Maybe, maybe not. Mary Ann asked a great question about my labeling hope as “Christian hope.” Here, just in time for Good Friday, is an article I wrote many years ago on the difference between Christian hope and the hope the world offers.
Stories allow us to see our way through the impossible as we suffer in hope. Ever had an ‘impossible dream’? Ever come to a place where you wanted changes to take place in your life that seemed utterly impossible? The Gospel story begins and ends in the impossible. To grow her hope, Mary is told one simple sentence, “Nothing is impossible with God.” (Even Virgin birth!) Many years ago, I came to one of those difficult places when I began to despair of the possibility for real and lasting change in my own sinful heart and in the heart of my family. In that moment, it was the Story of Scripture which spoke deeply to me. These events occurred on Good Friday.
I had prayed a strange and dangerous prayer at the beginning of holy week. I wanted to understand more of what it was like for Christ to walk through that week. As I struggled with what I recognized to be a sinful heart and lustful demands that life would go my way –on this, the day that marked the anniversary of the beating, persecution, mockery, and condemnation of our Lord, I recalled a story of hope that changed my perspective on the difficulties of my present circumstances. Here is how it happened. I was sitting at the kitchen table, planning to write about stories growing hope for the story retreat I was preparing. I felt absolutely flat, lifeless, and hopeless. (A good therapist would say I was depressed!) This is what I wrote:
How to write about how stories grow our hope on a day when I feel pretty hopeless about my life? Right now it looks as though it will always be this way – every day fraught with frustration. If Kirby happens to have an easy day, Robert will be in a snit. If Jackie isn’t hormonal, Mary Elizabeth is. Kip will always work this hard, and all of our plans for family fun will be ruined by his work.
Why bother to hope? I am tired. I am so tired. I don’t want to get up, and I don’t want to face a day, a week, a summer, a lifetime with these bickering children and a husband who appreciates me for my understanding and my helpfulness. How can I write about hope?
Do stories grow our hope? Right now, I can’t see it. But maybe it’s because right now I can’t remember any relevant stories. So I am saying to myself, tell yourself a story, E.
How about this one? There was a strange man, a perfectly righteous man, an innocent man. The Jews hated and feared him and did all sorts of wrangling to sentence him to death. They had no right; even the Roman authorities recognized his innocence. It did not matter. They condemned him anyway.
And amazingly, this innocent victim knew all along the horror of the story. Did he dread it? Indeed, he did. He prayed, “Abba, Father…please take this cup of suffering away from me. ” Yet, he knew that there was no one else who could drink it. And so he added, “Not my will, but thine….” Impossible! He knew what lay ahead, the unspeakable suffering of the horrible separation from his father, and yet, he submitted. They picked him up, charged him, tried him, and condemned him to death. He endured beating, mockery, spitting, and the cross. Finally, after an eternally long day, he died. A story of hope? Not just yet.
Let us flash back for a moment. Just before these sordid events, he had drunk another cup with his best friends. He had explained to the puzzled disciples that the wine in this cup symbolized his blood which sealed the new covenant. He further reminded them to celebrate this feast in commemoration of him. Is there a connection between the two cups? It seems that there is: because he drank the cup of God’s wrath, I drink the cup of my hope. I have thought a lot today, this “good” Friday, about how unlike my brother Jesus I am. I have not been willing to say, “Not my will, but thine be done.” I have been stubborn and selfish, wanting my own needs to be provided for, wanting my life to go according to my plan. Right now, I feel hopeless about my circumstances and my sin.
And yet, as I remember the narrative of the events of that Good Friday almost 2000 years ago, I am reminded of my eternal hope. The eternal hope is not merely the hope that things will get better here on this earth; I need not rely on chirping with Annie, “The sun will come out tomorrow…clear away the cobwebs and the sorrow.” Perhaps it will. More likely, tomorrow will bring with it a new set of troubles. But because of what happened on the Cross and then two days later, I can live with eternal hope. This hope sees a “vision of redemption in the midst of decay.” It sees that we live in the frustration of a fallen world. Yet, it recalls the greatest love story ever told, of a Father filled with such a bizarre love for His people that He is willing to condemn an innocent son that the unrighteous might be made righteous. My hope rests not on my own ability to pull myself out of this domestic funk, nor my ability to redeem myself from my lustful demands. Instead, my hope relies on the belief that one day he will return and I will be like him (I John 3:2). The redemptive work has been accomplished; is being accomplished, and will be completed in the final chapter. And because I know the end of the story, I can look beyond the minor frustrations and the deeper sorrows of living in a fallen world to the final scene, the “one day” when I will sit down and share with my Lord a full cup of victory over sin and death in our Father’s kingdom. This is, indeed, the story of hope.
