"To much too hope for"

Dr. George R. Sinclair, Jr.
Pastor

November 18, 2007

             On her 13^th birthday, Anne Frank received a diary.  Thirty days later, under threat from the Nazis, Anne, with her family, went into hiding and began recording her experience.  Seventeen months later, the 14 year-old Anne made this diary entry: “Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs.  From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little rain drops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind.  As long as this exists . . . I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies—while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.” 

Six months later Anne was imprisoned by the Nazis. She died seven months later. At the time of her death, Anne Frank was fifteen years old.

Three days from now the chestnut tree that inspired Anne Frank will be cut down.  It is 150 years old and is dying.  I don’t know if Anne Frank ever read Isaiah and it probably doesn’t matter, but I suspect she’d be glad to know that that old chestnut will be replanted from a sapling cut earlier from its branches.  I think Isaiah would like that too. Isaiah, like Anne Frank, knew something about the will to live—“for like the days of a tree [so] shall the days of my people be.”

Of course fifteen year olds don’t have to read prophets to know what it’s like to want to live.  It may help, but you don’t have to read prophets to long for sunshine and blue sky. And I’m not even sure you have to read prophets to know that even on its worst days, the earth is good.  Hope seems etched with an iron pen into human DNA.

Is it really too much to hope for a good, long life where labor is not in vain?  Is it too much to hope for a world where infants always live and people die in ripe old age?  Is it too much to hope for a world without tears?  Is it too much to hope for a world where the wolf and the lamb feed together or where nothing is ever beyond being made new?  Is it too much to hope?

When I got to work Thursday I ran into a sleepy-eyed IHN volunteer.  “I don’t know how they do it,” she said. “I just finished helping a mother iron her work uniform. How do they do it—living out of a suitcase like they do, trying to raise kids, getting them off to school? I don’t know how they do it.”

It makes you wonder. . . I get up every morning in my own house. I might fix Paula’s coffee and bring her breakfast if she really twists my arm, but that’s all I have to worry about. There’s plenty to eat. I hop in my car and go to work to a job I love.  I rarely feel bad—I’m almost never sick. I have lots of energy, a wife who loves me and above average children.  What do I have to worry about?  When you have everything, hope is a breeze. But how do you hope when you have nothing? 

I saw one of the IHN kids here this week. I think maybe he was in middle school, a bright kid. One night he wanted to use a computer. He had homework to do, a science project.  How do you do homework, when you don’t have a home?  He found a way. I saw him later in the week and he was still smiling, still bouncing, still full of fight, full of hope.

I’m afraid that much of what I call hope is really management.  I’m pretty good at playing the hand I’m dealt, but then I hear Isaiah and I wonder—“new heavens and a new earth”—that doesn’t sound like management.  Do you ever wonder where your work ends and God’s begins?  I hear the large promises God makes and I immediately think, “Well, it’s up to us. We’ve got to do something with the cards we’re dealt.”  But I’m not sure that’s what Isaiah meant. New heavens and a new earth sound like something I can’t manage. 

You see, when I hear Isaiah talking about infants and old people I think health care and nutrition.  When I hear Isaiah talk about houses and vineyards and folks enjoying their labor, I think economic opportunity, progressive tax, and fair trade.  And when I hear Isaiah saying people shall inhabit their own houses I think political justice.  Isaiah’s talking about “new heavens and a new earth” and I’m thinking managed progress. 

Hope for me is too often a management problem.  I figure “there must be a way.”  So when God says the “wolf and the lamb” will feed together I’m thinking disarmament, peacemaking, diplomacy.

But I’m not sure that’s what Isaiah meant—that his images are just images—dreams we color in with public policy, economic strategy, diplomacy, or even charitable good works.  If that’s the case, where does that leave God?  If hope is really another word for managed progress, what happens to the One who promises “new heavens and a new earth?”  Creating new heavens and a new earth sounds big to me, way bigger than public policy or economic strategy or charitable works, which raises a different kind of question.

