The Waking Dreamer: Hope

Showing posts with label Hope. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

A "Living" Hope

A “Living” Hope

1 Peter 1:1-12[1]

People sometimes make outrageous claims. Social media, podcasts, YouTube, and the internet all makes it very easy to put your message out there, no matter how outrageous it might be. The truth of the matter is that people have made outrageous claims throughout the ages. In previous centuries, they did so in published tracts or books. That made the invention of the printing press a “dangerous” new technology to the institutions that were in power at the time. It was “dangerous” because eventually, printed tracts would lead to the reshaping of the church, politics, society, the family, and our whole view of life. From the invention of the printing press in the 15^th century to the rise of radio and television in the 20th century, the printed word was viewed by some as a dangerous technology that would undermine the conventional norms and practices of both church and state, both society and home. It changed everything!

The rise of radio and television in the 20^th century changed everything as well. It created a whole new means of getting the “word” out. I’m sure there were some who cautioned against the danger they posed. But at the same time, many embraced the new technology and used it for good. Some of us remember Walter Cronkite as a voice you could trust. But there were other voices that made outrageous claims. Of course, the rise of the internet, email, social media, podcasting, and streaming services has led to vastly more ways of getting your message out there. Some of it is very helpful. If you need to fix just about anything, there’s probably a YouTube video for it. And I subscribe to several YouTube channels for insights into playing guitar more effectively. But again, there’s a lot of content out there that continues to be outrageous.

In the days of the first Christians, there were likely many who would have view Peter’s declaration that believers had been “born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3, CEB) as outrageous. For one thing, most people in the Greek and Roman world would have scoffed at the mention of anything like a “resurrection.” They believed that there was no return from death. Death was final, and that was that. Talk of a resurrection would have literally sounded like nonsense to them. It would have been outrageous!

More than that, the whole question of the afterlife was just as confused then as it is now. The prevailing view in those days was that everyone, both good and bad, died and went to “hades.” It wasn’t exactly the same idea as the notion of “hell” that has developed over the centuries. Everyone went there, not just those who “deserved” punishment. It was just the place of the dead. Good and bad, rich and poor alike, all went there at death. But it was a place of fires and ash, a kind of perpetual purgatory where you lived in regret for your mistakes forever. Not something to look forward to at all!

Into that world came the Christian gospel. As our lesson from 1 Peter puts it, “you have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). There were several aspects of that claim that would have been viewed as outrageous. First of all, the claim that Jesus had been raised from the dead would have been rejected outright. Because death was final, there was no returning from it. At least that was what most people believed. But that’s precisely the point of the death and resurrection of Jesus in the Christian gospel. As another Christian teacher put it, by dying and rising again, Jesus freed “those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death” (Heb 2:15). So it is that Peter could call the hope that we have through Jesus a “living” one because it stems from the fact that Jesus is alive to this day. I think the Contemporary English Version does a good job of bringing out this emphasis when it says, “by raising Jesus from death, [God] has given us new life and a hope that lives on” (1 Pet 1:3). Our hope is a “living” one because Jesus “lives on” to this day.

More than that, the hope that God has given us through the death and resurrection of Jesus is a “living” one because it points us to our own future. Peter says that “You have a pure and enduring inheritance that cannot perish—an inheritance that is presently kept safe in heaven for you. Through his faithfulness, you are guarded by God’s power so that you can receive the salvation he is ready to reveal in the last time” (1 Pet 1:4-5, CEB). I like the way the Good News Translation puts it: Jesus’ death and resurrection “fills us with a living hope, and so we look forward to possessing the rich blessings that God keeps for his people. He keeps them for you in heaven, where they cannot decay or spoil or fade away” (1 Pet 1:3-4, GNT). The main idea is that the “new life” that we’ve been given through Jesus’ death and resurrection is one of the “rich blessings” that God is keeping for us for the future. And there’s nothing and no one powerful enough to take that future away from us. As Gene Peterson puts it in The Message translation, “God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole” (1 Pet 1:4, MSG). Our hope is a “living” one because it points us to our future life in the fullness of God’s blessings.

There are still a lot of people in our world who believe that death has the final word. When you die, you just die, and that’s it. Maybe some of you believe that. But the clear message of the Gospel is that Jesus died and rose again to give us something more to hope for than life that ends at death. Jesus died and rose again to give us a “living hope,” as Peter puts it in our lesson for today. That hope is a “living hope” because Jesus lives at God’s right hand and in our hearts and lives. It’s a “living hope” because it points us to the promise of new life with Jesus in the fullness of God’s presence. And I would add that our hope is a “living” one because it gives us a reason to live our lives differently. If life definitively ends at death, there are some who would think you better grab all you can while you’re here. Not everyone believes that, but some do. But if Jesus’ resurrection from the dead points us to our new life with him after death, then we have a unique reason to do all the good we can do while we’re here. At least in part that means, as Peter says later in this chapter, we’re to “Love each other deeply with all your heart” (1 Pet 1:22, NLT).

[1] © Alan Brehm 2026. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/12/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Tuesday, May 05, 2026

Looking for What God is Doing

John 9:1-7, 13-41[1]

We turn to faith for comfort. That’s one of the main roles faith plays in our lives. It offers us comfort when the realities of life can feel like they’re too much to bear. That’s why we love Scripture passages like Psalm 23. It’s a beautiful expression of the comfort our faith offers us. But when we only look to faith for comfort, it’s too easy to focus only our ourselves, and lose sight of those around us. That’s why our faith also challenges us. Faith that’s worth its salt not only offers us comfort, it also challenges us to see the suffering of our sisters and brothers in the human family. Especially those who suffer the most in this world, the very ones we may prefer not to see. When we let our faith turn in on itself, it becomes too easy to convince ourselves that their suffering is somehow their own fault. Instead of seeing them as beloved children of God who are suffering in the same way we all can suffer, which can be a scary thought, we convince ourselves that they must have done something to bring it on themselves. The idea that they must have done something to deserve their suffering somehow assures us that it won’t happen to us. But in the process, we let our desire for comfort and safety blind us to the compassion God wants us to give to the people who suffer the most in this world.

Our Gospel lesson for today addresses this issue. It’s the story about Jesus’ encounter with a man who had been born blind. But the irony is that it turns the tables on how we might expect the story to go. In this story, the “religious” people who claimed that they could see were in fact blind. They were blind to the compassion of God, they were blind to truth that Jesus restored this man’s sight. But it was a man who was despised as an ignorant vagrant was the one who was able to see what they couldn’t or wouldn’t see. The narrator emphasizes this irony by calling the one Jesus healed “the man who had formerly been blind.” But irony is that in this story, he was the one who was able to see the truth about Jesus. On the other hand, the “religious” people were blinded because of their assumptions.

