Hope Does Not Disappoint
Knowing that we belong to God is the ultimate hope. Things will happen, difficult circumstances will arise. But it is good to know that we were made to do difficult things.
Hope is a gift given specifically for difficult times. Times like these. My question is how might we create a space where a common appreciation of everyone’s dignity thrives? I pray that isn’t a cumbersome question but let me repeat it once more: how might we, you and I, create a space where a common appreciation of everyone’s dignity thrives? A space where people realize and can bear witness to the truth that Hope does not disappoint.
This question is borne out of a perceived necessity and intensifying urgency. I think of Dr. King writing about the fierce urgency of now. When we are talking about dignity, we are talking about a divinely imbued substance that human beings foolishly attempt to deny one another everyday. Our toolkit for denying another’s dignity seems endless. You have the dramatic episodes where violence is justified by dehumanizing another. The horrors of genocide and ethnic cleansing have often begun with referring to another person, made in the image of God, as subhuman. We devalue one another in order to justify our own brutality.
Try as we may, we can never permanently remove God’s fingerprint. Everybody needs to be nurtured. Everybody needs to be reminded that they are fearfully and wonderfully made. We can even boil it down simply to encouragement. What are the spaces in our lives where that sort of encouragement happens?
We are so connected now through technology and social media yet people still feel so alone. Someone can watch thirty sermons, podcasts, and lectures today if they so choose but people still need community. Someone to send them a text message, give them a phone call, or visit. Remind them that they have not been forgotten. I think about this in the context of Paul’s ministry and the churches he wrote letters to but particularly the church in Rome; a church in the seat of Empire. In my estimation, there is precise purpose in Paul’s ministry and its relationship to Rome. Rome was the seat of global power. Military, cultural, and religious power emanated from its center. Bringing the gospel to the heart of Empire is undoing Empire and distributing its undoing to the world.
There’s a certain loneliness that fills the air when you are countercultural. A certain seduction toward despair because what you are doing is not popular. In the case of the church of Rome, it was dangerous. Certainly costly. In an empire culture, with its trappings of hierarchy and hegemony, this small group proclaiming that Jesus is Lord meant Caesar was not. Saying Jesus is Lord in that context was both unpatriotic and blasphemous. They lived their faith under the shadow of death daily. Yet still, Paul communicates an understanding of that peril as an instrument of God’s glory.
Paul offers an invitation to the church in Rome to follow Christ in community, word, and deed (Romans 5:2). And I know sometimes people get really excited about this ideal. There’s this sensationalized idea of holiness that can become an idolizing of one’s self. This idea of being right in one’s own righteousness. This frustration with the isolation, even loneliness, that can arise when one professes to follow Christ but also desires followers of their own. This armor of light that Paul is talking about is so necessary because it doesn’t take much for works of darkness to compel us once again (Romans 5:5). Our need for acknowledgment, for people to come see how good we look, can make even our acts of charity perverse through the lens of self-glory. Our appetite for justice lessens because we fail to see what’s in it for us. In our pursuit of empires, and our seduction by values of empire, we’ve lost our way. We’ve failed to seek first the kingdom of God.
If God is not in it then truly the labour is in vain. Community without Christ as the tie that binds has its limitations. Certainly people have a love for one another, can be decent toward another, but Paul positions Christ as the source of what we need to get through. We see in Romans 13, Paul speaks about an urgency borne in our greater proximity to salvation (v.11). The audience, whether they are seasoned followers of Christ or recent converts, are further in their sanctification than they were when they first believed. Paul speaks as a loved one compelling his family toward proper perspective. Paul is saying none of the stuff, the busyness, the monuments we build for our own glory mean anything in comparison to what God has for us. What good news this is for those dissatisfied by the rat race! Good news for those convinced that the measure of life is more than what society tells us. We can have all the economic resources and social prestige we want but without this proximity to salvation, we will never be satisfied. I think about how the world convinces us to work without ceasing. Yet Jesus tells us that his “yoke is easy and his burden is light,” (Matthew 11). The world tells us that we can sleep when we are dead yet we see God consistently reminding and inviting God’s people into Sabbath rest.
Paul’s urgency with the church in Rome is an urgency we need to apply in our time and space. Our urgency must lead us to seek God’s clarity and an alignment of our priorities with God’s priorities. It is an urgent time. A saturated and hollow time where the cacophony of the world has intensified. Yet as the noise grows louder, so does our hope. So does our conviction that the things of this world—selfishness, jealousy, contempt—have an expiration date. That try as they may, none of them can outlast or cosmically withstand the love of God.
Community in Christ is founded on the ultimate demonstration of love. A demonstration that prioritizes sacrifice over self-preservation. One that offers a free gift where the giver absorbs all of the cost. That is the foundation of our faith, friends. Not mere transactions. Certainly not self-gratification or exploitation but a demonstration of love certified by gratitude justified by faith.
I love the theological weight of the word justified. Justified is a state of belonging to God. Imagine that we are buildings. Justification is what happens when the building is purchased. Therefore, when we say that we are justified, we are saying that we belong to God.
