Living Between Reality and Hope

Our calling is to live between acceptance of some of the painful realities of life and the hope we have that with God new things are possible for us and for the world we live in--a world deeply marked by sin and suffering.  We are called to be an Easter people--a resurrection people who can live in a broken world but maintain the hope that the painful realities we see around us are not “ultimate realities.”

God’s reign is a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and justice and so as a people who are steeped in hope, we are to pursue those things that make for peace and justice even when we know that our efforts may have a limited impact on the events around us.  In God’s Kingdom there is food for all, clean water for all, and so we do what we can to feed the hungry knowing full well that there will still be empty stomachs no matter how much effort we expend.  Our hope empowers us to be faithful in times of pain, struggle, and disappointment because we know that God’s power isn’t confined to this present state and we are doing the things He has blessed.

Most of us are pretty ordinary people who live pretty ordinary lives, and we find that to carry out the simple tasks and chores that sustain life around us, nurture relationships in our neighborhoods and build healthy ways to live in our wider environment, taxes our energies.  Doing the things we can while being realistic about our power and our needs is often all we can manage.  Too often we condone over-consumption of resources with the types of recreation we have around us, the lavish homes and vehicles our friends ad we insist we need, and the wasteful ways in which we produce and dispose of goods causes much guilt.  We long to reorient our lives to a better way--to be empowered by a vision of God’s salvation and a Christian hope--and a new reality of life in God’s Kingdom.

I recall a funeral I attended some years ago of a dear old man who I respected so highly.  When they were returning him to the earth, the attending minister said, “Lord, we give you back your son--treat him kindly for he has served you with gentleness and compassion in his tenure here.  We all came to love him for the things he taught us about being a caretaker of your earth.”  May they say that about me someday--but they won’t, because I am weak.  We need to help each other on this path to the freedom of giving more than we take each day. 

Bow with me to pray:

Dear Lord of Heaven and Earth.  You have “walked” this Earth.  We thank you for being flesh and blood like us.  For struggling with the reality of our walk--with us.  Our North American footprint is huge and heavy.  We know that there is a connection with our way of living and the oppression of other people in the world we share.  We don’t want it to be this way.  Our lives are filled with many good things.  Parting with them is very difficult, for our security and comfort is largely tied to things.  Forgive us for having our securities rooted in things rather than in your love and your kingdom.  We seek repentance.  We wish for change.  Grant us wisdom to live in your joy of “living with less.”  Let us be your helpers as you “rebuild your kingdom” here.  Amen.

In Jeremiah 29:4-9 we read a part of a letter:

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes, this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the LORD.

I can’t help but wonder what would be the effect of this letter on an exiled people who are waiting to go home and resume their lives.  Essentially the message was, “You’re not going home; what you see is what you get--enjoy it here and make it yours.  I’m with you--trust me.”  They were to resume their lives and do well in all things--in this new place.  It was home.  Which brings to mind a thought--Is there a difference between optimism and Christian hope?  The people were optimistic that they’d soon be going home.  Some of the prophets were promising them an end to the exile--and going home to the land of their ancestors.  Jeremiah brings a message “You’re not going home.  This is home.  Prosper where you are--it’s what you have.”  Stop being optimistic that things are going to get better and you’ll find yourselves returning to the place and the way of your ancestors.  Optimism--looking on the bright side and believing that things will turn out well--or as they used to be when we were young.  The exiles needed Christian hope in their troubled times.  While optimism is valuable and important in it’s place, they needed something more filling.  More growth worthy.  When our reality consists of pain, anxiety, and dread, it’s pretty tough to not let that reality overwhelm us and take control of our lives.  To be people of hope means we need to open our lives to a new and different reality, that being our living in the power of Jesus Christ and His resurrection.”

Christian hope doesn’t mean believing that all of our pain, anxiety, and dread will be swept away and everything will be great again.  “Maybe all the trouble in the whole world will be swept away.”  It means we’ll be able to look beyond the pain, the anxiety, and the overwhelming dread to what God has done for us and continues to do through Jesus Christ.  Christian hope means we become rooted in the grace and love of Jesus Christ.  The new reality--the here and the now.  According to the biblical worldview, God created the world good and made many attempts to restore it, but sin entered the picture and became an incredibly destructive power.  Ever since, God has been at work to free humanity and the rest of creation from this slavery to sin, death, and decay.  His most decisive intervention came when Jesus Christ came to bring the Kingdom and the reign of God, thereby unleashing the redeeming and fulfilling power of God into our world and initiating God’s intervention to renew and heal creation.  He walked and talked among the people telling them what it would be and doing signs and wonders to prove that what He said was true.  Followers of Jesus began to embrace and experience God’s way, and down the centuries that followed have continued to embrace this way of the Lord.

