It is not so much sin that plunges us into disaster, as rather despair (John Chrysostom)

Revelation 21:7-8 – “The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. ⁸But as for the cowardly (timid, fearful), the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

“That which leads people to sin, seems not only to be a sin itself, but a source of sins. Now such is despair, for the Apostle says of certain men (Eph. 4:19): “Who, despairing, have given themselves up to lasciviousness, unto the working of all uncleanness and covetousness.” Therefore despair is not only a sin but also the origin of other sins.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 2.20

The Lord is wanting to confront the sin of despair. This woeful resignation to the status quo, this reconciliation with the deplorable condition of the present world order, is like a cancer in individuals and communities. Despair (with its corresponding lack of vibrant hope) destroys the uplifting, forward-looking, revolutionary aspects of the Christian eschatology and replaces it with an insipid acceptance of what is. “Whatever shall be shall be” becomes the mantra of a hope-less Christianity.  We guard our hearts from the pain of disappointment and disillusionment by burying our hopes under the spiritual guise of “contentment” or the philosophical guise of “realism.”

In such despair, especially when theologically or spiritually justified, we testify to a God who is not powerful, not loving, not faithful and not near. He is powerless in the face of the overwhelming forces of the present world. He does not care enough about humanity to create and lead us into a reality different than the present world of suffering. He is not faithful to come through to all the dramatic and seemingly “unrealistic” promises given in the Scripture. He is not near –he is so far off and disconnected to even consider the plight of fallen humanity.

In the name of “realism” we join with Camus in his goal of “thinking clearly and hoping no more.” To think clearly, to adequately assess our situation is to not hope for very much, to expect very little, to reconcile ourselves with the way all currently exists – to rescind to a “utopia of the status quo.” We then develop theological reasons as to why every bad event occurs. We do this in order to guard ourselves from the terrifying realization of the person we perceive God to be, or what kind of person to which the unfolding of history testifies. If there is not some “higher divine reason” for all the bane and blight of my life, and indeed the universal suffering around the world which at times becomes sickeningly grotesque and wicked, then there is no other conclusion to come to than that God is some combination of weak, cold, unfaithful and distant.

Such an admission would be so painful to the core of our being that we would rather live in the depression of theological despair. Everything is thus thought to be the way it was meant to be. Every act of evil, every event of suffering is thought as God giving to us as a wonderful and precious gift. In doing so, we move the conflict and tension from between our witness to the Kingdom and the contradictory present existing reality and make it into a conflict within God – God has two “wills” – he says he is the source of a good and perfect gifts, but then seems to be the source of all evil as well.

When we reconcile ourselves with the way things are, when we passively comply to a “utopia of the status quo,” nothing is required of us. We are never called up into anything great and grand, nothing other that which is and that which we already are. We never feel the need to embrace a valiance that shapes our present world by the power of the Gospel and the life of the Spirit.

We give up and give in. We surrender to the powers that be. In doing so we give credence and even allegiance to the powers of this age. We live safe lives, marked by mediocrity, complacency and dull indifference. With resignation we accept what is, while the Spirit is calling us up into something greater.

While “hoping no more” may sound like “thinking clearly” to Camus, an atheistic existentialist, for a Christian such borders on insanity if we take the testimony of Scripture to be serious. We do not need to give theological justification, and thereby give a state of permanence to the “sufferings of the present age.” We should not ask, in all things, “why did this happen?” Rather, we can answer the question Scripture does: “what will happen?” We then proclaim the Christian hope over and against the darkness of the present.

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. ²Do not conform to the pattern of this world [age], but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:1-2

Throughout Romans, Paul has been calling the people to understand the work of new covenant and New Creation that God is effecting in Jesus. He is the New Adam. He breaks our solidarity with the family of Adam and the reign of sin and death that it entails (Romans 5:14ff). We are members of family of the Messiah, who frees humans from the powers of this age (Romans 6) and will one day liberate the entire creation from the curse of the fall (Romans 8:19ff).

In this famous passage, Paul urges the people that the manner in which we serve God in the present time is by living in non-conformity with the present age. The common translation “do not be conformed to the ways of the world” means literally, “this age,” the present evil age of sin, suffering, sickness and death. The way to offer our lives to God in light of His mercy is not to accept all that is, but to live in resistance to it, to refuse to go along with the sin, death and suffering that so often prevails. This begins with our personal lives but immediately then moves outward as the remain thrust of Paul’s letter the Romans focuses on the implications of thus in how one lives in community.

