Hope, right now

Devotion for Being Apart - June 7

I will be sharing a devotion Sundays, and Wednesdays through Fridays.
- Kara

Psalm 27

These are intense times, when it feels like so much is falling apart – and probably it needed to fall apart – the climate is at a breaking point, the deep disease of racism has been festering at our nation’s core since its founding, the inequity in healthcare and our economic structures, the vitriol in our politics, they all continued to plug along in devastating dysfunction.  But now it feels like everything has burst open and is a leaking mess.  After three months sitting in our time-out corners, we can see how badly broken and destructive it all really is.  

But we are people of hope. We are people who trust what we cannot see.  So what is our hope?  And how do we live in hope, especially when things feel devastating and hopeless.

One answer has been, our hope is that one day this mortal life will be over and we will be with God. That is hopeful.  And we will be. But that’s not the hope this scripture give us when it says, “I believe I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”  That is hope for later on, this is hope for right now.  I will see God’s goodness in this place, for these people, while we are living this life. 

Another way hope has been framed defines God’s goodness by human ideas of goodness.  Our culture values upward mobility, endless accumulation, and measurable results. We worship security, independence and happiness. We might think it’s God job to give us those things.  Is the goodness of the Lord the promise of financial security? Guaranteed good health? Assurance that bad things wont happen to you?

My uncle believed he’d beat cancer through prayer and faith in God.  Last week, the pastor at his funeral said, “We are shocked. We all thought he would be healed.”  Why? Because we modern people see goodness as the absence of suffering, the stability of health, the achievement of the goals and future we had planned for ourselves. We think a good life is security, independence and happiness, and put our hope in God to provide that.  What if God doesn’t?  Where is our hope then?  Near the end, my uncle’s hope shifted, and he began to find hope in being with God when his life was over, and in that he had peace. But the horror of leaving this life, and leaving behind his family, never left him.  

A third way Christians have seen hope has been to treat Jesus as a model for how we are to live and act as though the work of God is now entirely in our hands. Not so different from interpreting God’s goodness as permanent health or stability, we equate God’s goodness with communal health or stability.  

We put ambitious, noble goals in front of us, like the end of poverty our lifetime, guaranteed equality for all, reversing climate destruction – and then every moment we are not working toward that goal feels like wasted time, and every action - purposeful or unintentional - that counters that goal feels like lost ground or personal shame, and everyone working on other goals feels like a competitor. 

A few years ago, someone crept through my neighborhood in the night and stapled big, cardboard, painted flowers at the base of the telephone poles, to look like they were growing up out of the sidewalk, two feet tall and brightly colored.  On one pole, above the flower at eye level, a painted calligraphy sign was attached, that said, “Live like the world should be to show the world what it can be.”  It’s a beautiful sentiment, but In this view, hope is something we must provide for others.

Hear this: our hope is not just for after this life. Christianity is not a religion of escape; it’s trust in the God who joins us here. 

Our hope is not for our own security, independence or happiness.  Christianity is not a religion to soothe our fears or avoid suffering; it’s trust in the God who joins us here. 
And our hope is not that enough of us striving and working can bring God’s vision to fruition.  Christianity is not a religion of positive progress, or a blueprint for social change; it’s trust in the God who joins us here.

We have talked before about eschatological imagination.  But it might help to define again what these words mean.

Imagination is the forming of new ideas, images or concepts of outside things not present to the senses.  And eschatology, or what my kids used to call “the very, very end,” is that part of theology – or thinking about God - that is concerned with the final destiny of humankind.

So to have ‘eschatological imagination’ is to live into God’s final destiny for humanity, right now.  It’s letting our understanding of a good life be shaped by God’s trajectory, and live now where the story will arrive in the very, very end.  

So instead of ““Live like the world should be to show the world what it can be,” the sign above the cardboard flowers of eschatological imagination would say, “Live like the world will be to show the world what really is.”

“I believe I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” means I trust I will see God doing something here and now, in visible, tangible, joinable ways.  I’ll see God’s goodness, not ours.  We don’t pine for it someday far away or bring it into being with our human efforts.  We trust God to bring it. “Wait for the Lord. Have courage and watch for God.” the scripture goes on to say. 

And we will see God’s goodness not when everything is all better, but now, in the brokenness, in the cries for justice and the suffering of injustice, in the midst of an earth in crisis, in the grips of a worldwide illness, the corruption of governments and the selfishness of commerce notwithstanding, not apart from but right within the frailty of the human body and the vulnerability of human bonds.

A big word of eschatological imagination is nevertheless.  Nevertheless, we will see the goodness of God, anyway.  Here. now. 

We become people who are always asking, “What is God up to?” in every circumstance, especially the godforsaken ones. Not just because God is present and working in all circumstances, but because Jesus comes especially into godforsakenness, when, by own his unjust, politicized, and brutal death, and raising us to newness of life, he spoke the final and authoritative nevertheless.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
   whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
   of whom shall I be afraid? 

God is trustworthy.  This is our hope.  To trust God is to live by imagination shaped by the final destiny of humankind. The very, very end will be love, wholeness, joy, peace, belonging for all.  So we live love now, we seek wholeness now, we take pleasure in life’s joy now.  We join in peace, and practice belonging because they are more real and more permanent than the discord and division we see in front of us.  

We want to see the world as God sees it, to trust our lives to the story God is telling, and let our lives be shaped by the ending to the story, right now and nevertheless.  When we live like the world will be we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

So be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

 

Perhaps tonight before bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Today we sang this together. Perhaps before bed, you might sing or recite this a few times.

The Lord is my light,
my light and salvation,
in God I trust, in God I trust.
The Lord is my light,
my light and salvation,
in God I trust, in God I trust.

I will see your goodness in the land of the land of the living.
I will wait with courage for the Lord will come.
 I will see your goodness in the land of the land of the living.
I will wait with courage for the Lord will come.
 

The Lord is my light,
my light and salvation,
in God I trust, in God I trust.
The Lord is my light,
my light and salvation,
in God I trust, in God I trust.