deepening thoughts on hope, expectant waiting and the pashcal mystery...

In a recent post and Sunday live-stream I shared a reflection on hope as an

unsentimental commitment to expectant waiting and trust in God's steadfast love. This is different, to paraphrase Dr. Cherice Bock, from personal goal-setting and/or psychological/emotion longing. Rather, this hope is a counter-cultural commitment to living beyond the confines of empire. Such a way of living resonates with my own life experiences and theology, so I want to articulate how hope becomes a spiritual discipline or practice. In this, hope is a way of being guided by discernment - embodying "eyes to see and ears to hear" - the quiet but salvific presence of the holy in our ordinary lives. I have found the writing of the Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann to be helpful:

“Hope, on one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk. On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.”

In An Introduction  to the Old Testament: Canon and Christian Imagination, he makes the case that the Hebrew Bible has consistently been shaped and redacted by the faith community's experiences as a "displaced people." One of the consequences of ancient Israel's various encounters with exile is their "imaginative remembering" of history, stories, prayers, and songs. This "disciplined, emancipated act of imagination" produced a tradition guided by a "relentless act of imagination. "That is, the literature (of the Bible) is not merely descriptive of a commonsense world; it dares, by artistic sensibility and risk-taking rhetoric, to posit, characterize, and vouch for a world beyond common sense." (Brueggemann, p. 9) The purpose of this creative body of writing is to train people apt to be seduced by a culture that rejects wonder, gratitude and obedience  - empire - in practices reinforcing the character of God for individuals as well as the whole community of faith. Expectant patience and waiting with discerning hearts Brueggemann notes become foundational spiritual disciplines.

"It may be that the final form of Torah was not reached in the brief period of the Babylonian displacement, but rather during the subsequent Persian period during which there continued to be communities of passionate Jews far from Jerusalem. Either way, after the disruption of 587 BCE, under Babylonian or Persian aegis, Jews understood themselves to be exposed, vulnerable, and at risk without the visible supports of a stable homeland... Displaced people need a place from which to validate a theologically informed peculiar identity and practice of life. The traditioning process that produced Torah thus strikes me as a remarkable match for displacement, so that we may understand 'the Torah of Moses' as a script for displaced community." (p. 22)

I have come to trust that a similar and equally creative imaginative remembering

is taking place within Western Christianity, too. And the key doctrine in transition is the Paschal Mystery. In the realm of dogma, the Paschal Mystery addresses both the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as a discrete sacrifice in history, and, how this sacrifice is shared during the celebration of the Eucharist. There is now a cadre of creative people of faith exploring how the rhythm of Holy Week not only mirrors an individual's spiritual renewal - what Richard Rohr calls falling upward through descent before new life or the healing of the 12 Step process is realized - as well as the theological interpretation of cosmology being explored by Matthew Fox, Cynthia Bourgeault, David Steindhl-Rast, Thomas Berry, Sally McFague and Pope Francis. Annie Dillard and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin might also be included as a part of this movement. 

What I hope to do over the next few weeks here and during my Sunday live-cast is describe key components of the new eco-theology as it applies to a

contemporary understanding of the Paschal Mystery. This might be helpful in practicing how a Christian discipline of hope of expectant patience is at the core of our liturgy. The wetlands behind our house is slowly shifting in hue and scale. It serves as a constant reminder to me of creation's journey from life into death before a profoundly different new life. i think the United Church of Canada got it right in their modest Statement of Faith:

We are not alone,

we live in God’s world.

We believe in God:

who has created and is creating,

who has come in Jesus,

the Word made flesh,

to reconcile and make new,

who works in us and others

by the Spirit.

We trust in God.

We are called to be the Church:

to celebrate God’s presence,

to live with respect in Creation,

to love and serve others,

to seek justice and resist evil,

to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,

our judge and our hope.

In life, in death, in life beyond death,

God is with us.

We are not alone.

Thanks be to God.