Hope as Theology of Resistance

“The messianic hope can act in two opposite directions.  It can draw the hearts of men and women away from the present into the future.  Then it makes life in the present empty, and action in the present empty – and of course suffering over present oppression too.  But it can also make the future of the messiah present, and fill that present with the consolation and happiness of the approaching God.  In this case what the messianic idea enforces is the very opposite of ‘deferred life’.  It is life in anticipation, in which everything must already be done and accomplished in a way that is final, because the kingdom of God in its messianic form is already ‘nigh’”[1]

The presence of the Messiah’s future also brings an awakened sense of the contradiction between that future and the brutal darkness of the present. Rather than minimize the tension, the brilliant colors of Messiah’s dawning reign bring the darkness of the present into sharper contrast. That evil which we had grown accustomed and indifferent to is now manifest as viciously unnatural and grotesque. After we encounter the resurrected Messiah, we cease seeing injustice as a social phenomenon, death as a phase of life and suffering as our inevitable lot. We see them as in opposition to God’s kingdom and as a betrayal of the Father’s name.[2]

Thus while in one sense, hope is a stabilizing force in our lives, empowering us through difficult circumstances, at the same time hope is a de-stabilizing force. Hope draws believers into the contradiction between the Kingdom of God and the anti-kingdom and issues forth from the deep heart as a protest against suffering, sin, injustice and death.

“If Paul calls death the ‘last enemy’ (1 Cor. 15:26), then the opposite is also true: that the risen Christ, and with him the resurrection hope, must be declared to be the enemy of death and of a world that puts up with death. Faith takes up this contradiction and thus becomes itself a contradiction to the world of death. That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promise future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.”[3]

To live in this contradiction by nature brings with it the experience of deep and profound pain, because we open ourselves to the concrete suffering and evil that pervades our age, the groan of creation and the tragedy of God in the midst of it.

This inexplicable mourning is not despair. Despair leads to reconciliation with that which is opposed to God’s Reign, the anti-kingdom. The acknowledgment of pain maintains the presence of the contradiction. If all is as it is supposed to be, there is no pain. Hence the presence of pain indicates the presence of at least an incipient resistance against darkness. It is by hope that we remain unreconciled to the world and yet maintain an “unresolved openness to the world” “until the great day of the fulfillment of all the promises of God.”[4]

[2] Carlos Bravo, “Jesus of Nazareth, Christ the Liberator,” in Systematic Theology, ed. Jon Sobrino and Ignacio Ellacuria (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 106.

[3] Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 21.

[4] ibid, 22.

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In his gospel, Luke tells us that as Jesus was on the way to Golgotha, a number of women followed Jesus mourning and wailing for him. Remarkably, he turns to them, saying “do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children” (Lk. 23.28). I find it amazing that as Jesus experiences the greatest amount of pain in his life and indeed in the entire existence of the world, he turns and tells people to not focus on his pain, but rather on their own. For many of us, thinking about our own pain seems to be one of the last things we want to do. For others of us, we can’t even think about our pain because it is so far buried that it is beyond our cognizance. For others, we spend so much time giving to others, helping, serving and ministering to those whom to us seem in dire need, that we have emptied our reservoir of time or emotional energy to consider our own pain. Yet, in the moment of his anguish, at the time when he faced death and separation from his Father, he calls attention to the plight of human suffering – the universal experience of every human being. We spend so much time, energy and anxiety denying, avoiding, suppressing, overlooking and dismissing our pain, yet Jesus seems to find it important in the hour of his death.

The liturgical tradition of the church maintains this undesired nuance of the Good Friday story. It is traditional that following a reading from Isaiah 53 (the suffering servant) or Genesis 22 (Abraham offering Isaac), Psalm 22 is said or sung by the congregation. This psalm, with its opening line “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” is obviously connected to Jesus’ suffering due to his own voicing of these words while hanging on the cross. However, ironically, though alluding to the suffering of the Messiah, the psalm is said by every congregant in the first person. Each person voices to God, “why have you forsaken me.” While of course recalling Jesus’ sufferings, one personally recounts to God and is therein confronted with the anguish, god-forsakenness, confusion and despair of their own existence. This inclusion of the first-person recitation of Psalm 22 prevents us from moving through Good Friday mourning solely for the sufferings of Jesus. “Do not weep for me; weep for yourselves…” In order for Good Friday to mean anything, we must mourn our own pain, we must grieve our own god-forsakenness. We must discover how the words of Psalm 22 are not simply Jesus’ words, but are in fact our own. Indeed, in the chronology of humanity, these words of god-forsakeness were our own lips long before they were on the lips of Jesus. They were words of the universal human plight that Jesus, in his passion, identified with, entered into and experienced fully.