The basic assumption in this story that blinded the “religious” people is that anyone who is suffering must have done something to deserve it. That’s an assumption that we still make. In the Gospel story, it was Jesus’ own disciples who voiced this assumption, asking, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). The very fact that he had been born blind meant that someone had to have done something wrong to cause his suffering. But Jesus exploded the centuries-old myth that suffering comes from sin. I like the way Gene Peterson translates Jesus’ response in The Message: “You’re asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do” (John 9:3, MSG).

The hard truth is that we live in a world where any kind of suffering can affect anyone at any time. And we tend to use rationalizations like “they must have brought it on themselves” to assure ourselves that we won’t have to suffer the same pain! But Jesus turns all that on its head. He says that the suffering people experience in this world isn’t about blaming or shaming. Rather, it’s an opportunity for those of us who claim to follow him to demonstrate “the works of God” (John 9:4): kindness, compassion, and mercy! The suffering that people endure is an opportunity for us to “look instead for what God can do” (John 9:3, MSG), even and especially in the worst of the pain people can suffer!

Because Jesus healed “the man who had formerly been blind” on the Sabbath day, the religious people believed he had “broken” the Sabbath and therefore he must have been a “sinner” (John 9:16). They believed that following their “rules” about the Sabbath carefully and completely would act as a kind of magical protection from the suffering in the world. Because Jesus didn’t follow their rules about how to observe the Sabbath, he called into question their assumptions about God and the world. To keep their assurances intact they concluded that he must have been a sinner! Only if Jesus was a sinner could they keep their assumptions intact, assumptions that gave them false and shallow assurances that they would never have to deal with that kind of suffering. We still do that: we tell ourselves that if we follow all the rules, we’ll be spared from the worst hardships of life. And we reinforce that line of thinking by assuming those who suffer the worst must have “broken the rules,” and therefore they must be “sinners.” I would think that most of us have had enough experience with life to know that’s not the way life works. We can follow all the rules and still be hit with some of the worst kinds of suffering.

Again, in the Gospel story it was “the man who had formerly been blind” who exposed all these false assumptions. The religious leaders kept pressing him, trying to find a way to avoid the obvious conclusion that Jesus restored his sight. Finally, in exasperation they said, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner” (John 9:24). And an unlearned, marginalized, ragged, and dirty man, who just that morning had been living on the street, showed a depth of insight beyond all that they possessed. He said simply, “I do not know whether he is a sinner” (Jn 9:25). There’s probably a lot of wisdom in that when it comes to using the word “sinner” about someone else. But he said, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (Jn 9:25).

This man who had been blind was able to see the truth about Jesus. Those who claimed to see and know God’s truth were blinded by their false assumptions. That’s what the story is about. We see it in the end when Jesus makes an ironic and somewhat confusing statement about enabling those who are blind to see and making those who can see blind. The Message translation puts it this way, “I came into the world … , so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind” (John 9:39, MSG). I don’t think Jesus ever meant to keep anyone from seeing the truth about God, the truth about themselves, or the truth about life. I think what he was trying to do was to expose those who “make a great pretense of seeing” as people who can actually be blind. The story is about bringing to light something that happens all too often: those of us who think we see the truth about God and therefore view ourselves as “holier” than others are the ones who can at times be the most blind to God’s grace and mercy and compassion!

The hard truth about life is that we never know what we may have to go through. There are times when suffering just happens, not because of what we have done, but in spite of all we may have done. It’s natural in those times for us to look to our faith for comfort. But when we take that to an extreme and try to use our faith as an assurance that it won’t happen to us, we’ve missed something. Jesus made it clear that we’ve missed something when we use our “faith” to brand those who are suffering as “sinners” as a way of reassuring ourselves that we won’t have to suffer like them. What that really boils down to is an elaborate means of making ourselves feeling better at the expense of others. But Jesus framed the suffering people experience in this world entirely differently. He framed it as an opportunity for us to “look instead for what God can do” (John 9:3, MSG).

The Bible says that “nothing will be impossible for God.” We oftentimes think that some people may be beyond hope. And we tend to point the finger at them and assume that they must have done something to deserve it. It’s their fault somehow. But we really don’t know what life experiences have brought people to where they are. We really don’t know the burdens that people are carrying. I think that’s why Jesus taught his disciples and us to look at the suffering people experience not as a reason to point the finger and blame but as an opportunity to “look instead for what God can do.” Instead of shaming people, he challenged us to look for the good that God can do even and especially in the worst of human pain. After all, God raise Jesus from the dead after his suffering on the cross. If that’s true, what experience in this life is there that God can’t bring good from? And when look for what God can do when someone is suffering, not only does it change our whole perspective, but it also helps us to see that we have the opportunity to share God’s mercy and compassion with them. Maybe that’s what God “wants” to do. Maybe God wants to open our hearts to show kindness, compassion, and care, especially toward those whose suffering challenges us. I think Jesus challenges us to find the faith to look at the sufferings of this life and trust God enough to look for what God can do in any situation, come what may, and then try to join him in doing that.

[1] © Alan Brehm 2026. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/15/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Wednesday, December 03, 2025

Embodying the Light in Community

Isaiah 2:1-5[1]

Most of you know that I am primarily a Bible teacher and preacher. I’m not much of a storyteller. I’m also not much for telling jokes in the pulpit. There are others who have those gifts. Mine is that I’ve spent a lifetime studying the Bible. And I try to share as clearly as I can the insights I’ve gained over the years. I know that when I’m in my “Bible preacher” mode I can come across as intimidating. When I was a seminary professor, I was always amazed when students told me that some of their peers were intimidated by me. I know what I know, and I’m not shy about speaking out about it. But I also care more deeply about people than about being “right” about anything. I think that’s why I am always surprised to learn that some people may find my preaching intimidating.

I think one of the most important things I would want to share about the insights I’ve gained over the years is that much of it did not originate with me. Yes, I have read through the New Testament in the original Greek text. And that gave me access to some insights that I gained on my own. But so much of what I “know” I learned from those who have served the body of Christ before me. Bible scholars, theologians, professors, pastors, and friends have shared their insights with me, and they’ve left deep impressions. Over the years, their contributions have become so much a part of who I am that I can no longer sort out what came from where. Not precisely. But there are some people who have influenced me deeply. If you haven’t heard me say it before, while I’ve studied and studied with world-class scholars, it was my younger brother, Douglas, with his various disabilities, who shaped me perhaps most deeply.

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite authors who shaped me is Henri Nouwen. He was a professor at some of the most prestigious theological schools in this country. He pioneered in the study and teaching of pastoral care. And after spending a year’s sabbatical at a community in France where mentally disabled people and their caregivers lived together, he walked away from the academic world to serve as the chaplain at a similar community in Toronto. I’ve learned a great deal over the years from reading Nouwen’s books. I’m still learning some of the lessons his insights have to teach me. I think I might be learning some of those lessons all my life, truth be told.

