BLOG 10/11/15. BEING A PEOPLE OF HOPE IN A CYNICAL CULTURE.

BLOG 10/11/15. BEING A PEOPLE OF HOPE IN A CYNICAL CULTURE

We have watched, in the news of this past week, the chaos of the Republican Party as they have sought a speaker who eschewed bi-partisanship, and whose basic role would be to oppose anything in the platform the Democratic administration. This is not surprising. Our present culture has been described as all too cynical. It is easy to be negative in a cynical culture, and to demean anything that even attempts to find the positive solutions to human welfare, at home and abroad. Hope is brushed off to the margins and cynicism dominates.

The apostle, Paul, concludes his letter to the Roman Christians with a unique benediction: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may about in hope” (Romans 15:13). Commentator Gordon Fee remarked on the people who embody this hope: “As so confident in the future that they can pour themselves into the present with utter abandon, full of joy and peace, because nothing in the present can ultimately overwhelm them. Such people make the Christian faith a truly attractive alternative.”

Since the people of God in Jesus Christ, are to be those who live and operate as his New Creation people in the here and now, this text pertains in their workplace, in their homes, in their politics, in their neighborhoods, in their engagement with the cultural and social realities of daily life. Not much is accomplished by simply being against something. God’s people are not looking for escape from the social and humanitarian realities which stare us in the face every day. They are to be the children of the Light, people of hope. The psalmist says that those who seek God’s presence, and seek to be his faithful folk, leave behind them in desert places springs of water, pools in their footsteps. His people are not to be grim, judgmental, self-righteous religious figures, but rather those who are full of mirth and gladness.

I have a dear friend whose corporate title includes the description of her position as “strategic initiator,” which speaks to a better future. Don’t you love that? People who live their lives, perhaps ever so modestly, as those to whom others look for wisdom, for positive responses, for encouragement in doing what is good. The apostle could say with total modesty, that he encouraged others to be imitators of him, even as he was of Christ. He taught that in a believer’s daily existence there should be those fruits of God’s Spirit in him or her: love, joy peace, long-suffering, patience, etc.

Dear Lord, how we need such practitioners—not those claiming to be Christian who only want to go to heaven when they die, and certainly not those who make a career of finding things to judge and condemn, … but those who are people of hope living realistically with what are often frighteningly insoluble human and social dilemmas. Most of the worlds population live with such existential human hopelessness—which makes a people of hope even more like pools of water.

In my career as pastor in a very difficult blue-collar community, where economic existence was marginal, one of the sweet-spirited, gentle, quiet persons of hope was a self-trained auto mechanic (a “grease-monkey” as they were called). He and his wife had suffered a bitter tragedy in the difficult death of an infant child, and had found their refuge and strength in their trust in Jesus. In a Christian community composed of some very impressive, also some very ‘power-hungry’ individuals, … when the community was looking for wisdom they turned to this mechanic and his wife, who were modest and self-effacing to the core. Why? Because they were realistic people of hope. They were wise. Yes, there is much that is wrong with this broken world, but it is God’s people of hope who bring light into the darkness, whether in the mechanic’s garage, or in the Christian community, or in the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. How we need hopeful “strategic initiators.”

“Such people make the Christian faith a truly attractive alternative” (Gordon Fee).

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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