Waiting, Work and Hope
Let me be honest, I’m not very good at waiting. Admittedly, I have gotten a lot better, but I still have a long way to go. I get up in the morning and although I like to grind my coffee beans, boil the water and filter a good strong cup of coffee, I can’t usually wait. So in my impatience, I pop a K-cup into my Keurig and within a minute or so, I have my coffee. Better than instant, but not as good as my usual dripped coffee. But I find it hard to wait.
There are other things that are hard to wait for – my turn in line, test results, seeing loved ones, waiting for the newest gadget to hit the stores. Now, some waiting is good. Waiting can build character and patience. It gives us time to think and to weigh the issues involved. It helps us avoid rushing into things by carefully considering the implications and consequences of our actions and our choices. There is something to be said for deferred gratification and careful planning. Waiting can be good.
But there are other things, bigger, more pressing things that I find it hard to wait for. It is hard to wait for things like: ending hunger in a nation of plenty, clean water for all people, affordable health care for all, decent and dignifying jobs for all who want them, decent and affordable housing, healthier marriages and families, the end of injustice, just politicians and equitable systems that benefit all people not just the mighty or the wealthy or the ones who are well-connected or know how to manipulate the system. I wait. And I wait.
Of course, that is what life is often like in a fallen world – a world waiting and groaning for its and our redemption (to paraphrase Paul’s words in Romans 8). Jesus and the long prophetic tradition in the Hebrew Scriptures remind us that we are waiting for God’s ultimate Kingdom to come and while we wait, we experience all the tension and travail that often accompanies waiting. Yes, the Kingdom of God has broken into our world in Jesus. Yes, the Kingdom of God is working itself out whenever God’s will is understand and embraced and put into action. But yet, we still wait for the Kingdom’s full realization.
And while we wait, we work. It is easy to get discouraged and angry and throw up our hands and say: “Forget it!” (or something stronger!). But those whose hearts are gripped by the compassion and vision of Christ, refuse to become victims of despair. They have glimpsed something and experienced something of the possibilities of the Kingdom and have to respond. Our work can take many forms. It can be serving, marching, protesting, making donations, writing letters and making phone calls, it can be speaking out against practices, structures, systems, persons that dehumanize and betray the dignity of human life as God intended it. But it seems to me that one of the key ways in which we work against the injustices and demonization in the world is by prayer. The theologian Karl Barth once wrote about the revolutionary nature of prayer. He said: “To clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” William Ramsey, a former Archbishop of the Church of England, reminds us that: “The church is called to be a community which speaks to the world in God’s name and speaks to God from the middle of the world’s darkness and frustration. The prayer with beautiful buildings and lovely music must be a prayer which also speaks from the places where men and women work, or lack work, and are sad and hungry, suffer and die. To be near to the love of God is to be near, as Jesus showed, to the darkness of the world. This is the ‘place of prayer’” Prayer is not a passive exercise, a folding of the hands and a closing of the eyes. It is taking up arms against the darkness of the world and embracing the world with the compassion and heart of God.
And what keeps us going? What keeps us from giving up or getting tired of waiting? It is hope.
As we look at the life of Jesus we see that he tasted failure, sorrow, loneliness and brokenness. And Jesus didn’t really promise much less for those who were to follow him. This is what life is like in a broken world and a world that so often forgets its God-oriented purpose. But Jesus not only endured, but triumphed through hope in the goodness, sovereignty, presence, plan and promises of God.
God’s spirit makes that hope real in our lives by changing our hearts and perspectives and helps us to see God’s future -- a future described in the vivid images of the closing chapters of Isaiah and Revelation among other places. Christians are witnesses in the world to God’s shalom (peace, wholeness, well-being) for the created cosmos. It is a future with hope (cf. Jeremiah 19:4-5,7,11), a good future.
Just as there cannot be any love without God, there can be no hope without God, for all hope is rooted in God and the promises of God. The writer of the book of Hebrews says that hope is the anchor of the soul. Without it, life is a long journey into darkness. And so we wait in hope, we work in hope, we are inspired by hope. This is true at the personal, social and global level. Hope that both looks back at Jesus’ life, ministry and resurrection, and a hope that looks forward, moves forward, revolutionizing and transforming the present.
One of my favorite quotes on hope was given to me years ago by one of my students. I have kept it with me over the years and have drawn encouragement from it. It by the Brazilian theologian/philosopher Rubem Alves: “Hope is hearing the melody of the future. Faith is to dance to it.” Anyone feel like dancing? Don’t give up.