I bring him up because I’m going to do something different this year for Advent. I’m going to ask Henri Nouwen to be our guide through Advent. Each week I’m going to share my reflections on the four themes of Advent—hope, peace, joy, and love—based on a quote from Nouwen. And not surprising to me, one of the themes that these quotes will continually emphasize is community. Nouwen was keenly aware that we practice our faith, we continually learn what it means to follow Jesus, we keep discovering new ways for our faith to make us more like Christ in our daily lives precisely as we live together in community with one another.

This week, the focus of our Advent expectation is hope. Hope can be the essential cord that holds everything together. Yet it’s like silk, which can at times be strong, and at times can be fragile. I don’t know about you, but lately my hope has been feeling somewhat weak, as if the very fabric has come unraveled to some extent. That’s a scary feeling, for anybody. As I mentioned in my sermon a couple of weeks ago, St. Paul teaches us that when we endure hardship, it reinforces hope. But as I shared, in my experience many times it is our hope that helps us to endure. When our hope seems to give way, however, we may be left feeling like we’re falling into an abyss of fear.

The quote I want to share with you from Henri Nouwen is this: “Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us. In this way we can live with courage, trusting that there is a spiritual power in us when we are together that allows us to live in this world without surrendering to the powerful forces constantly seducing us toward despair. That is how we dare to say that God is a God of love even when we see hatred all around us. That is why we can claim that God is a God of life even when we see death and destruction and agony all around us. We say it together. We affirm it in each other. Waiting together, nurturing what has already begun, expecting its fulfillment—that is the meaning of marriage, friendship, community, and the Christian life.”[2]

Nouwen reminds us that we keep “the flame of hope alive” in community in all its forms, and especially in this community. We keep the flame of hope alive in our hearts and in each others’ hearts as we make the journey together in community with one another, committed to walking this path together as the body of Christ, committed to helping each other complete the journey, especially when we may grow weak or stumble and fall. It is only as we encourage each other along the way that we can keep trusting the promises of our faith. Think about the ones we heard from the Scripture lesson from Isaiah for today. When in the history of this world has any nation beaten “their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isa 2:4, NIV)? When in the story of the human family has any nation given up warfare and stopped treating those who are “other” or “different” as enemies? It hasn’t happened! Instead, as Nouwen says, what we see are “death and destruction,” and we see that “all around us.” It can at times take the very life out of our faith and our hope. It can leave us despairing of the world that we are leaving to our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren!

But that is precisely why our life together in this community of faith is so very important. Because, as Nouwen wisely observes, we keep our faith and our hope alive by “saying it together.” We keep our faith and our hope alive by “affirming it in each other.” We do that by worshipping together right here. That’s why worshipping together is so important. That’s where we keep our faith and our hope alive together. We do that in this community. Yes, in this community where some of us hold long-standing hurts over offenses we’ve inflicted on each other. In this community where some of us have let others down. In this community where we may be afraid to speak our deepest truth out loud, for fear of having others gossip about us. We keep “the flame of hope alive” as we nurture it and affirm it together in a real, live, flawed community of real, live, flawed people.

I think what Nouwen might be calling our attention to is that Christian hope, real hope that has the strength to face the real world with everything in it that we want look away from, takes root and grows in our hearts as we share it together with real people in a real community. Even and especially when that community might include people we may not particularly like. If our hope is to remain alive in the real world, it has to be nurtured in a real, live community, flaws and all. In fact, as Nouwen reminds us, that is the very meaning of Christian community: it’s the place where we affirm our faith and our hope together. We nurture hope in one another precisely as we affirm it in one another, even and especially in those we may not care to have in our community! And as we do so more and more, we embody in ourselves and in this community the light of life that Jesus has given to us. That’s what keeps “the flame of hope,” real hope, hope that can stand up to the challenges of real life, alive in each other.

[2] Henri Nouwen, Finding My Way Home, 105-107; cited in Henri Nouwen, You Are the Beloved: 365 Daily Readings and Meditations for Spiritual Living, 361.

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Satisfied

Psalm 63:1-8[1]

We live in a culture defined by dissatisfaction. In fact, we live in a world defined by dissatisfaction. I’m not talking about our “little world” around here. I’m talking about the great big world of all 8 billion people! In 2022, Gallup concluded a 15-year survey of people from all over the world measuring their sense of “happiness.”[2] They did over 5 million interviews, and they determined that “happiness” or “wellbeing” was based on five metrics: fulfilling work, little financial stress, great communities, good physical health, and loved ones to turn to in crisis. And their survey concluded that, in 2022 people felt “more anger, sadness, pain, worry and stress than ever before.” I don’t think that’s changed for the better. One of the reasons they offer for this situation is that most world leaders have been preoccupied with measuring income inequality. Of course, that’s important. But what the survey suggests is that the world’s leaders need to be paying much more attention to “wellbeing inequality,” or this global rise in dissatisfaction. I would say it’s all interconnected.

We don’t have to look around the world to see this for ourselves. It plays out in our lives and in our families’ lives every day. As a people we’re driven to do more, to have more, and to be more. We’re obsessed with perfection. All we have to do to verify that is open any of our social media accounts. We tend to want to put on the façade of “perfection” in the version of ourselves we present on Facebook or Instagram. But what all the pictures are hiding is the fundamental sense of inadequacy we feel. Not everyone posts out of insecurity, but the constant stream of “perfection” we scroll through can convince us we’re not “enough.” When that happens, it’s likely that we’re stuck in the rut of measuring our worth solely by external means. Living in the “right” neighborhood. Having all the “right” friends. Driving the “right” car. But all too often, what all this “striving” leads to is growing depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. And it leaves us incapable of any real contentment with what we have, where we are in life, or who we have become. But the wisdom of the ages has taught us time and again that it is precisely through that kind of contentment that we find lasting happiness.

Our Psalm lesson addresses this issue of where happiness is to be found. In fact, it’s one of the fundamental themes in the Psalms. We find it in the psalm-singers’ use of the language of “blessing.” It’s the first word of the first Psalm, and the idea of a life that is “blessed” resonates throughout the Psalms, echoing some 26 times. And the gist of what the psalm-singers have to say about “blessing” or happiness is that it “derives from living in complete dependence upon God.”[3] As we discussed in a different light last week, the Psalms clearly emphasize that this “blessing” or happiness is something we experience in the present. It happens right here and right now, even and especially in the midst of hard times. The reason for the ability to find “blessing” or happiness in the present is because of the confidence we have that it is the LORD who reigns over all things with “unfailing love,” and with justice that promotes peace and freedom for all peoples everywhere.

We find this general perspective reflected in our Psalm for today, even though it doesn’t begin in a way that sounds “blessed” or happy. Rather, the psalm-singer is so weary with longing for God’s help that he can liken his present experience to living in a “parched and weary land where there is no water” (Ps 63:1, NLT)! Even though he had worn himself out with looking for God’s deliverance, the psalm-singer had a resource in the past experiences of deliverance not only in the life of the people of Israel, but also in his own life. As he looks back over that history, he says, “I have seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upon your power and glory” (Ps 63:2). And the display of “power and glory” that he recalls, the reminder that despite it all God does indeed “reign,” is defined by remembering that God has always been true to his promise to show “unfailing love” (Ps 63:3).

