Hope
A few minutes ago I was at the Unholy Empire of *$s reading one of the workbooks from The Center for Parish Development called The Church and the Reign of God. A wonderful piece of work. Anyway, in one of the discussion questions, I came across this dynamite sentence:
“The mission of the church is to inspire hopes, to support hopes, to give back to people the capacity for dreaming.”
Put that in the context of God’s kingdom and his vision for the world and you get a seriously loaded sentence. Recently I’ve had a few conversations about the subversive nature of hope. Despair seems to be much in fashion these days. Depending on your political leanings, economic outlook, or theological persuasion, it can make a lot of sense to welcome despair as a blanketing healing balm. However, the community of Jesus is in its very nature a community of hope. How do we reconcile the Story of God’s seemingly endless provision and rescue for the hopeless and lost (the kingdom which is already) with the experience of pain regarding the state of the world and honesty concerning suffering (the kingdom which is not yet)? I believe the answer rests in a community of Jesus-followers who recognize that hope is one of the most contrarian tools they have.
Now I’m tipping my hand a bit on what the second part of my community post is going to be about. But back to hope and how it relates to missional communities. Many times over the past four years I have recognized that one of my primary roles and callings of our local faith community has been to create a place where dreaming (imagination) is possible. Church as consumer product does not foster imagination; it contributes to the maintenance of a culture in pursuit of comfort and happiness. A church with an imagination can be a pretty uncomfortable place. So we have tried to forsake the comforts of ecclesiastic certainty by returning to our roots – becoming a community that tries to ask good questions and goes on a journey to discover answers in the context of real life. We are forced to deal with each other’s doubts, fears, and hang-ups and love each other through the process. And every once in a while (God willing), the hope of the kingdom is allowed to break through the despair and such a light fills the darkness that we catch a glimpse of the way humanity is supposed to be.
Later on in the workbook I was reading tonight, there was a quote from John Howard Yoder:
“The church is called to be now what the world is called to be ultimately.”
That’s a tall order, isn’t it? Thankfully, we are not called to achieve this through our own efforts. “Hope” that subverts status quo despair is not manufactured, it is given. However, it is not given indiscriminately or devoid of context. Kingdom hope springs from the soil of concrete communities of men and women who make room for the uncomfortable silence of waiting. Will He really show up and make things right? Can we imagine it?
“The mission of the church is to inspire hopes, to support hopes, to give back to people the capacity for dreaming.”
Put that in the context of God’s kingdom and his vision for the world and you get a seriously loaded sentence. Recently I’ve had a few conversations about the subversive nature of hope. Despair seems to be much in fashion these days. Depending on your political leanings, economic outlook, or theological persuasion, it can make a lot of sense to welcome despair as a blanketing healing balm. However, the community of Jesus is in its very nature a community of hope. How do we reconcile the Story of God’s seemingly endless provision and rescue for the hopeless and lost (the kingdom which is already) with the experience of pain regarding the state of the world and honesty concerning suffering (the kingdom which is not yet)? I believe the answer rests in a community of Jesus-followers who recognize that hope is one of the most contrarian tools they have.
Now I’m tipping my hand a bit on what the second part of my community post is going to be about. But back to hope and how it relates to missional communities. Many times over the past four years I have recognized that one of my primary roles and callings of our local faith community has been to create a place where dreaming (imagination) is possible. Church as consumer product does not foster imagination; it contributes to the maintenance of a culture in pursuit of comfort and happiness. A church with an imagination can be a pretty uncomfortable place. So we have tried to forsake the comforts of ecclesiastic certainty by returning to our roots – becoming a community that tries to ask good questions and goes on a journey to discover answers in the context of real life. We are forced to deal with each other’s doubts, fears, and hang-ups and love each other through the process. And every once in a while (God willing), the hope of the kingdom is allowed to break through the despair and such a light fills the darkness that we catch a glimpse of the way humanity is supposed to be.
Later on in the workbook I was reading tonight, there was a quote from John Howard Yoder:
“The church is called to be now what the world is called to be ultimately.”
That’s a tall order, isn’t it? Thankfully, we are not called to achieve this through our own efforts. “Hope” that subverts status quo despair is not manufactured, it is given. However, it is not given indiscriminately or devoid of context. Kingdom hope springs from the soil of concrete communities of men and women who make room for the uncomfortable silence of waiting. Will He really show up and make things right? Can we imagine it?
posted by Mike Bishop at 8:28 PM
2 Comments:
To coin an overused christianease word. AMEN!!
Faith, Hope, and Love are the most underused "states of being" we are called to as believers. We are all to often so concerned with the Faith part that we either a) force a mature faith on weak belivers (causing them to be set up to fail) b) fake our own faith to look more spiritual (a failure all its own) or c) create a false faith system and ask others to live up to it (i.e. - the pharisees of yesterday and today).
The list is not exhaustive of course and many times a persons faith is genuine and leads to hope, but when we take the lessons of faith outside of community, the hope becomes individualistic (sometimes/oftentimes necessarily individualistic) rather than wholeistic. Wholestic faith that leads to hope is contagious (check out Acts chapter 2). The question is, of course, in our American/ individualistic/ make it on my own society, how do we do the latter part of your post and "be now what the world is called to be ultimately". A highly interdependant community of Oneness (See John 17).
Part of the idea of creating hope in a community will have to be sacrificing some, if not all of our individuality (not personality) in order to be truly concerned about others needs. This to me is somewhat spelled out in Romans 5:1-5 where St. Paul talks about persevering through tribulations, allowing our faith to build hope in community. I used to see this as an individualized passage of scripture due to my upbringing, however the more I look at it, I see it in the context of community.
Sorry for the ramble, but I get excited about hope and I look forward to our continuing this discussion on tuesdays so I can unscramble some of the scrambled ideas above.
Great thoughts! I love the subject of hope. For me hope is not so much a result of faith, as it is like an oxygen-rich atmosphere that fuels the fires of faith and love. Despair has the effect of sucking all the air out of a room so no warming fires can be hearthed. Is 'hearthed' a word? Anyway, you know what I mean. When hope saturates a life all it takes is a tiny mustard seed spark of faith to ignite an incarnational experience with the Holy One.
--Chris
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