers, mountain settlers, and, yes, even a few Baptist preachers who laid down deep roots across North Carolina?

And do I have the faith, you might even say the audacity, to claim that my story, my calling, my purpose in God, began in THE beginning?  In the beginning, with the Word, who was with God and who is God.  With the Word, who became flesh and dwelt among us.

Perhaps it isn’t so strange that my own story is so full of fits and starts, dead ends and cul-de-sacs, theological questions and holy head scratchers.  If we look carefully, we may be surprised to see that even the writers of the New Testament were not always in agreement over just what, exactly, was important about the life of Jesus Christ. 

For St. Paul, who’s writings are the earliest records we have in the New Testament, the historical life of Jesus was almost totally uninteresting.  In all his writings, Paul quotes the sayings of Jesus exactly three times.  For Paul, the only thing that mattered was the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.  Virtually all of his thought is ruthlessly fixated on these two events.  As he reminds us in the 2^nd chapter of Philippians, what is important for us to remember about Jesus is that, “being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.  Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him a name that is above every other name.”

The Gospels, of course, do tell the stories of the life of Jesus.  But even they have different ideas about what is important.  Where should it begin?  In Mark, the story begins with Jesus’ baptism.  The Spirit descends upon Jesus like a dove and a voice comes from heaven saying, “You are my son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  But when we look at the Gospels of Matthew and Luke we find that Jesus’ story begins at his birth, where in one Gospel a band of exotic astrologers follow a traveling star and offer gifts fit for a king to a peasant boy, and in the other we find the whole host of heavenly angels singing, “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to all people,” and poor shepherds worship this strange baby born in a barn.

And then there’s John’s Gospel.  For the Fourth Evangelist, the important events in the story of Jesus the Christ begin, not at Jesus’ death and resurrection, not at his baptism, not even at his birth, but in…the…beginning.  At the very creation of the world, the Christ, the Messiah, the second person of the Trinity, the Word of God, is at work.  In words that are truly more hymn than prose, John tells us that this man we know as Jesus is truly the Word, the logos of God. 

Logos, you may know, is a term borrowed from Greek philosophy.  It does mean “word” like the words on a page, but it also means the “reason,” or the “governing principle.” The logos is the creative vehicle through which God brought the universe into being. 

The first chapter of Genesis tells us, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  God spoke the elements of the cosmos into being.  The word God spoke was the logos.  From the start, John wants us to know that the universal implications of Jesus Christ began, not at his resurrection, but from the pre-existence.

It is easy to see that any debate about who is right and who is wrong, whether, Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John are correct about what is and isn’t important in the story of Jesus, is to totally miss the point.  They are all right.  Each, like an expertly cut jewel held to the light, reveals a new beauty as we view each facet in its turn. 

Are our lives, our stories, any different?  Can any of us say where God got a hold of us?  Can any of us declare with certainty where our life in and with God begins?  Reflecting on his own call to preach, Fred Craddock comments, “A call is of a piece with one’s entire life of faith; it may be made up of a constellation of small things: a stanza of a hymn, a child’s prayer, a friend’s presence, a verse of Scripture, a greeting card, an evening walk, or an encounter with a stranger.”  Even those among us who “got saved hard” as the old Baptist revivalists used to put it, must stop and consider how God’s grace may have been working in their life before they even knew it.  How a loved one may have prayed them through to an encounter with the living God. 

 I have already heard some of the stories of people in this congregation, who left church as adults, only to find their way home here, at the First Baptist Church of Smithton.  That you are the kind of community where people who have been outside the church for years feel at home is one of the reasons I am standing here today.  But wasn’t God working in and through the lives of these men and women in those intervening years?  And don’t the experiences they had during those years inform and shape who they are today?  None of us would be the person we are now were it not for the person we once were.  And all of it is part of our story. 

In his book, To Be Told, author Dan Alexander reminds us that we must be aware of “God’s authorship of” our lives.  We are too often “aware of God’s authority, but not of God’s ongoing, creative work” in our story.  As we look to where God is calling us in the future, we must look back with an eye for where God has spoken creative words into our lives.

Alexander continues: We must ask one another, “‘Where have we been?  Where are we now?  Where are we going?’ When we ask this of each other, we are throwing ourselves into the moving circle of story…To know others and be known by others; to know [we] don’t know [ourselves]…and to say yes to the terror of being known.”  When we share our stories with one another, when we examine ourselves in the light of God’s creative claims on our life, when we share the story of how we became children of God, when we praise God for all the ways in which God’s light and wisdom and grace and truth have been poured out on us, we are no longer simply individuals with a God-story.  We are created into something else entirely: the Church.  The creating Word of God creates community.