The way in which the Hebrew Bible presents this kind of “blessedness,” this promise of happiness, is with the language of being “satisfied” as if one had just finished a fabulous feast (Ps 63:4). In fact, the idea that God’s “blessing,” or even God’s “deliverance” is to be found precisely in being satisfied with more than enough food echoes throughout the Psalms and the Hebrew Bible itself.[4] We heard it in our lesson from the book of the Prophet Isaiah as well: “Come, all you who are thirsty. Come and drink the water I offer to you. You who do not have any money, come. Buy and eat the grain I give you. Come and buy wine and milk. You will not have to pay anything for it. Why spend money on what is not food? Why work for what does not satisfy you? Listen carefully to me. Then you will eat what is good. You will enjoy the richest food there is” (Isa 55:1-2 NIRV). Joyful feasting is a recurring image in the Bible for the way God satisfies us with his love.

The key to finding this kind of satisfaction in life, come what may, is to learn to trust God’s unfailing love. As I mentioned earlier, the way the psalm-singer saw God’s “power and glory” was through God’s faithful exercise of unfailing love. So much so that he can say, “Your unfailing love is better than life itself” (Ps 63:3, NLT). I think this is the point of the psalm: we find satisfaction in life by trusting God to be faithful to show us his “unfailing love” right here and right now, through it all. To see that, however, we have to do what the psalm-singer did. We have to look back over the course of our lives and recall all the ways that God has done that in the past.

It may take some doing to adjust our focus to see that, especially when we’re going through hard times. In those times our experience may be like that of the psalm-singer. We may search for God and feel only silence. And we may continue the search so long that we feel worn out. But like the psalm-singer, when we continue to seek out the God we have known as our deliverer before, we find God’s unfailing love at work even in the midst of the pain. This kind of faith isn’t a “quick fix.” The psalm-singers knew what it was to suffer and to wonder where God was. But they kept looking back over the course of their lives. And as they did so they saw again all the ways God had been faithful to keep his promise of unfailing love.[5] That invitation is open to us as well. When we continue that search in our lives, in my experience we usually find ourselves at some point able to say with the psalm-singer, “You satisfy me more than the richest feast” (Psalm 63:5, NLT). People can find joy in many ways, as it should be, but this psalm invites us to a deeper joy that’s rooted in the God whose love for us is better than life itself. We can be satisfied when we remember that God has been our help in ages past, and that same God will be our hope for years to come.[6]

We live in a world defined by dissatisfaction. In our culture, I wonder whether the narrative that fuels that dissatisfaction isn’t the myth of the “American Dream.” We should be able to do better and have more than our parents, and our children should be able to do better and have more than us. But the realities of our economy and our society make it clear that narrative may actually drive us to be deeply dissatisfied with our lives as they are. What if we turned the narrative around and learned to be truly content with what we have? Can you imagine a world in which we were more concerned about communities thriving together than we were with outdoing our neighbors? Can you imagine a world in which we’re more interested in lifting up all those who are broken, or hurting, or displaced, and offering them what they need rather than being so obsessed with getting everything we want. I think that would be a world filled with people who are happier, more content, and truly blessed. I think that would be a world full of people who know what it means to be satisfied. That vision of the world, one where we seek to lift one another up rather than beating others down, might sound like fantasy. But through God’s unfailing love, the dream becomes reality right here and right now.

[2] Jon Clifton, “The Global Rise of Unhappiness,” Sept 15, 2022, accessed at https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/401216/global-rise-unhappiness.aspx on 20 Mar 2025.

[3] J. Clinton McCann, Jr. “The Book of Psalms,” New Interpreters Bible IV:666.

[4] In the Psalms: Ps 22:27; 37:19; 81:17; 103:5; 104:28; 107:9; 132:15; 145:16 (“every living thing”!); 147:14.

[5] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed., 183: “the Christian doctrine of providence is not based on what we can figure out for ourselves from our own experience or observation of the world, balancing evidence for and against faith in God. It is a Christian doctrine based on what scripture tells us about the presence and work of God in the story of ancient Israel and above all in Jesus Christ” (emphasis original).

[6] McCann, “Psalms,” NIB IV:667: “To be happy is to entrust one’s whole self, existence, and future to God.” Cf. also Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 184: “Remembering the past gives hope for the future. Again and again the psalmist expresses his confidence that the God who has been present to help, protect, liberate, and save will do it again. The memory of the powerful love and justice of God in the past brings hope for the powerful love and justice of God in the future” (emphasis original).

Tuesday, March 04, 2025

Not In Vain

Not in Vain

1 Corinthians 15:25-28, 35-58[1]

I mentioned last week that hope is something we all need to thrive in this life. But hope can be tricky, because it can be hard to know what to place your hope in. Especially in times when it feels like everything you thought you could count on in life has dropped out from under you. Those of us who practice faith in Jesus Christ have a hope for something more, beyond this life. But that hope has resulted all too often in an attitude that what happens now doesn’t really matter. That was why Karl Marx criticized religion as a kind of drug that made people passive in the face of the wrongs that were being perpetrated against them. I think that’s why we need the full version of the Christian hope: not just that we’ll go to heaven when we die, but also that God is working to restore all our lives and everything he created in the same way that Jesus was raised to new life. The miracle of the resurrection on that first Easter Sunday points us to the promise that God is working to change this world, and everyone and everything in it.

Even with that hope, there are still some pitfalls to avoid.[2] For some of us, it becomes all too easy to take an overly optimistic view. Because we have the hope of being with Jesus at our death, we can treat death like it’s no “big deal.” It’s just “passing on” to another stage of our journey. That’s not the biblical view. As Paul puts it in our lesson for today, death is an “enemy” (1 Cor 15:26). Death has a “sting” that is real and harmful (1 Cor 15:55). Paul’s not just talking about physical death, although as many of us have experienced, that can be truly harmful to those of us who have lost loved ones. Paul is also talking about the destructive power that “death” exerts in our lives and in our world to this day through the powers and persons who align themselves with evil.[3] Our hope is not that somehow death is no “big deal.” Our hope is that in Jesus’ very real death on the cross, and especially by raising Jesus to new life, God has overcome the power of death.

The other pitfall goes to the opposite extreme. For some of us, it becomes all too easy to take an overly pessimistic view. Because of the harm that death continues to inflict in our lives and in our world, we can decide that God must not be able to do anything about it.[4] But that’s also not a biblical view! Not by a long stretch! The God to whom the Apostle Paul points us is the God who not only worked in the lives of the people of Israel and in the lives of believers in the early church all those centuries ago. This God is the God who continues to work in and through us to bring life out of all the harm that death can inflict on us. We have this faith, this confidence, this hope, because Jesus died a very real death on the cross. But we also have this faith, this confidence, this hope, because God raised Jesus to a new life that is just as real. That means death will not have the last word for anyone.

