Hope

"Hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." Romans 5:5

I've been thinking a lot about hope lately, especially in light of my experiences at Juvie. I've been wondering what hope is and how we live it out in the midst of seemingly hopeless situations. In my theology/ethics class this quarter we've been reading Avery Dulles' Models of the Church. I've found myself exceptionally drawn to the model of the Church as sacrament, and I think it has many implications for the way in which we conceptualize hope.

If we understand a sacrament to be a visible sign of God's invisible grace, and if we are viewing the Church as a sacrament, then the Church is acting as a sign for God's Kingdom.

But it's not an empty sign. And, really, I'm not sure that an empty sign is any sign at all. Without some sort of actual, ongoing presence, how is the Church any different from the rest of the world? What would possibly beckon others to join this body if all we do is long for something in a day to come? A sign, in the way that I am presenting it, is not only pointing to something but is also embodying that "something" to a certain degree.

In the words of Dulles, "[The Church] is more than a sign. It betokens the actual presence, in a hidden way, of that to which it points" (Dulles, p.120). The Church is distanced from the fully-consummated Kingdom of God, but it embraces the mysterious presence of the Kingdom too.

Isn't this what hope is? Not just a wandering desire for something better, but a yearning that is rooted in faith and living into the desires for which our hearts were created. I can wish for something all day long, but we can't really name that "hope" without some real reason for those desires. Frankly, it seems absurd to to trust that one day things might be different without some sort of reassuring promise and reality of the difference.

The fact of the matter is, Jesus came and everything is different because of it. Certainly, we can see that the world is still a broken place, full of broken people. We still need reconciliation. Our very lives are obvious cries that we want something more from this life. Yet, I think we have experienced what that "something more" is to an extent; perhaps that is why the ache for it is so overwhelming at times. We have known the redemptive work of Christ in our lives, and that is why we hope for the culmination of God's Kingdom. The church is not merely a sign that proclaims redemption for someday, but I believe it is a place of actual presence that invites us to the beauty of God's Kingdom for both today and that someday.

And this is where my friends in juvenile detention come in....

If we trust that the Church is a sacrament, extended in time and space, we offer hope for all people of all time. We have a basis for hope. We have a reason to hope. We remember that we've tasted the goodness of God's Kingdom, that the taste is sweeter than any other, and that we want more of it!

Wishing that these kids had had a better childhood or that they hadn't made the dumb decisions that got them there isn't really hope; that's just unrealistic wishful thinking. Those thoughts appease for a moment, but they leave us wanting something of which there is no reality, no experience, no promise. Those thoughts are truly hope-less.

Instead, we have the opportunity to enter into a hope that is... well... hopeful. We can believe that there is more for our friends on the margins, because we've experienced some of that "more" already. We, as God's people, have the unique opportunity to be a sign and an embodiment, and to me, that sounds about as hopeful as anything.

* Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (Garden City: Image Books, 1978).