We know this is true because the creative action of God in the logos is not at the end of the Gospel, it is at the beginning.  It is just the beginning of the story.  The Word was not content to stand apart from creation.  The Word entered into community with it.  John tells us God in Christ loved the creation so much that, out of love, God became part of it.  As the Message Bible so wonderfully renders it, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”  The word for “flesh” here is sarx. According to the theologian Elizabeth Johnson, when sarx is used in the 4^th Gospel, the writer is not just talking about that which is bodily, but also that which is vulnerable, temporary and passing away.  The Word was not simply embodied, but “enfleshed.”  In the words of one commentator, it was “the Word made flesh and blood, rather than paper and ink.”  The Creator took on all the risk of the vulnerable creation. 

What a radical act!  I worry that Christians may have heard this story too much.  Have we heard it told so many times that we have lost a clear understanding of what it means?  The very God who has the power to speak things into existence gave up everything to become a fragile baby in a finite body.  Who is this God?  A god who loved the world so much he would go in exile from himself.  A god who could be, and was, killed by his own creation.  The weakness of God should be a scandal to the world!

But if this is a part of God’s story, where do we fit into it?  A starting point to find our place is to look at what this passage says about John the Baptist: “He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.”  John the Baptist spent his ministry, not pointing to himself, but pointing to Jesus.  How often we spend our time and energy pointing congratulatory fingers at ourselves instead of the God who gives light to the world.  We spend so much of our time pointing accusatory fingers at each other instead of pointing out the humble way God chooses to relate to the world. 

As the church we, like John, are called to witness to the light.  We must not, cannot, hide the light of Jesus.  The darkness cannot overcome it.  It enlightens everyone. 

When we keep our focus on telling the story of our God who became one of us, we become the kind of church that Jan-Olav Henrickson is talking about when he says, “At its best, the church is the place where we function as images of God, that is, witnesses of God.  These witnesses are not only in speaking, perhaps not primarily in speaking.  We are witnesses in the way we relate to others, the way we shape our community, in the way we are hospitable, in the way we are servants…”  When we focus on telling God’s story in all we do, we might become surprised by how much our story begins to mirror God’s story.

Yes, we are to testify to the light, but we must do more.  Elsewhere, you might recall, Jesus tells his disciples that they are the light of the world.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we not only point to, but actually are the divine light of God.  If we are called to both point to and actually be the light, then we can no more stay confined within the walls of this church building than the logos could remain over the tumultuous waters of chaos at the dawn of creation. 

So, we must ask ourselves: If the Word was willing to give up everything to become one with a vulnerable creation, what must we be willing to give up in order to be what God is calling us to become?  To put it another way, have we moved into the neighborhood?  Have we become neighbors with the people who live around us, no matter how different their story might be from ours?  Do we even know their story?  Do we dare allow the creative word of God to create community with those on the outside of our churches as well as in? 

We must remember: Just as John reminds us that the Word of God as revealed in Jesus the Christ was the only God anyone had ever seen, maybe you, or you, or you, will be the only God someone else will ever see.

Now a word of caution here:  No one is saying this is simple.  No one is saying that following God into the darkness of the world is easy.  Remember that even Jesus came to his own people and they did not accept him.  We find this truth in the very foundational story of this church.  A few people had the courage of conviction to say that, when the scripture says the true light enlightens everyone, it means women, too.  They had the courage of conviction to say that, when the scripture says “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,” it means women, too. 

They had the courage of conviction to say that, when the scripture says the Son has made the Father known, it means to women, too.  But, of course, their own people did not accept them.  But thanks be to God that the light of truth that proclaimed that God calls women and men equally to ministry continued to shine in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it, and the First Baptist Church of Smithton came into the world and moved into the neighborhood.

To fully understand our calling as children of God, to truly understand our calling to testify to and be the light of Christ in some very dark places, we must continue to return to our story.  Not only the story of this church and the stories of our individual lives, but also the stories of our faithful Baptist fore-fathers and mothers, and most importantly the stories of faith we find in the Bible.  To find our calling, to find God’s story and our place in it, we must not only look back, we must also look ahead, to the future.  We must look for and expect more light from God’s creative Word in Jesus Christ.  Then we will truly be receivers of, and testifiers to, the grace we have received.  And not just grace, but grace upon grace.  Amen.

Here are the links to a video of the sermon: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

well, it’s been a while…

I haven’t posted anything in a while, and for that I apologise.  Life gets busy: work, family, etc.  My life is no different from anyone elses.  I have decided not to finish blogging through all of the Moltmann book, not because I am not interested or do not think it is worthwhile, but because I have so many other things I want to talk about.  A new post soon, I promise…

A Hope and a Future: 6

Introduction: Meditation on Hope

5.  Hoping and Thinking

Well, it has been a few days since my last post and it appears my goal of blogging through one chapter per week is out the window.  I’m not going to beat myself up about it, though.  I want this to be helpful for me and for you, mythical reader.  If I turn it into a chore I will just start hating it. 