If God’s promised world is so big and so far beyond human reach, is it really “this-world” we’re talking about or some other world?  Is it really “this time” we’re talking about or some “time to come?”

Hope is a problem. On the one hand it gets whittled down to soup, soap, and slate. And on the other it gets pushed off to a kind of never never land.  The one sounds like managed progress, the other like wishful thinking.  Real hope, I think is something else.

Surveys indicate that six in ten Americans think the world will one day end.  About a third of those who believe that think the world will end in their lifetime.  Jesus talked about the world “ending.” Some say Jesus believed the world was ending in his lifetime. Others say that while Jesus talked about the world ending, he was fuzzy about the timing—that what he really meant was, “Yes, history will end at some unknown and most likely far, distant time, but you never know so you should always be prepared.”

Finally, there are those who say Jesus wasn’t talking about history ending at all, but rather God’s reign coming within history. Some reason that God’s kingdom “comes” when, with eyes of faith, we see it coming.

Personally, I don’t find any of these answers satisfying.  Obviously, Jesus was wrong about history ending in his lifetime if by “end” we mean actual human existence. If that’s the case, then all of this is an illusion.

The second position is not quite right either.  It seemingly suggests that Jesus leaves things in our hands as if to say, “Well, it’s been nice folks, but you take charge and when I get back I’ll clean up, meanwhile, cheery-o.”

The third position, which I’m more inclined to favor, at least takes seriously the claim that God actually shows up, that God in Jesus Christ is not just a “big idea,” but is actually reconciling the world through faith.  That makes sense to me.  But what that reading fails to address is the very real and massive human suffering occurring every day all over the world, suffering which cannot under any circumstance be compatible with or acceptable to a loving and just God.  And for that reason I believe God was serious when God promised to create new heavens and a new earth.  New creation is more than an idea. It is God’s redemptive act.

I don’t think God was speaking metaphorically when God promised to make new heavens and a new earth. I think there will actually come a time when “one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth.” And I don’t mean that one day we’ll cure every disease or genetically alter life expectancy.  New creation means New Creation, one where former things are not remembered, a time when nobody gets hurt, a time when labor is not in vain, a time when the wolf and the lamb shall feed together.  To put it negatively, we don’t “bring in” the kingdom of God.  God brings in the Kingdom. God creates new heavens and a new earth. Progress is not another word for new creation which means that hope is something different from wise management.

I don’t think we’re supposed to sit back and wait on Jesus to make everything right at some far off distant time. And yet I also don’t believe we can manage our way to the kingdom of God.  I find myself caught between worlds and between times. I find myself caught between this world and the next and between this time and the next, which I suppose means I find myself trying to live with hope, which is different from both wishful thinking and managed progress.

Hope is what makes a 12-year old homeless boy do homework. Hope is what makes a single mom get up at 6 a.m. and iron her uniform.  Hope is what made Anne Frank happy while all that existed were raindrops on a bare chestnut tree.  I don’t know where you get hope like that, but I think it must be some kind of gift and it must come from a powerful giver because hope like that overcomes really big odds. 

What are the odds that a man who never traveled more than a hundred miles would become the most widely recognized name in the whole world?  What are the odds that a man who never wrote down anything would become the most quoted person in history?  And what are the odds that a crucified Jew would be called Lord by a third of the people on our planet?

I don’t know how you overcome odds like that unless hope is a gift. And if a gift then it must come from a powerful giver, One who creates new heavens and a new earth. And hope that big can’t be managed. It can only be received as a gift promised. 

They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

They shall not build and another inhabit;

they shall not plant and another eat;

For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

They shall not labor in vain . . . for they shall be offspring blessed.

Hope like that is too big to be managed. And human suffering is too real to be answered by wishful thinking.  But mostly, God refused to give up on us. The one who made us in perfect love will create the perfect ending to our lives—new heavens and a new earth.  To God be the glory. Amen.