December 1998 Issue

Advent, of course, is a season of expectancy. It speaks constantly of comings. John the Baptist questions whether this strange Jesus is the "one who is to come" or not; there are gaudy pictures of a "second coming" on clouds of glory attended by fire and smoke; indeed, right at this moment we are looking forward to looking back to the one who did come announced by a mysterious star and a fantastic chorus of angels; and, hopefully, we look forward to the coming of that same presence into our world, too.

But what does it really all add up to—for us? What comings do we look for? The coming of peace, perhaps; the coming of a lessening of tensions in our country; the coming of greater justice; the coming of more prosperous times than we've got on our hands right now, together with the lessening of inflation and the increase of employment. And for our individual lives? What comings do we look for there? Who knows? The coming of health again, perhaps, of greater happiness than we've got, of fulfillment for the lives of our children...and on and on. But perhaps most of all—and this includes pretty much of everything we've said so far—we look for the coming of hope when so much in the world and perhaps in our individual lives looks so damned hopeless. And I use the word damned, quite literally. For if we've lost hope, then we are damned quite literally.

That passage read a few minutes ago is part of a section in Romans where Paul is talking in very down to earth terms about life in the Christian community, how they weave to treat each other in their everyday contacts, and running through that passage as part of their everyday concerns is a recurring emphasis on hope. He speaks of the scriptures as a source of hope, of the Root of Jesse as the hope of the gentiles; he speaks of God as the God of hope and ends with a little prayer that these Christians in their everyday lives may "abound in hope."

But I wonder. Isn't "abound in hope" too strong a phrase for us perhaps—in times like these? Those of you who have been listening to this series on the radio know very well that I have dragged in just about every week a rehearsal of all the dreary problems we face in the world today: The frightening population explosion and the horrors we face in a generation from now if it is not drastically controlled, the filthy pollution of air and water, the cities strangling to death with traffic and urban rot, the plight of the Blacks and Puerto Ricans and Chicanos jammed into ghettoes, the drug culture among the young, the tensions between the generations and within the generations—the whole dreary bit. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were sick of it! But this is our world and we dare not forget it—especially when we are trying to hear a word from the Beyond, a word of God for us in our world, a word which would be meaningless—even blasphemous—if it allowed us for one moment to forget the world we live in.

And there doesn't seem to be much hope lying around this world of ours, does there? Wherever the voices come from, they don't carry much hope, that's for sure.

Whether it's the voice in a popular song:

Or whether it's the voice of Norman E. Borlaug who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his "green revolution." Through his research into improved strains of wheat and rice, he has made it possible for the developing countries to break away from hunger and poverty. Yet he says: "We have only delayed the world food crisis for another thirty years. If the world population continues at the same rate, we will destroy the species."¹

When a man who has done so much for millions is warding off hunger and famine and death looks gloomily into the future, then there's little cause for "abounding in hope"—is there? Perhaps the gaudy hopes of Paul and the early Christians are simply beyond us in times like these. But at the same time it may be possible to come at life day by day with a little more hope than G. Manley Hopkins can muster when he writes:

Maybe, if we can't quite abound in hope, we can do better than, "Bid joy back...keep hope pale."

For one thing, we know that hope, in and of itself, without any roots in the "God of hope," who comes to us as a child at Christmas, can be a very fickle thing—a "pale hope" indeed. For if hope is tied too closely to the outward look of things, it can go up and down as rapidly as a barometer or the stock market. It merely reflects the changes in outward circumstances rather than steadying us in the face of them. Thus hope goes up when the President offers a reasonable basis for discussion of peace—and goes down when the offer is turned down. When hope is tied too closely either to the bright or to the ugly facts of life—whether on the international scene or in our own private lives—it is indeed "pale." Hope is at its lowest ebb precisely when we need it most.

But on the other hand, if hope ignores the gritty facts of life around us, if it divorces itself completely from the actual historical events of people and nations from moment to moment, then hope simply becomes an escape from the unpleasant realities of life. This is the peril of our American appetite for the happy ending and for a religion which will offer us an escape from the nitty-gritties by dangling in front of us no more than the hope of another world.

Biblical hope burns brightest on a darkened stage. It is in the dark moments of their history that the ancient prophets and writers—and Christians after them—have talked most eloquently about hope. Because they knew that hope has to be held close to all that seems to deny it if it is to mean anything. Anyone can hope when things go well. But when things look bleak and dark, then the God of hope can offer us something to go on.

Maybe, too, what the God of hope offers will mean more for us if we keep our hopes modest. No. Not pale...modest. After all, the gaudy hopes of the earliest Christians are really beyond us. They really expected a glorious "second coming" within their lifetimes. Any moment now! Well, after two thousand years, that is no longer possible for us. I doubt if we can ever reach the level of Paul's prayer that we "abound in hope." But I think it is possible for us to achieve a no less real even if more modest level of hope.

Loren Eiseley, in The Unexpected Universe, paints a haunting picture of a star-thrower. He tells of walking along a beach in Costabel,... "littered with the debris of life...Along the strip of wet sand that marks the ebbing and flowing of the tide death walks hugely and in many forms. In the end the sea rejects its offspring. They cannot fight their way home through the surf which casts them repeatedly back upon the shore. The tiny breathing spores of starfish are stuffed with sand. The rising sun shrinks the...bodies of the unprotected. The seabeach and its endless war are soundless. Nothing screams but the gulls..." Later Eiseley came upon a human figure on the beach ahead of him stooping over a starfish. "`It's still alive,' I said, `Yes' said the

stranger and with a quick yet gentle movement he picked up the star and spun it...far out into the sea... `It may live,' he said, `if the offshore pull is strong enough... The stars throw well. One can help them.'" So they went along the beach stooping down to pick up a half-dead starfish and throw it back into the sea in the hope that it might live again. Later still, pondering it all, Eiseley wrote, "Somewhere...there is a hurler of stars, and he walks, because he chooses, always in desolation, but not in defeat."³

Hope is always held close to the things that seem to deny it. And at that level we are content with modest expressions of hope. Because there is no lost good. At the end of the 15th Chapter of First Corinthians where Paul deals with the Resurrection, that shining fact in which our hopes are rooted and which sounds on the face of it like an escape from life's ugly realities, he ends by getting down to the daily nitty-gritties: "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."

This is where hope always brings us—back to the nitty-gritties, the huge and terrifying problems of our time; not overwhelmed by them but, like the star-thrower, giving someone another chance at life—whether in ghetto, or in your own family.

And is that really very much less than abounding in hope? If, day by day, we can be expectant—for, as someone has said, "Expectation makes life good." To be expectant, even in days like these with their vast and seemingly unmanageable problems, and to act like the star-thrower in expectation of life rather than being overwhelmed only by the inevitability of death—that is to abound in hope.

Perhaps, if Paul were writing that great hymn of love in the 13th chapter of First Corinthians today, rather than two thousand years ago, he might have concluded, not "And now abideth faith, hope, love, and the greatest of these is love" but rather, "And now abideth faith, hope, love, and the greatest of these is hope." For hope is so strange a thing in a world like ours that, as Peguy writes somewhere, "God himself must be constantly amazed when people still can hope."

Edmund Steimle
The Protestant Hour—Lutheran Series

1. New York Times, October 22, 1970.
2. Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Bridges, ed. (London: Oxford, 1931), p. 88.
3. Loren Eiseley, The Unexpected Universe (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969), pp. 69-91.