The hope of the Gospel is the promise of Jesus’ resurrection. It’s the promise that the life God revealed in Jesus’ resurrection is a new kind of life that is stronger than the worst that death and all its powers and those who align themselves with them can throw at us. Paul points to this hope when he insists that “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54), the victory Jesus won when God raised him from death. Paul can go so far as to “taunt” death like one might do to a defeated and humiliated bully: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55, NLT). The reason he can act so confidently in the face of the harm that death still can and does inflict on us is because he knows that God has given us “victory” over all of it “through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:57). The life that God has injected into this world through Jesus’ resurrection has already defeated death and all the powers and persons aligned with it. And the promise of our faith is that this new life will finally and fully define all creation. For everyone and everything!

Our faith and our hope exist in a balance. We don’t naively water down the power of death or the very real harm those who align themselves with evil can do in our world. Rather, with Paul we take all of that seriously as an “enemy.” But on the other hand, we don’t just give up in the face of the sometimes overwhelming discouragement we feel over the influence of those powers and persons. That’s because we’ve seen the light of new life that dawned on that first Easter morning, and with Paul and the hosts of believers throughout the ages we put our faith and our hope in the power of that new life.[5] We hold our faith and our hope in the power of God to overcome evil in this world in a balance. But the scale is tipped in favor of hope, because Jesus’ resurrection points us to the day when the final victory will come.

We don’t place our hope in some idealistic vision that attributes to humanity a goodness that can prevail against all evil. There is much goodness to be found in the human family, to be sure. But it’s not equal to the task of overcoming the powers of evil and those who align themselves with it. Neither do we place our hope in sheer determination and willpower to resist in the face of all the wrongs that are so blatantly perpetrated in our day, every day. Human willpower isn’t sufficient to the task either. We place our hope in the confidence that, as the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth said, “God is not God in vain.”[6] Or as Paul puts it in our lesson for today, ultimately God will be “utterly supreme over everything everywhere” (1 Cor 15:28, NLT).[7] And so we place our hope in God, and in the victory he has won in Jesus Christ. And that hope leads us to the confidence that God will fulfill all that he has promised to do. One day, we will share in the new life that Jesus now enjoys.

So how then shall we live in these times of turmoil? Do we retreat behind the walls of our homes and churches and sit back, waiting for God to work a miracle? Or do we “plunge into the present struggle” as our affirmation of faith last week called us to do, putting the courage and energy our faith and hope give us to good use here and now?[8] I think St. Paul would have us do the latter. After all that he had to say about the reality of Jesus’ resurrection and the hope it gives us, Paul concluded this chapter by saying, “So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless” (1 Cor 15:58, NLT). That last phrase is often translated more literally “in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” We may or may not see tangible results from our work. But I believe that every act of integrity, every act of kindness, every act motivated by faith and hope and love can and does make a difference.[9] Not just because of our sincerity, or our determination, but because the new life of our resurrected lord Jesus means that what we do here and now is “not in vain”!

[1] © Alan Brehm 2025. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/23/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church.

[2] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed, 378.

[3] Paul speaks of this especially in Romans 5, where he contrasts the effects of death’s “reign” with the effects of God’s grace that lead to the “victory” that we have through Jesus Christ (cf. esp. Rom 5:17). See especially The Message translation: “If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, absolute life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?” Cf. also Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on the Greek text, p.1302.

[4] This was Harold Kushner’s view in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. He and his wife had experienced the loss of a child, so while I may disagree with his view, I would not want to criticize him personally.

[5] Cf. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 283. See also ibid., 285, where he says that Christians “know of a power at work here and now greater than the power of evil, a power that keeps breaking into our godless and godforsaken world to heal old wounds, make new beginnings, and (if only now and then, here and there) give us a glimpse of the final victory of God’s compassion and justice that are on the way.” See further, ibid., 375: “The God in whom we hope is a God who not only will be but is the powerful and compassionate Creator and Ruler of the world. The crucified and risen Christ who will come to overthrow all the powers of darkness and evil that spoil God’s good creation and human life in it has already triumphed over them and even now is at work to complete the work he has begun.”

[6] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3.4.1:196. While he concedes that work of reconciliation that Jesus has accomplished through the cross and resurrection (elsewhere he calls it “the accomplished alteration of the whole world situation”; ibid., p. 191) still faces opposition in this world, he insists that we must see this “battle” as resulting in the victory of God.

[7] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 163, where he points to the final victory of Jesus’ resurrection as serving “the sole and all-embracing lordship of God.”

[8] Cf. “A Declaration of Faith,” 10.5 (Presbyterian Church in the United States, 117th General Assembly 1977, reissued by Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.], 1991).

[9] Cf. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 280-81: “we can and must confidently throw ourselves into the fight against evil in our own lives and in the world around us, knowing that we do not fight alone but with the one who is stronger than all the forces of evil.”

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Our Hope in Christ

1 Corinthians 15:12-26[1]

Hope is a crucial aspect of human life. We cannot thrive without a sense of hope. While I think many would agree that hope is a mindset we can learn, it doesn’t just come automatically. And when we lack a healthy sense of hope about our lives we can find it hard to believe that they have meaning and purpose. That puts us at risk for sliding into depression, anxiety, or even suicidal thoughts. A lack of hope can affect us in more “physical” ways, like diminishing our ability to cope with the stress we all face as a part of life. Hope gives us confidence to persevere in hard times, because we believe that there is indeed meaning and purpose to our lives, each and every one of our lives. That kind of resilience enables us to move forward with our goals in life and with our commitments to family and work and service.

Hope keeps us going when everything in life seems to conspire against us. But hope can be risky as well. We can put our hope in all the wrong things. We may be hoping for a nicer car, a bigger home, a better job, a more fulfilling relationship. Hoping for those things isn’t in and of itself wrong. There is a forward-looking aspect to all hope. But when we stake too much of our well-being on hoping for the wrong things, if those hopes come crashing down, so do we. That’s when false hope can hurt us deeply. It can shake our faith in others, in the meaning of life, even in the goodness of God.

Our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians for today addresses hope from the perspective of Christian faith. Specifically, Paul was addressing the hope of the resurrection. I dare say that’s not something that’s high on our list of hopes these days. As Christians, we hope to “go to heaven” when we die, to be with Jesus and to be reunited with our loved ones. But that’s not the focus of hope in the New Testament. The focus of Christian hope is that we will share Jesus’ resurrection, in bodily form, and that in that new body we will enjoy new life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation.[2] In fact, for Paul the hope of sharing in Jesus’ resurrection is so foundational for Christian faith that he could say, “if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless” and “we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world” (1 Cor 15:16-17, 19, NLT).