God doesn’t only hold dominion over His followers; He holds dominion over all of creation and when the time comes that He’ll exercise that dominion over all of creation, we live in the Christian hope that He’ll use us as His workers to walk with and talk with our neighbours about God’s way wherever we live and in whatever we do.  The way of peace, justice, healing, and shalom is all around us.  It just needs to be absorbed into us and exude out of us.  I like the example of the radio waves and television signals that fill the atmosphere around us.  They’re all around, but we need to be tune to them.  So often the dial we tune to is one that everyone around us is pushing, so we follow, and feel uncomfortable instead of tuning into what we know is the right channel.  In that we as God’s people need to help each other--to help each other find and stay on the channel.  God is hard at work establishing His divided rule over the entire creation.  We have the opportunity to be His helpers in pushing back the destructive powers of sin and death.  As Jesus followers, we, like the exiles to Babylon, live between the old and the new.  We’ve been delivered from some of the realities of the old way, but we still live in it and are subject to many of its limitations.  But we also live in the Way of the Lord and this is what shapes our identity.  To be people of Christian hope means to live within the old realities but to know and live in the new reality of Jesus Christ.  So we plant gardens and enjoy the fruits of the work we do.  We build houses and settle down where we are, raising our families and seeking the peace and prosperity of those things and places that are around us.  And we watch and wait for the signs of God’s new reality, and do the things he has blest and asks us to participate in.  We pursue those things that make for peace and justice even when we know that our efforts will have limited impact on the powers and events around us.  And we hope.

A vision comes to mind:  after living many years in Egypt and learning Egyptian ways, the Israelite people came to the promised land, that historic moment when it came time to claim their promise.  This was the place they were to occupy and populate, and worship their own God.  But as they came closer, they came to realize that it was occupied by people who worshipped other gods, people who were organized, had defenses, and were hostile to them.  They had heavily fortified cities and they weren’t about to give them up.  Adding to their unease was the fact that Moses, their champion and trusted leader, had died, and young, untested Joshua was leading them.  They had no trained soldiers--they were a slave people, wandering desert folk who were being asked to walk on water.  With no time to practice, God was saying, “Trust me, I am with you.”  Like “Step out of the boat.  You don’t need it.  Just walk over with me and claim your place.  Oh, and take your belongings.  You’ll need them.”  After spending three days on the banks of the Jordan River wondering what they had gotten themselves into, they were told, “Tomorrow morning bright and early, when you see the priests carrying the ark of the covenant of the Lord God into the river, arise and follow them.  Take everything you own, your families and your cattle.”  Then came the remarkable wonder, “that you may know the way you shall go, for you have not passed this way before.  I am the Lord your God and I am with you.”  What a critical time to cross over into a new patten for living.  No turning back.  Trust me.  I am the Lord your God. 

Those words were probably more alarming than they were comforting.  Where was the connection between the old and the new?  I am the Lord your God.  No army to follow.  Instead of following an army of thousands of soldiers with swords and spears, they were to follow a harmless group of priest who carried their holy artifacts--artifacts that consisted of two stone tablets and a few other things--oh, and a wooden box known as the ark of the covenant.  This box that symbolized Israel’s covenant with God.  His presence in their lives.  Following this box and its contents symbolized that they were entrusting Themselves and their future to God as they crossed the river that led them away from the past they knew to their future in a new land where the odds looked unconquerable.
We as a people of faith move into our tomorrows with a Christian hope that God is leading us--”not an optimism for a bright future.”  We follow God’s promise, this covenant that says, “I am with you.  Whatever you will meet, trust me.”  The purpose of this assurance is not to assure us of our safety and success but rather to ensure that God’s purpose is accomplished and fulfilled, and that we have the privilege of being part of the plan.  As it was for the Israelites, God’s purpose is to lead us into unchartered waters and to a higher purpose than any we know. The people of the covenant have a calling that sets them apart from all others.  They are to serve their Lord and do his will while waiting for him to fulfill his plan for the whole earth

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “Following Jesus is like going to one’s death.  When our Lord calls, he bids us to come and die to ourselves.”  The lament of the writer of Psalm 73 reads, “I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.”  He was puzzled and dismayed that his call to follow the Lord didn’t give him the rewards he had hoped it would.  Often, we as believers suffer these same misgivings.  But it is our assurance of God’s presence in our lives that carries us onward.  The testimony of Isaiah to whom God said, “Fear not for I am with you.  I have redeemed you, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will lead you.  The waters won’t overwhelm you.  And when you walk through the fire, I will be there and you will not be consumed.”  God’s promise is that in times of hardship He will provide for us with a way through.
Countless believers have walked through the deep waters of life, through fires, terrible accidents, physical ailments and social rejection because they followed the Lord God.  But they’ve not been overcome or diverted from their calling, even when they were facing insurmountable odds.
Joshua confessed in chapter 24, “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord.”  That was his resolve, to follow the Lord into an unknown future that had the appearance of an insurmountable task, but carrying the history he already had with his Lord, he went forth boldly.
Can we follow boldly--as boldly as the people of old who had their only hope in God and His challenge to them that their lives wouldn’t necessarily be easier and certainly wouldn’t be less oppressed, but they would be serving the Lord and living in a Christian hope of living for a better time in God’s rule?

Bow with me to pray:

Lord of Creation, thank you for setting us in a beautiful place, a place where we can worship you for giving us bearers who could share with us the stories of the wonders you did in their lives.  We see your beauty and wonder displayed all around us.  You beckon to us to come and enjoy and participate in right relationship.  We confess that we’ve been influenced by the gods of this age, and have withdrawn from our interconnectedness with you.  The result is that we have caused harm to your creation. We commit to renewing ourselves to a holistic sense of place in You and Your creation.  May we contribute to the health of the earth and commit ourselves to teaching your glory to coming generations.  Amen

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