Hope

Hope.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:12)

I’m told that a human being completely void of any hope of survival will expire. Nevertheless, some of us live without much hope or meaning. All is chaos. All is disintegrating towards inevitable death. The universe is an ancient grandfather clock slowly winding down. Life is accidental, without a telos. If that is the case, it is most prudent to enjoy the present moment and push away all thought of an ultimate future, of an afterlife, of eternity. Face the storm with courage and die like men.

Others – the majority I think – live in world of fragile hope. Perhaps if enough of us protest, get out and vote, write enough letters, knock on enough doors, things will change. Belief in a better world is rooted in politics, social change, educational enlightenment. In times of progress, it appears to be working, but when regression and fascism arise, hope shatters.

Then there are the few that live with resurrection hope. Not the hope that some of us will escape, be evacuated, fly away to a heaven somewhere (for that is also a fragile hope), but the hope that there is a God, that God is love, and that God will renew the entire cosmos. These people are filled with joy. They are fearless. They happily die in the colosseums of empires. They love their enemies. They are delighted to lay down their lives in service to others. You can’t throw them off their game. Ask them. They are sure Jesus was God-incarnate and rose from the dead. They are certain he will come again and make all things new. They are quite confident they will live forever.

From a human perspective, that hope seems an absurd fairytale. Everyone knows, everyone has always known, that all life ends in death and dead people don’t come back to life. A few are clinically dead and resuscitated, but once you’re dead, you’re all dead. It’s over. Humans not only die, they facilitate more death, polluting the waters and skies for profit, denying the conclusions of medical and environmental science, exalting racist narratives, and perpetrating genocide. Cruelty reigns. The rich get richer. The oppressed are pushed further down. Where is God in all this?

Many people seem to quite contentedly be able to simply choose what they believe. I’m not one of them. In fact, I sometimes have trouble believing despite being very aware of an abundance of historical, anthropological, sociological, and theological evidence. That evidence is so copious that the intellectual side of me must affirm its validity. My brain says, of course it’s true. How else can we explain the empty tomb, the undisturbed grave-shroud, the massive rock moved some distance away, the multitude of eye-witnesses (almost all of whom died torturous deaths insisting they saw, ate, talked and ate with the risen Messiah)? What other explanation can there be for millions of radically changed lives over two millennia? Not to mention people willingly sacrificing their comfort and wellbeing to care for the loathed and diseased.

Sometimes, though, my emotional side is not on board. I see the wars, diseases, mental illnesses, hatred, and xenophobia. I’m aware of the environmental destruction, the greed and inequality. All around me I sense a disregard for truth, critical thinking, art, beauty, and honest historical analysis. I see reactionary fascism on the rise. Opponents are disappeared. Children commit suicide. A deep sadness creeps into my soul.

My head says all will be set to rights by a good and powerful God of love. My emotions say all is lost; a hopeful future is the pipe-dream of mystics. The hope in my intellect is deferred. My heart is sick. Like the martyred souls under heaven’s altar, I cry, “How long, oh God?” How long will the wicked rule, oppressing those on the margins? Will there ever come a time when no one learns war anymore and children play safely in the streets?

Empires crush dreams, extinguish lives, grind hope to dust. They are all the same – built on the backs of slaves on land they conquered by force, insisting that might makes right, and God (or the gods) is on their side. They are all the same, whether Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Ottoman, British, German, or American. They are all the same because they all are puppets of the same god – the accuser, the usurper, the satan. Empires know nothing except lies, exploitation, manipulation, and oppression. How long, O Lord?

In his Easter 2025 sermon (available here: https://whchurch.org) at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, Greg Boyd (https://reknew.org) told the story of Bobby Fischer (1943- 2008), the youngest chess grandmaster in history who stunned the world by defeating reigning champion Donald Byrne at the age of 13. Fischer sacrificed his queen on the 17th move to Byrne to set up a devastating counterattack that led to checkmate. Despite his skill, Bryne could not see what was coming.

Bryne was sure Fischer had made a mistake. When we look at Jesus’ death on a Roman gibbet, it looks like God made a mistake. I’m often like Bryne. It looks to me like evil is winning. Bobby knew better. Bobby knew checkmate was inevitable once Bryne took his queen. Bobby duped Bryne into taking his queen. God duped the devil into killing Jesus.

Jesus’ death, resurrection, and crowning assumption to the heavenly throne room crushed the satan, wiped sin off the table, and enabled forgiveness for all. A cosmic shift began. Invisible to most, the inevitable was set in motion. His was not simply innocent blood poured out, it was redeeming blood poured in.

Blood is life. It carries nutrients to from every cell in the body. Many a hemorrhaging patient has been saved by an infusion of someone else’s blood. Many surgical procedures would be impossible without similar infusions. Blood. Not poured out, but poured in. Saved by the blood.

After the Passover meal, Jesus took the cup of blessing, offered thanks to God, and passed it around to his apprentices. “Drink of this. All of you. This is my blood. Blood poured in. His blood infused. His life in me. In us.

Blood poured in. Saved by the blood.