It may be hard for us to understand how Christians who lived only 30 years after the first Easter Sunday could somehow doubt the resurrection of Jesus. Part of the problem in Corinth may have been that in the Greek world, the idea of a future “resurrection” in which the dead live again in physical form was thought to be crude and disgusting. In the Greek world, people looked forward to being set free from the “prison house” of the body. They believed that death was a transition from physical life in a body to living among the stars in the heavens as an immortal soul. “Resurrection” just didn’t compute to them. They would have been much more comfortable with our notions of “going to heaven” when you die. In fact, it was the influence of this line of thinking about three hundred years after Paul’s day that shifted Christian hope from sharing Jesus’ life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation to eternal life in heaven.

Some of the believers at Corinth went to the opposite extreme. They heard some of the wonderful promises of new life in the Gospel message Paul and others had preached. And because they heard in that message that they already had eternal life fully and completely because of what Jesus did, they believed that they had all they were ever going to receive of salvation. They bypassed the promise of God’s future as resurrected people living on a recreated earth in the way God had intended in the first place—without sadness or pain, suffering or injustice, violence or even death. They believed that all they were ever going to get from their faith was what they had right then and right there.

But St. Paul wouldn’t accept either of these options. For him, the inevitable consequence of Jesus’ resurrection on that first Easter Sunday morning was that we would all share in the new life Jesus now enjoys. He says it this way: “Christ has been raised from the dead” as “the first of a great harvest of all who have died” (1 Cor 15:20, NLT). For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection meant more than God had intervened to vindicate Jesus and his message. For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection meant the beginning of the transformation of all things and all people! It meant the beginning of God’s whole new creation that would eventually “make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).[3] It’s hard to wrap your head around that big of an idea. But for Paul tampering with that hope meant tampering with the Gospel message. And that was something he never allowed!

The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that he died on the cross so that we could know without a shadow of a doubt that God loves us—he always has and always will. The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that his death broke the power of everything that could separate us from God or harm us in any way. The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that his resurrection overcame even death itself and brought new life to everyone. Paul said it this way, “In Adam all of us die. In the same way, in Christ all of us will be made alive again. (1 Cor 15:22, NCV). And that means that what God has done through Jesus is nothing less than to set in motion the process of restoring everything in all creation to the way that he intended in the first place. Just as Jesus enjoys that resurrected life now, so we too can look forward to enjoying the same life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation.

We need all kinds of hopes to keep us going. Hope in the form of looking forward to doing something fun. Hope in the form of knowing that there are friends and family who will always love us no matter what. Hope in the form of trusting that all our needs will be supplied by our God. But more than that, we need a hope that can motivate us to do as our affirmation of faith for today puts it: “to take up our cross, risking the consequences of faithful discipleship; to walk by faith, not by sight.” It takes serious hope to give us the courage and the strength to “plunge … into the present struggle.”[4] The reason for that is that we can see injustice and violence and even death at work all around us to this day.

Yes, we already have a taste of the amazing grace of God at work in our lives here and now. But I think our experience with the bitterness of death can help us truly appreciate the hope Jesus gives us by rising from the grave.[5] Those of us who have looked into the eyes of a loved who was there a few moments ago, but is gone now, those of us who know the bitterness of death, must know that we cannot accomplish God’s work in this world on our own. It’s just too big! Because what God is doing is nothing short of restoring of all things and everyone to the life that God intended for us in the first place. And that’s what he is doing even now through the power of Jesus’ death and the power of Jesus’ resurrection to new life. Our hope is that power is already working to change our lives now. But our hope is also the recognition that we have not yet tasted it fully and finally as we will when we all share in Jesus’ life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation. Sharing that life, the life that Jesus now enjoys, in God’s (re)new(ed) creation: that is our hope in Christ. And that hope gives us courage and strength to press on, come what may.

[2] Cf. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on the Greek text, 1229: “the resurrection of Jesus was not to restore life in the conditions of continuing earthly existence (and eventual death) but to initiate a transformed mode of existence as the firstfruits (v. 20) of the eschatological new creation.”

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, 55, where he says that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ “the eschatological turn of the world begins, from transience to non-transience, from the night of the world to the morning of God’s new day and to the new creation of all things” (emphasis original).

[4] Cf. “A Declaration of Faith,” 9.5, 10.1, 5 (Presbyterian Church in the United States, 117th General Assembly 1977, reissued by Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.], 1991).

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 171-72, 210-11. He holds in tension the “deadliness of death” which still persists in our experience of life with the “promise and hope of a still outstanding, real eschaton,” that is, a future that is defined not by death but by life.

Tuesday, December 03, 2024

The Hopes and Fears of All the Years

The Hopes of All the Years

Luke 21:25-33[1]

As we begin the celebration of the Advent season, I think it may be helpful for us to remind ourselves what it’s about. In the original church tradition, Advent was meant to be a time of reflection in preparation for the celebration of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” from December 25 to January 6. The idea was that we prepare to celebrate the “coming of the Lord” by waiting quietly and patiently for Christmas to come. Lighting the candles on the advent wreath, and even using advent calendars, have been traditional ways to practice this “waiting.” Of course, these days the Advent season is filled with all kinds of celebrations of Christmas, which in our minds is over on December 26. Some people who are sticklers for liturgical correctness complain about this every year. I used to do some of that complaining myself. I’d like to think I’ve mellowed from being such a liturgical stickler!

If we think about the focus of the four Sundays in Advent: hope, peace, love, and joy, then maybe the way we “celebrate” Advent isn’t all that far off from the original intent. As we approach the end of the year, many of us may focus on the hopes we may have for the coming year. While the busy-ness of the season may make it not so peaceful to some of us, it is a time when we think about peace in our world: peace between countries, peace between different factions in our country, peace with those who may have anything against us, peace between family members. Advent is a time when we sing songs that tend to remind us of the love that we have in our lives, and the love that God has given us. It’s a time when we may go out of our way to be loving toward our friends and family. And as we seek to practice the kindness and giving associated with the season, it all reminds us of the joy we have in our lives.

I realize that much of that may not hold true for some of us. This may be a time for many of us when our hopes have dimmed and faded. We may struggle to hold onto our hope in the face of all that life continues to throw our way. Some of us may have had a difficult year, and we may simply feel weary from all the losses and disappointments we’ve had to bear. Or maybe this year hasn’t been that kind of year for some of us, but you’ve had years like that in the past. All of it can make “hope” seem like a flimsy thing to use to get through difficult times. Our past experiences may make the songs of hope we sing in this season sound hollow to some of us. So, on this first Sunday of Advent, when we celebrate the hope that the birth of Jesus represents for us, we may be wondering what good hope can do for us.

