Hope dismantled?

Throughout the Church's history Christians have believed that the future belongs to God. With varying degrees of intensity they have also held that out of that future God himself comes to meet them and to draw them forward to their destiny with him. Present crisis/coming judgment/final vindication is the pattern of Christian expectation, that is, of hope.1 Whether the crisis in which Christians find themselves is caused by persecution, by natural or man-made disaster or by old injustices best left behind, hope is awakened. It is answered by an exodus, a readiness to speak out against injustice, a willingness to go into exile, and an eagerness to step forth into an unknown future and to act. Christians believe they stand in the presence of God's unending and absolute glory from whence they are called to participate in the great cosmic drama unfolding before them. Through Jesus Christ they are bidden to claim this heritage as their own.

From the call of Abraham to that of Moses and the prophets, to Mark's "he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you" (16:7), to the stunning declaration of Hebrews that the risen Jesus has gone beyond to the right hand of God, entering the unknown world within the veil "in advance of us, having become high priest forever after the order of Mechizedek" (6:19-20)-from one to the other, hope has been the motor dynamic of Christian faith. The world and its history, it is thought, have been providentially reordered in Jesus Christ. That claim's great crescendo appears in the final chapters of Revelation with the poet's description of God's triumph: the descent to earth of the heavenly Jerusalem and the promise, "These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place. And behold, I am coming soon" (22:6-7). These and similar expressions of hope are well-known.

Yet for many in the Church today the search for God takes the place of his coming to us. Has the Church in fact succumbed to Nietzsche's claim, "God is dead," and given up "on the truth value-if any---of the propositions it [religion] asserts"?2 At best confidence extends only to seeing Jesus as the inspirer of such a search, as a healer, wisdom teacher, mystic, and "a Spirit person," as one' commentator refers to him.3 Here Jesus is attractive because he increases spirituality, puts the believer in touch with "God," and liberates her from anxieties and preoccupations. Since life is generally a circumscribed and unhappy journey, it is thought, the human spirit needs help to overcome despair. Jesus, we are told, can provide that succor. No doubt such aid to middle-class Americans is efficacious. The historic faith of the Church, however, has been more sanguine and expectant. Christians have been traditionally called to expansive hope and large, demanding service to the only Great One.

The toning down of both hope and faith can be seen in the rewriting of Philip Nicolai's "Sleepers, Wake," which is set to the music of J. S. Bach and was translated (1863) from the German by the able Catherine Winkworth. The metaphor in which this hymn is cast is that of the approaching wedding feast with the groom (the Messiah/ Christ), the bride (Zion), and the circle of welcoming guests (the incipient Church). The original stunning language of expectation was majestic, paced, and used contrasting images. The new translation in The Hymnal 1982 is good-natured, less scary, and more personal. "Midnight's solemn hour is tolling, / His chariot wheels are nearer rolling" is replaced by a sentence which ends flatly with the watchmen's "urgent summons clearly spoken." Presumably not mumbled Instead of abruptly commanding the wise virgins (Matthew 25:1-13) to "Rise up with willing feet," the new translator seems to be invoking nothing so much as Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter," with his "The time has come, O maidens wise!" Zion (Isaiah 52:8) does not rise "from her gloom" but simply "wakes and hurries through the night." The "marriage throng" becomes the "banquet hall," i.e. the parish church. "We raise the song, / We swell the throng, / To praise thee ages all along" is personalized into a monotonous "Therefore we sing to greet our King; forever let our praises ring." And this subjective ending fits the attempt, twice made in the first verse, to include the worshiping singers--"us"--who are alternately astounded and surrounded, but not wholly convinced. Pomp is out; friendliness is in. If hope is not dismantled here, it is surely domesticated.

Faith, hope, and love are the Church's traditional theological virtues. Of these three love (agape) has the priority, faith the primacy and the motivity, but hope the velocity.4 Love is the foundation of both hope and faith. Hope for its part provides the dynamism to Christian life and work. Hope keeps faith alert and animated. Faith needs hope and hope faith. Calvin went so far as to assert that when hope "is taken away, however eloquently or elegantly we discourse concerning faith, we are convicted of having none." Hope for Calvin was the expectation that what faith has believed will come about as God has promised.