When we have been justified by God, God is our reason. Why be loving? Why be a peacemaker? Why leave places better than you found it? Because while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). Christ improves our lives through sanctification. Back to that earlier image of the purchased building, sanctification is like that new owner renovating the building. So what this means for our lives is that we demonstrate Christlike characters, also called the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), because we not only belong to God but God is working on us everyday. This news is too good, just too good, to keep to ourselves.
Imagine if we lived the great commission in this way? Loving folks how Christ loves us. Not waiting for them to get right, or somehow needing to earn our kindness but letting love be our signature. Our fragrance in the world (2 Corinthians 2:15). This has to be a better way of making disciples than tryna dominate folks. This has to be a better way of making disciples than leaving folks out. Especially in this time! Imagine how transformative it would be for us to love people so much that it becomes louder than their doubt? Louder than the noise of the world that tells them they are insignificant. Louder than the noise that says they are forgotten. Louder than the noise that says they are not worthy of dignity.
When we speak of dignity, I want us to think about how love adds value. As we celebrate Advent, let’s consider how Christ met us with love while we were still enemies with God. I want us to think about that in terms of the ultimate granting of access. Christ met us in our worst position and gave us the very best. What does that look like in our time and space? Interrupting indignity by taking Christ’s words seriously. In Luke 4, Jesus reads the book of Isaiah aloud and tells those gathered, “these words are fulfilled today,” (v.21). Jesus takes on these words of Isaiah as the foundations of his public ministry: Preaching to the poor, healing the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, granting liberty to those who are oppressed and proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord. All of these activities add value to the recipient’s life. All of these activities interrupt the Empire’s message that only some people have worth. Or that worth is based on what one is able to produce. Christ flips this on its head and demonstrates that love, God’s love, adds value and makes life worth living.
Jesus says in John 10 that “I come that they (us!) might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” (v.10). Far too many people do not live, they merely exist. We hear it in our culture all the time; people are living for the weekend. Measuring their lives by events they anticipate instead of the gift of every breath. Far too many people do not have what they need. Clean water, proper nutrition, housing, education and employment. Makes me wanna holler, “this ain’t living!” Sometimes I see the inequities in our world and I catch a glimpse of the Lord’s prayer in its fullness. When things are on Earth as it is in Heaven, life and life more abundantly won’t be mere abstraction. I do not believe Jesus was speaking figuratively. The abundant life stirring in our souls will spill into the ways in which we treat each other; it will shift culture and transform the world. We must disabuse ourselves of any pretense of scarcity. Paul tells the Galatians in the eponymous epistle that “freedom is for the purpose of serving my neighbor,” (Galatians 5). This hope in God that we enjoy is worth sharing. People cannot hear it over the grumbling of their children’s bellies, the cries for justice, or, much worse, our moral failings and inconsistencies. It is perplexing and undoubtedly off putting to preach about liberty while we contribute to our neighbors’ bondage.
Suffering is a part of our experiences on this side of eternity. We have enough of it that we do not need to contribute to anyone’s suffering. I think of my times in the hospital. Living with Lupus has led me to be hospitalized for significant portions of my life. I remember Advent 2017, waking up everyday hoping for news that I would be out of the hospital soon. Yet bad would become worse and my belief that I would ever get out was tested. I do not wish that journey on anyone else but I am so grateful that God allowed me to go through such tribulation. I believe that the problems in our life are invitations to build our empathy. Perhaps if we never went through ill circumstances we would delude ourselves into thinking we were better than other people. Maybe when we encountered people who suffered, the best we could offer is sympathy. Some sort of “I’m sorry but I can’t relate.” But when we go through, we are able to not just say “I’m sorry” but to say “I understand.”
Throughout the book of Romans, Paul places tribulation as the very first step on the road to hope. In chapter five, verse 3 he tells us that tribulation produces perseverance. Perseverance is essential for our walk with God. If I could sum up the walk with God in two words it would be, “Hold on!” The race is not given to the swift but to those who endure to the end. Hold on!
Those of us who have had the privilege of working with young people know what it is like to tell a child to hold on. To not quit. To remember that we were made to do difficult things. When we persevere and endure we become a dependable person. A lighthouse in the midst of chaos. People know that you are a real one. Anyone can be a critic, anyone can put a smile on when times are good but those who persevere know that their lowest point is not their defining point. Proverbs tells us that the righteous person falls seven times and rises again. I don’t know who needs to read this today but you are not your lowest point. You are not defined by your failures. You are defined by what God says about you. And God sees you and says, “You belong to me.”
Knowing that we belong to God is the ultimate hope. Things will happen, difficult circumstances will arise. But it is good to know, my friends, that we were made to do difficult things. John writes in Revelation 12 that “they (the saints) overcame him (satan) by the blood of the Lamb (Jesus) and by the word of their testimony,” (v.11). You cannot have a testimony without going through something. So yes, these are difficult times. We have witnessed and survived unspeakable horrors but thanks be to God, these are testimony building times. These are times that grow our faith. These are times that require hope. Even if you have to keep your hope on a tightrope. And we have a responsibility, dear friends, to remind one another of that hope. To encourage each other in that hope. To make sure that every person we encounter, even folk we don’t like, have access to that hope. How we live, our commitment to extending common dignity to everyone we encounter is an opportunity to witness, to become living testimonies that evil has an expiration date. That weeping may come in the night, but joy comes in the morning.
The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.
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