New Years and Hope

We inevitably associate hope and New Years. Ever optimistic we pine for and pin our hopes for some change in our lives or nation or world on the mere flip of a calendar page. Even many in the church buy into this version of pagan mysticism. I believe, however, that this version of hope is

-more optimism than hope

-more Western than biblical

-focused on big victories, large accomplishments worthy of grand celebrations

-beset by expectations galore

-accomplished by a few but never many

Biblical hope, however, cuts much deeper than such optimism-laced expectations. It garners little fanfare and breeds few large-scale parties. People like Debie Thomas know and practice such hope (The Christian Century (December 4, 2019). She’s the mother of a child with debilitating chronic pain. Caring for him is time-consuming, exhausting, and expensive with no hope of a respite. It won’t change with a flip of a calendar page. The stories of hope she inclines to in her situation are not, in her words, “ones that resonate (with) stories of epic victories and grand celebrations. Those are lovely, but they don’t speak to where I live as the mother of a son in chronic pain. Instead I take hope in the story of Sarah, 99 years old and pregnant, laughing her head off because she thought for sure she was too old and wise and jaded to ever again be surprised by God. I take hope in the story of Hagar, a slave woman dying of thirst in the desert, who even in her abandonment becomes the first person in the Bible to name God. I take hope in the story of Hannah, who cries so hard and so earnestly in the presence of God that people take her for a disrespectful drunk. I take hope in the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who ponders hard mysteries deep in her heart. I take hope in the persistent widow who pounds the door of a corrupt judge day after day after day, insisting on justice until she drives the man nuts. I take hope in the story of Mary Magdalene, who refuses to budge even when evil, tragedy, death and despair seems to have won the day.”

Such hope dares to raise its head where optimism has wilted, expectations have died, no one else is watching, cheering us on, drudgery weighs us down more than doubt, where our experience of God is like that of one of Toni Morrison’s characters who believes in God but has trouble sometimes trusting his judgment. This hope, biblical hope, is the size of a poppy seed. It grows in friendships, is nurtured by unobtrusive fragments of wisdom, and in what Debie Thomas calls “quiet resurrections that keep my son and our family going.”

Hope resists the magical thinking of calendar change mysticism. It’s built for lengthy waiting and has the tenacity to endure the “long defeat” (Tolkien) of God’s history in this world that claims its victory by martyrdom. Fired by the fierceness of love “strong as death, passion fierce as the grave” which floods cannot quench or drown (Song of Solomon 8:6-7). Watered by tears of compassion for fellow-travelers hope smacks down apathy and any excuses that give us leave not to act. It “finds and names God in the world’s most desolate places . . . (it) ponders and meditates and ruminates. Hope sits in the darkness — outwitting torture, humiliation, crucifixion, and death — until finally a would-be gardener shows up at dawn and calls us by name” (Thomas). Hope flies in the face of expectations and outcomes.

Hope, then, differs from optimism in the same way a New Year’s Eve party differs from a celebration of the Eucharist. There’s nothing wrong with New Year’s Eve optimism and resolutions, I suppose. As long as a few grains of salt sit near at hand. Their optimism will be disciplined by our weakness, their expectations rewrought by resurrection, and the new life they aim at will be transfigured by a cross, if indeed such optimism is cast as faith in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Such optimism and resolutions will fade within a few hours, days, months of their making for the vast majority of those who make them. Stories like Debie Thomas’ brutally honest account of her journey seeds and waters the bits of genuine biblical hope that may lie latent within them. In turning us toward the small friendships, fragile family ties, and broken beauty of God’s creation those bits are nurtured. May we cling to them in our lives as Ms. Thomas has in hers. And may we find the tough and hard-won hope she has. For God is faithful and good, all day, indeed, all life long.