A Darker Hope

It is not wrong to hope that things may get better before they get worse, that the world may yet avoid some—or even many—of the catastrophes that are barreling toward us: ecological, psychological, economic, political. But what would be unfortunate would be for us to allow our hope and our vision of the good to become contingent upon that avoidance, for us to equate hope with optimism. A hope that depends on the worst NOT happening will fall impotently short if and when the worst indeed happens—when the oceans rise, the bombs drop, the diseases surge, the immigrants rot in death camps, the wealthy dominate, the sick go unattended, and the poor starve to death in debt-slavery.

The hope we have in Jesus Christ, thankfully, is not a hope merely for avoidance (though, of course, it demands that we work toward that renewal and reconciliation that may indeed lead to such avoidance). The hope we have in Jesus Christ is that the God of life and resurrection persists and suffers with the suffering. The hope we have is not the optimistic hope that the cross and the grave might yet be bypassed; it is the darker hope that endures even when catastrophe is not avoided, even when God ends up dead and buried and in hell. It is a hope that says: the worst may indeed happen to us, but the worst will not be the last.

So our work is the work of hope—the work of the body of Christ that insists on love and compassion even in a world where love and compassion end up being crucified. It is a hope that insists on faithfulness even though that faithfulness may prove ineffective in stopping the “wars and rumors of wars” that plague our world. Christian hope is a hope within hopelessness and a hope that empowers us to radical resistance, because we know that death may yet have its day, but love will stand victorious on the last day.