Especially in the uncertain times we live in, most of us would probably choose safety and stability over hope. As much as we may be looking forward to new things in our lives, we like to know that tomorrow will be, in all essentials, basically the same as today. We rely on the stability of the routines that make our lives familiar. But our experience of recent years may have left us wondering whether anything in our lives is really stable or secure. That’s a question that’s more than unsettling; if we’re honest, we have to admit it’s downright scary! Again, it can leave us wondering what good “hope” can do for us.

In our Gospel lesson for today Jesus addressed this question, but in a way that might seem to be coming through the back door. He was answering the questions his disciples had about the uncertainty of his times. But he did so in a way that they may have found less than reassuring. The setting of our lesson is the final week of Jesus’ ministry. What we should understand is that the political situation in Judea was unstable and even chaotic. Although the Romans maintained control through their powerful armies, there was a constant undercurrent of resentment and even rebellion among the Jewish people. All of this would boil over into an all-out war within a few decades, and the result would be Jerusalem destroyed and with it, the Jewish nation.

I think Jesus’ disciples must have been aware of what was going on. Tjhey must have sensed the tension in the air. As they were walking through the Temple, the most magnificent structure in Jerusalem in that day, I would imagine they saw the strength of the structure as a reassurance of God’s presence among them. To them it may have been a kind of promise that whatever the future may hold, God would be with them. But Jesus told them that not one of the massive stones that made up the Temple complex would be left on one another. They asked him to tell them the “signs” as a way of making the stress of an uncertain future more “manageable.” But Jesus didn’t give them any signs to reassure them.

Instead, he told them that the world in which they lived would continue to be as uncertain and as unpredictable as ever. If they wanted reassurance, they would have to look beyond the structures they had come to rely on. They would have to reclaim their hope in God. It may seem like a strange response on Jesus’ part. But I think Jesus was pointing them to something beyond what they felt they could “manage.” He pointed them beyond the safety and stability they had come to rely on in their daily lives. He reminded them that none of those things are ultimately reliable. Rather, he reminded them that God, the promises God had made, and the hope all that creates for us, are the only things we can truly rely on in this life. As Jesus told them, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Lk 21:33).

That brings us back to the hope of Advent. In our worship today, we sang the verse from the hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem” that said “the hopes and fears of all the years” were “met” in that village on the night of Jesus’ birth. I think we can easily imagine the “hopes of all the years” fulfilled in Jesus’ birth, but what about the “fears”? I’m no specialist in the history of hymns, but I would think that the idea is that the birth of Jesus relieves the “fears of all the years.” The hope that Jesus brought into this world is one that helps us overcome all our fears, especially in uncertain times. It’s the hope that God’s love for us never fails, and that’s something we can rely on when everything else around us does fail. It’s the hope that God’s promises stand forever, and that God will not stop working in this world until every promise has been fulfilled. Most of us pin our hopes on some part of our lives here and now that we want to continue just as it is. But life is always changing. It is the hope we have in God through Jesus our Savior that we can rely on through all the years. That hope remains; that hope will not pass away; that hope will see us through this year, and all the years of our lives!

Tuesday, June 11, 2024

Try and Try Again

2 Corinthians 4:8-18[1]

You may or may not know that I enjoy solving puzzles. All kinds of puzzles, from sudoku, to crosswords, to card games, to actual jigsaw puzzles, to Lego sets. Yes, I am an “Adult fan of Lego” (Afol). I enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to put it all together. I enjoy keeping my mind and my hands busy, so to speak. Solving a puzzle is something that I can do and lose track of time. I enjoy other activities as well, as you know. I can lose myself in a really good work of fiction. I can lose myself playing guitar, especially when I’m trying to learn something that’s challenging. But puzzles have been a “go to” activity for me for a long time.

One of the reasons why I enjoy solving puzzles so much is because you have to look at the “big picture” in order to solve a puzzle. That’s especially true with sudoku. Every column, every row, every segment can only have one sequence of the numbers one through nine. I also enjoy the fact that solving puzzles requires “thinking outside the box.” Or perhaps I should say looking at things from a different perspective. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the right puzzle piece in the right place, but it was turned around the wrong way. I enjoy the challenge of a puzzle because it makes me look at both the “big picture” and the “small details,” and it makes me “turn things around” in my head until I find the solution.

I would say that the question of how a church can thrive in this current setting is something like that. We have to look at the “big picture” in order to solve the puzzle. We need to see how all the pieces fit together. We also have to look at the “small details.” Some aspects of our life together as a congregation that we may have taken for granted, perhaps for years, may need more careful attention. The way things are in our current context also means that we have to “think outside the box.” Some of the things we have always done continue to work for us. Some of them may not, and we may need to be willing to look at new solutions to the new problems we’re facing. Maybe the most important element to solving the question of how a church can thrive in this current context is the ability to look at things from a different perspective. We get used to seeing things on a regular basis (or not seeing them). All of this is going to require that we adopt the basic attitude that “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”!

I think that’s what St. Paul’s testimony about his life was about. From our perspective, it’s all too easy to think of “Saint” Paul as someone who walked around with a halo and lived “above” this world and all its troubles. But Paul makes it clear in his letters that was not the case! Later in this same letter he tells us that he endured “troubles and hardships and calamities of every kind.” He continues, “We have been beaten, been put in prison, faced angry mobs, worked to exhaustion, endured sleepless nights, and gone without food” (2 Cor 6:4-5 NLT). He summarized his experience by saying, “I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not.” (2 Cor. 11:26, NLT).

In our lesson for today he describes his experience of serving Christ as an Apostle in a particularly memorable way: “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed” (2 Cor 4:8-9, NLT). I’ve always found this passage to be both troubling and comforting. It’s troubling because in essence Paul says that when we follow Christ, we are bound to have this kind of experience! In another passage, he says that we “must expect such things” if we follow Christ (1 Thess 3:3, Phillips)!

Given all of that, you might think that anyone in their right mind in Paul’s shoes would seek “greener pastures”! But I think this is where he was able to view his situation from the “big picture” and see all those hardships from a different perspective. In doing so, he was able to recognize that God was using the hardships he endured for good in the lives of the believers he was serving. He viewed his sufferings as part of Christ’s sufferings, and so he could say, “we live in the face of death, but this has resulted in eternal life for you” (2 Cor 4:12, NLT). I think his ability to adopt this perspective reminds us that we may not truly know how God is using the hard things we may have to endure for the benefit of others. But I think Jesus’ death on the cross makes one thing clear: that’s how God does his most powerful work in this world!

That brings me back to the comforting part of the passage I quoted earlier: “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed” (2 Cor 4:8-9, NLT). Paul could face everything he had to endure with the assurance that God never abandoned him. And with God’s help, he was able to bear everything that came his way. He knew the weight of suffering, but it did not crush him. He knew the confusion of not understanding why some things happened to him, but he never gave up hope. Instead, he was confident that through everything he had to endure, God’s grace was reaching “more and more people” (2 Cor 4:15, NLT). And so he could say “we never give up” (2 Cor 4:16, NLT)!