“Do not weep for me; weep for yourselves…” This perspective is crucial for understanding the significance of Jesus’ death. On the cross, he not only paid the penalty for sin, but “surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows...upon him was the chastisement that brought our wholeness and with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:4-5). Without griefs and sorrows that are woefully significant, without brokenness that requires wholeness, without wounds that need healing, Jesus death flies high into an abstract world of economic exchanges for the price of sin, far from the aching place within us so desperately needing his presence. On the cross, Jesus drew near to us in our pain and fellowshipped with us in our suffering and continues to extend his wounded hands to embrace us in our brokenness. He knows us, in our pain. He understands us, in our brokenness. He is near us, in our sorrow. He feels together with us, in the place we feel abandoned by all, including even God. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16).

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“How long, oh Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” Psalm 13:1-2

How did these verses get in the Bible? How are they inspired by the Holy Spirit? How were they part of Jewish liturgy and prayer? Why have the been incorporated as part of Christian worship for the entire history of the church? How are these words remotely Christian?

Interesting questions regarding an even more interesting set of verses. It is remarkable that these verses stand as they are in the Biblical text. They are not followed by a rebuke our a denunciation for a bad confession. They are not followed by a discourse on the omniscience of God to correct the obviously true fact that God cannot and does not forget us. Neither are they set forth as an example of someone wavering in faith as if they had a long way to grow in trusting God.  Rather this text is in a collection of songs to be sung in the regular worship of the people of God. Possibly even more striking is that this text is not alone in the book of Psalms but is one among many like it with its climax possibly being Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” Rather than corrected with qualifications, these verses and the cries that they express in the heart of every human being are left to stand.

The Holy Spirit and the compilers of the canon deemed it fit that these words were important for the life of the people of God throughout the ages. However, at times we run across the attitude of “trust” and “faith” in God, in which one is confident that everything is turning out the way God wanted it and everything is working out the best possible way and thus we can be at peace. This faith seems to overshoot the faith of the Biblical witness itself and almost seems like “trusting God too much.” The Psalmist here and in other places apparently recognized that everything was not turning out the best possible way and in a sense perceived her god-forsaken status in the fallen world.

How can these prayers be ours as Christians who affirm the tender-hearted and tenaciously faithful love of the all-powerful God? Is there room for the recognition of our god-forsakenness without all the qualifiers immediately rushing in? How can we as believers in the promise of God express our pain and grief over the apparent non-fulfillment of the promise and the radical disconjunction between what we hope for and what we know should be? Every prayer we offer screams of this gut-wrenching, painful contradiction between what we believe God to be like and what we experience as reality in the world. Is the problem truly just in our perspective? If we understood from God’s perspective would that make all of our pain an unmixed blessing? Not many answers on this end, just a conviction that I want the real me – the perplexed, in pain, aware of my shortcomings me to know God and what He is like. I don’t want the “me” with no problems and everything is working out great to believe that God loves me and is faithful towards me. I want the isolated, god-forsaken, broken, longing-for-something-beyond me to glance outside my shell and somehow learn to trust and hope in a God who loves and delights in me.

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In the last entry, I discussed the “theology of glory” and the “theology of the cross” and my difficulty with both. I also mentioned how I feel that the problem is essentially Christological. How do we relate the cross and the resurrection in the person of Jesus himself?

In verse thirty of Luke 24, the resurrected Jesus sits down with two disciples who as of yet had not recognized that it was Him, who had not received the hope of resurrection that prevails over their present despondency. Luke is well aware here of the continued significance of the breaking of bread in Christian liturgy. It is at this point more than any other that every believer finds entrance into this story. Even if in our own disillusionment we grow accustomed and anesthetized to our own pain, disappointment and despair, we know that when Jesus breaks the bread, that we are the ones on the receiving end.

At the table, the resurrected Jesus enacts the same symbolic actions of the Last Supper and therein reveals himself as the crucified one. The resurrected one shows reveals himself as the crucified one. The crucifixion is not something Jesus has left behind forever in the triumph of life. The Christianity of the resurrected Lord is ever and always faith and trust in the crucified resurrected Lord. Resurrection in and of itself implies death, and for Jesus every-time his resurrection is mentioned, his crucifixion is implied. It is the symbolic reenactment of the crucifixion, which continues on in the liturgical life of the people of God, that the resurrected Lord is recognized and never apart from such is he known. Later on the resurrected Jesus would only be recognized by his disciples as he shows them his hands and feet (cf. Thomas in the Gospel of John). The contradiction of death remains present in every revelation of the resurrected Lord. He opens the eyes of others to himself in his own contradiction of death and life and herein frees us to live in the contradiction of death and life, promised hope and existing reality, that perpetually surrounds us. We do not live in the power of the resurrection by a denial of the deadliness of death, by the suppression of pain, by the avoidance of suffering or by the reframing of disastrous tragedies as an unmixed blessing.