I have also discovered the complete text of this book online.  I would imagine that reading the section on which I am commenting can only be helpful.  It will enable me to link to the relevant chapter and then you, mythical reader, can scroll down to the proper subheading.  Moltmann’s dense sentences are difficult to read all the way across the computer screen, but I trust you can figure out how to make it more user friendly for yourself.  Here is the link to the Introduction, and section 5 is at the bottom of the page:

http://www.pubtheo.com/theologians/moltmann/theology-of-hope-0b.htm 

In section 5, we find Moltmann wrapping up his Introduction.  He restates a few of the claims he has made previously and brings them to a final, crucial conclusion:  IF true hope transforms our thoughts and actions, and IF all God-centered hope is realistic because of the boundless possibility of God’s future, THEN “in the medium of hope our theological concepts become not judgments which nail reality down to what it is, but anticipations which show reality its prospects and its future possibilities.  Theological concepts do not give a fixed form to reality, but they are expanded by hope and anticipate future being” (35-36). 

In other words (or in my words), Moltmann is saying that a theology based on the hope of God’s future must not be static.  Even our theological beliefs are subject to the hope we have in Christ.  This is why (and this is me saying this, not Moltmann) fundamentalism is precisely a theology based on a lack of hope.  Fundamentalism asserts that the way things are is the way they always will be.  This runs contrary, however, to a God of hope.  The God of resurrection brings death into life.  The God of creative hope makes that which is not into that which is.  Our theological statements about ourselves, God, and the world must not be anchors dragging at God’s dream for the world.  Rather, they must be tugboats, proclaiming a reality that is not yet but for which we work with hopeful expectation.  A theology based in hope is a theology based in love, for it is out of love for the world that both we and God hope for its fullness and fulfillment.  We can only, therefore, understand and speak about God (theology) to the extent that we understand, accept and reflect God’s love.  It seems fitting that Moltmann closes this introduction with a quote from St. Augustine: “Tantum cognoscitur, quantum diligitur.” (“We know as much as we love.”)

A Hope and a Future: Day 5

Introduction: Meditation on Hope

4. Does Hope Cheat Man of the Happiness of the Present?

Well, we finally put up the tree and decorated the house for Christmas.  The stockings are hung with care (though we have no chimney) and my wife is waiting happily for me on the couch.  All that is to say I am fairly unmotivated to read and write about theology right now.  But, that is the point of undertaking a discipline; You do it even when you don’t want to.

It doesn’t make it any easier that Moltmann is a little hard to read in this section.  He spends a long time laying out and (seemingly) defending the view he ultimately wants to disagree with.  Basically, the charge Moltmann anticipates from his future detractors is…well, it’s actually named in the title of this section: Does hope cheat man (sic) of the happiness of the present?  In other words, does a constant focus on a potentially better future cause us to miss what is good in the present?  Is Moltmann simply asking us to believe the grass is always greener on the other side?

This is a popular idea among many great thinkers (Moltmann quotes Pascal, Goethe, Hegel, Nietzsche, Parmenides, Kierkegaard, Plato..I said A LOT), as well as among the kind of pop mysticism that always seems to come back en vogue every few years.  The general idea is that happiness is found in existing only in the present, for only the present is truly eternal.  We might find a parallel here in Buddhism, as well.  Hopes for the future both cause and are caused by the desire which is the root of suffering.  To expect nothing from life, to only take it as one experiences it, is to free oneself of the desires of expectation.  Taking this idea one step further, if only the present is truly eternal, then God is found only in the present.  God is a God of radical immanence, a Presence of the present. 

But Moltmann counters that this is to allow God to exist only where we experience God.  Furthermore, to suggest that one can only find contentment in the present is to suggest that the present contains something which can provide contentment.  What of those whose present situation is anything but contenting?  “The God of the exodus and of the resurrection…promises his presence and nearness to him who follows the path on which he is sent into the future” (30).  This is to say that, for those wandering in the desert, for those facing death, they don’t want the present.  What they want desperately is a future. 

Certainly God is present to us.  But this is because God travels with us on the path that has been set before us.  “His name is a wayfaring name,” Moltmann reminds us in one of the best lines in the whole book.  A God of the simply present cannot call non-being into being, cannot change the present, for the present always is.  But the God who holds the future, this God can call into being what does not yet exist.  This God “pronounces the poor blessed, receives the weary and heavy laden, the humbled and wronged, the hungry and dying,” and pronounces, “the kingdom for them” (32).  So, in answer to his own question, Moltmann declares definitively, “Does this hope cheat man of the happiness of the present?  How could it be so!  For it is itself the happiness of the present.”     