For many of us, the condition of the church as a whole these days is perhaps the worst we’ve ever seen it in our lives. There are people who are paid to come up with reasons for it, and their insights are helpful. But I think we have to adopt the mindset of solving a puzzle in order to address this challenging and confusing time. We can look at the “big picture,” and think about what God may be doing in and through us in the midst of these struggles. We may not know what that is, but we can be assured that God is doing something in and through us in this difficult time. We can turn the pieces of the puzzle around and look at things differently to try to figure out the key question: how can we draw people who are content with their lives as they are into our community? In all of this, we can trust that God never has and never will abandon us. And this hope can give us the energy to try and try again.

Tuesday, May 07, 2024

Complete Victory

1 John 5:1-6[1]

When I was growing up, the only games we had to play were the ones where there were winners and losers. The whole reason why you played the game was to win! Of course, what happens when you approach a game from that point of view is that it’s easy to lose sight of the simple pleasure of playing the game. In more recent times, we’ve seen the rise of “cooperative” games. In those games, the “opponent” is a situation or adversary that is literally “in the cards.” All the players cooperate, because they only win together or lose together. Either they win or the game wins. Some might ask “what’s the point?” The answer is the fun you have working together to “beat” the game!

When it comes to Christians talking about the “victory” they experience through their faith in Jesus Christ, I’m afraid it can sound like “winners” and “losers.” When we claim to be the “winners,” it follows then that those who are not among “us” are the “losers.” And, in fact, there is a whole strain of Christian history and theology that very much sounds like the “good news” is that “we’re in” and “you’re out.” It’s called Christian triumphalism. You can hear it in some hymns written around the turn of the 20^th century. That’s one reason why I never choose them for worship. There’s just something about singing a hymn that sounds like singing “we’re number one” that, at least in my opinion, just doesn’t fit in the worship of Jesus Christ.

I think anyone might be excused for adopting that way of thinking based on our lesson from 1 John for today. It promises that “we win the victory over the world by means of our faith” (1 Jn 5:4, NLT). And it insists that “Only the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God” can “defeat the world” (1 Jn 5:5). Here, the “world” refers to those who reject Jesus Christ as the Son of God. In that context, it was talking about some who had been part of the Christian community, but who had broken away over disagreements about how to understand Jesus as both fully human and fully divine. It wouldn’t be the last time the church would divide over a point of theology, and inevitably both sides paint the other one as in the wrong and even as enemies to the cause of Christ. That’s what we see unfortunately in 1 John. The animosity between the two groups was so intense that he could call the “others” “antichrists”(1 Jn 2:22)! That’s pretty strong language!

We can’t fully step back into that setting and understand what it was that motivated 1 John to use such harsh language. But I have a hard time seeing it as an expression of the enduring Word of God. I would say that it reflected much more a very specific situation in that day and time. Elsewhere in the NT, that kind of animosity between groups of Christians is not only discouraged, it’s positively rebuked! Even in other NT writings attributed to John, the “world” isn’t always the “enemy.” Remember, John 3:16 tells us that God sent his son precisely because he loved the “world”! This points us in a different direction in our attitude toward those who are “other.”

As I mentioned, the problem I have with the mindset about the “victory” of Christian faith that leaves out the people who have not (yet) come to faith is that it can lead us to look down on them as “less than.” I don’t believe that God is in the business of some grand “Zero-sum game,” especially one in which there are only a “chosen few” who “win” and the vast majority of the “others” “lose.” It was God’s love for the whole world of humanity that led to Jesus’ victory over sin and death at the cross and in the resurrection. That’s the language the NT uses for Jesus’ death and resurrection, although it describes that “victory” with different words.[2] Our affirmation of faith for today says it this way: “Jesus’ resurrection won the victory over all powers that deform and destroy human life.”[3]

We experience that victory not in that we “win” and others “lose,” but in that we already share in the victory of God’s grace over all that diminishes or harms anyone in any way. Even when we make the definition of who gets to participate in Jesus’ Easter victory over sin and death as broad as possible, it still leaves some “winners” and some “losers.” But the NT understanding of Christ’s victory is that it’s over “all things,” which is shorthand for the whole of creation. That includes not only the whole world and everything and everyone in it, but the cosmos and “all the heavens”! One of the leading theologians of the ancient church claimed that even the “inventor of evil” would eventually be restored by God’s grace![4] Talk about a complete victory!

More than that, because it’s not our victory, but Jesus’ victory, we cannot truly experience it unless we do so in the humility that acknowledges that we “win” only as we experience God’s love for us and share that love with all those who are “other.” The victory is not over the “others” who may not share our faith now, or who may live very different lifestyles. The victory is over the powers that oppress all people. And our faith in the victory Jesus won for us all through his death and resurrection enables us to confidently relate to all who are “other” with God’s love.[5]

Even after this careful framing of our “victory” in Jesus, there remains one more consideration. Talk about this kind of victory may seem hollow in a world in which there is still so much suffering taking place. Again, our affirmation of faith acknowledges that in the present day, “The world appears to be dominated by people and systems that do not acknowledge his rule.” One analogy that could be used is the invasion of Normandy on D-Day on June 6, 1944 and the final victory in Europe in the Second World War. Many would say that the invasion of Normandy on D-Day was the crucial victory that spelled the defeat of the Nazi war machine. The war still raged on for almost another year, and many more lives were lost. But after D-Day, the final victory in Europe was perhaps inevitable. Jesus’ victory over the powers of evil, sin, and death in this world is like that. It was the decisive event that made the final victory inevitable.

Most of us have experienced some kind of harm or loss in this life. We may have experience harm at the hands of those who don’t yet follow Jesus. Or perhaps even at the hands of those who follow Jesus, but don’t yet do so perfectly. Many of us have experienced loss in that our lives just didn’t turn out the way we had hoped. Those wounds can haunt us, sometimes for a whole lifetime. But the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that in his death and resurrection, he has decisively defeated all the powers in this world that can harm us. We may still be vulnerable to them in this life, but there will come a day when our victory will be complete, when we stand before Jesus and all our wounds are made whole. That’s a wonderful hope. But perhaps even more importantly, there will come a day when Christ’s victory over all of creation will be made finally complete for all creation, when all the heavens and and everything and everyone on earth are united under one Lord, and we all share together in that victory as confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:11)! That sounds like a complete victory to me!

[2] Cf. Colossians 2:15; Ephesians 2:21-22; 1 Peter 3:22; Revelation 5:12-13; 11:15.

[3] “A Declaration of Faith” Presbyterian Church in the United States, 117th General Assembly, 1977; reissued by Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 1991 §4(5).

[4] Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Orations, 26; cf. J. Quasten, Patrology, III:289-90.

[5] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.2:825. He says, “It is love alone that counts, love alone that triumphs, and love alone that endures.” Cf. also ibid., 832-35.

The Waking Dreamer