The Amazing New Testament: Backwards Hope

The Bible tells us that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts” (Romans 5:3-5). I might wish I needed a little less character and endurance, but I thank God for hope. What makes us different from dogs, giraffes or cockroaches is that we always care about tomorrow, next week, and next year. The uncertainty of it all can make us anxious, fearful, or just plain cynical.

Hope keeps us fresh and keeps love alive. Hope isn’t wishing. Hope isn’t optimism either. Optimism glibly believes tomorrow will be better, and it depends on us getting our act together and making tomorrow better. Optimism often disappoints.

Hope is very different. Hope is trust. Hope doesn’t depend on you or me doing better – although it may motivate and free us to do better. Hope depends on God. Hope clings to God – and realizes God is clinging to us and won’t let go. Hope can weather another bad day, and hope isn’t squashed if things get worse. Hope believes – in God, in God’s good future for us and all of creation. “Why are you cast down, O my soul?  Hope in God” (Psalm 42:5).

Hope suggests we need to wait. Hope is patient, and doesn’t over-specify what the outcome must be. Hope even expects surprises, unexpected fulfillments, and even peace with what just a while back might have seemed a problem. We are made, not for fun or comfort, but for hope.

We discovered, very early in the pandemic, that Hope mattered more than ever. Some spoke of “going back to the way things were,” but others more wisely spoke of moving forward into whatever new thing was dawning. We titled our building campaign Hope is Here, and the building is the Center of Hope. We’ve planned and budgeted and even dreamed – but we know what God will do through the building will exceed our imaginations.

Then, the other day, I read some remarkable words from the poet Christian Wiman – which you should read, and re-read slowly, and ponder: “To speak of extreme grief is to mark it as a thing that can be spoken of. It is to bring the abyss into the realm of consciousness… into the realm of time, which implies, if nothing else, the possibility of change. And where there is even a possibility for change, there is hope.”

Grief and hope are close friends, maybe unidentical twins. We grieve because we hoped – but then grieving releases a sad past, clearing the way for some new beginning. And hope now somehow brings a curious healing to the past. Wiman interestingly says this: “True hope goes backward as well as forward. It can transfigure a past we thought was petrified.” I love this notion: hope doesn’t only look ahead on the calendar. Hope knows how to look back, even to journey back. Hope can find its way into hard, petrified places in our past, things that cannot be undone, and some transfiguring happens. Some softening maybe. Some mercy. Some recollection that It’s not over. A huge tree got whacked down – but some green sprig pops out of that stump.

And so to face grief, to speak of grief, drags the past into present time and therefore dares to suggest that “possibility of change.” Not total recovery, and not gleeful bliss, but possibility. Newness. Change – not only in circumstances, but in me, in you.

Such hope, going backward as well as forward, stirs some holy boldness. People of hope never play it safe! St. Augustine eloquently suggested that “Hope has two beautiful daughters: anger at the way things are, and courage to see to it that things do not remain the way they are.” Yes, hope depends on God. But God crazily depends also on us. God wants to use us, to live in and through us, so we might be God’s courageous boldness in the world in such dire need not of playing it safe but courageous change.

So I am becoming more, not less sure, that Paul knew what he was talking about – or we could say he was inspired when he said “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.” It’s the love that doesn’t and can’t disappoint. We hope, not for outcomes, but who’s with us when the outcome comes.

And that is why we bother with church. Not a pillow of comfort, and not a fortress in which to hide from the troubles of the world, and not passing moral judgment on those outside. Church is all about hope. Hope is here. Church is the center of hope. We got those two names exactly right!