A Hope and a Future: Day 4

Introduction: Meditation on Hope

3. The Sin of Despair

Moltmann begins by stating that “the sin of unbelief is manifestly grounded in hopelessness” (22).  If we lack faith to believe in the promises of God’s future, we have lost our hope in the possibility of something better.  This idea, that the “originating sin” of many specific sins is hopelessness stands as an alternative to the age old idea that the “root sin” of all sin is pride.  Moltmann concedes that pride (believing we are like God) is often the motivation behind much of the sin in the world, but he sets beside it hopelessness (not believing God is who God claims to be.) 

I wonder if this idea might be helpful to many persons, especially many women.  As has been pointed out by many feminist theologians (and first presented to me by my insightful and intelligent wife,) many women are not guilty of too much pride.  If anything, they lack a positive self image.  They continue to persist in unhealthy and abusive relationships because they fail to believe that life can be better.  They have lost the hope that things can be different.  In the Italian film classic, The Bicycle Thief, the father attempts to steal a bike for himself because he has lost all hope of recovering his own bicycle, and therefore has lost all hope of providing for his family. But the lack of hope most often manifests itself in sins of omission: the “absence of meaning, prospects, future and purpose” (24).

In the 19^th century, many theologians and philosophers were guilty of presumption.  They believed that human progress was inevitable.  It was God’s will that life would only get better.  Humanity must take its cue from Prometheus and steal fire from the gods for the benefit of all.  But after a century of warfare, genocide and wanton destruction brought about by the very technology that was once hailed as humanity’s salvation, 20^th century thought was typified by Sisyphus.  The only “realistic” perspective on life is that nothing will change, nothing will ever be better.  Any hope in the future was dismissed as a dreamer’s utopia. 

But Moltmann observes that truly utopian thought is a belief in the utopia of the status quo, the utopia of “realism.”  As long as there is life to be lived, there is hope for change.  Existence is filled with so many possibilities that the truly realistic action is to seize onto the hope of these possibilities.  By believing that hope and change exist, we are actually empowered to transform those possibilities into actualities. 

I am reminded here of my favorite philosopher du jour, Slavoj Žižek.  Žižek observes that we are paralyzed by the seeming inevitability of capitalism as an economic system.  We cannot seriously contemplate an economy based on non-exploitation.  We continue, therefore, to believe in the utopian fantasy of a form of capitalism where some do not profit at the expense of others.  Only by hoping in the limitless possibilities of the future will we have a chance to escape the oppression of the many by the few.

A Hope and a Future: Day 3

Introduction: Meditation on Hope

2. The Believing Hope

 After my first try at blogging Moltmann, a couple of things have become clear to me.  One, I don’t think I am going to have trouble coming up with things to say.  Two, it will be a great temptation to get bogged down in simply writing a synopsis of Moltmann thoughts (and they are legion) instead of doing real reflection on what these thoughts mean to me.  Still, even this synopsizing and processing is helpful to me.  I know it would be helpful to some seminarian who doesn’t want to do her reading for theology and stumbles across my blog.  I hope it is helpful to you, oh dear (and possibly mythical) reader.  Still, my goal is to really engage with the text.  I think as I get more into the swing of this, engagement and reflection will come.  So, in the immortal words of Jay Z: “On to the next one.”

Continuing where we left off yesterday, faith and hope are inexorably linked together.  “Hope is nothing else than the expectation of those things which faith has believed to have been truly promised  by God…Faith is the foundation upon which hope rests, hope nourishes and sustains faith” (20). 

Yet, (and this is what gets me excited) faith and hope in God’s promises through Jesus Christ are not cause to sit on our hands and wait for God’s future, nor does it excuse or forget the suffering that is endured in the meantime.  The Christ who was raised to glory was raised from death.  They are both part of the story.  We must never use our hope in the future to overlook the evils of the present. 

Real hope, true hope, is the opposite of the “pie in the sky, in the sweet by and by, going to heaven when I die” kind of religion.  Hope “sees in the resurrection of Christ not the eternity of heaven, but the future of the very earth on which his cross stands.”  If, “My hope is built on nothing less than” the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, it is important to remember that, “The raising of Christ is not merely a consolation to him in a life that is full of distress and doomed to die, but it is also God’s contradiction of suffering and death, of humiliation and offence, and of the wickedness of evil.  Hope finds in Christ not only a consolation in suffering, but also the protest of the divine promise against suffering.” 

Our faith that is based on the living testimony of Jesus Christ leads us, not to a passive hope that God will eventually set all things right, but an active, vigorous hope that lives and leans into God’s promises of a better reality.  “That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience.  It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man” (21). 

Ah!  It’s so good I am tempted to just quote the whole thing!  Moltmann’s implication, it seems to me, is that it is no hubris to be the very realization of the hope we have found in Christ.  We do not overstep our bounds by “taking the kingdom of God by force,” as it were.  Our hope in God’s future demands that we remain dissatisfied with the state of the world as it is.  Our faith that God has done something and our hope that God will do something leads us to be the catalyst by which God is doing something, even now.