“Through the knowledge of the resurrection of the crucified the contradiction that is always and everywhere perceptible in an unredeemed world, and the sorrow and suffering caused by that world, are taken up into the confidence of hope, while on the other hand hope’s confidence becomes earthly and universal. Any kind of docetic hope which leaves earthly conditions or corporeal existence to the mercy of their own contradictoriness and restricts itself to the Church, to the cultus or to believing inwardness, is therefore a denial of the cross. The hope that is born of the cross and the resurrection transforms the negative, contradictory and torturing aspects of the world into terms of ‘not yet’, and does not suffer them to end in ‘nothing’.” Jurgen Moltmann,  Theology of Hope

Thus, the “theology of the cross” and the “theology of glory” become an eschatological dialectic of “already but not yet.” In the present we recognize the presence of suffering, sin and death, as that for which Christ died and rose to defeat and destroy. We do not glorify them as redemptive. The redemption of God is against and away from the realities that mark the present age of sin and death. We suffer under these woeful elements, groaning for the liberation of the earth and partnering with God to bring forth and implement, in the power of the Spirit, that suffusing dawn of the new age that Christ has accomplished and sent bursting forth in his resurrection. The “theology of the cross” and the “theology of glory” cannot look at each other in bewilderment from across a sharp divide. One side cannot berate the other for being overly optimistic and enthusiastic, from which they cannot in turn rise insensitively “from glory to glory” wondering why the rest don’t “get it together.” The cross and the resurrection, though inherently contradictory, with one annihilating the other, must be held together in the life of faith. We must honestly reckon with the painful absence of God in the earth as humanity pines in suffering, while also holding to the hope of new creation declared in the resurrection. From that place we can then move forward with both sensitivity and courage, with tender and valiant hearts proclaiming, embodying and expanding God’s kingdom of freedom, righteousness, justice and life on the earth.

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“Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”  “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.”  John 20:11-14

This is a most curious of passages. In all the other gospel narratives of the resurrection of Jesus, the angel(s) at the tomb give dramatic revelatory statements like “Why do you look for the living among the dead;” “He is not here, He is risen.” However, in John the angel makes a seemingly obtuse and even insensitive statement. He asks a woman standing outside a tomb why she is crying? Why might a woman standing by a tomb be crying? This seems blatantly obvious to anyone, let along an angel. This hints to us that more is going on here.

Rather than a revelation coming from the words of the angels, we get a description of the location of the angels. They are were Jesus’ body was, one at the head, and one at the foot. This creates a visual image that would have been familiar for first century Jews (by story and Scripture, rather than from experience of course!), that of the Ark of the Covenant.  This sole item that occupied the central and holiest part of the tabernacle and later the temple was covered by two cherubim, which from the best that we can tell are angelic-like figures.

Between the two cherubim was the precise place where God would meet with His people (Ex. 25:22). Moses would hear the voice of God speak to him from between the two wings of the cherubim (Num. 7:89). Between the two cherubim was the place where the Lord of the hosts of heaven was considered to be actually enthroned on earth (1 Sam. 4:4. 1 Chron. 13:6). The central ritual by which the forgiveness of sins was mediated to the people was through sprinkling blood on the cover of the ark (Lev. 16:15ff). In between the two cherubim was the place where God’s glory, his manifest shekinah presence dwelt. The ark was in a sense the meeting place between heaven and earth, where God and sinful humanity met and in a remarkable way met in mercy and forgiveness.

The irony here is that the place of the ark of the covenant – lost for centuries (since the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.), and certainly not dwelling in Herod’s temple has shown up in the most unlikely of places – in the place of death – in a tomb. The glory of God – his holiness and very nature on display is manifested in the place traditionally most antithetical to holiness – death. Here the victory of God over even death itself is displayed as Jesus rises from the dead and now the glory of God dwells in that place of triumph. This is not the redemption of death, but rather its reversal. The very glory of God dwelt in a tomb and defeated death in the resurrection of Jesus. Death, far from being outside of the reach of God is what He decisively defeated in the death and resurrection of Jesus. That which seems farthest from God’s intervention, those areas of pain, weakness, depression, despair, disease and death are not simply to be reconciled with and resigned to. Rather, these are the very places where God’s glory and resurrection life will manifest and display the character and heart of the loving, compassionate, merciful God who “gives life to dead and calls into being things that do not exist.” (Rom. 4:17)

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