Life can be so wonderfully joyous. The birth of a baby, the hug of a friend, the beauty of a sunset, the smell of coffee. And yet at other times, life can be so tragically sad. The recent floods in central Texas and the loss of so many young children and families was devastating. Our hearts go out to all those suffering such unimaginable loss. We are encouraged to hear of the overwhelming love and support they are receiving from people all around the world. But such suffering is another reminder that life is a mysterious mixture of joy and sorrow, life and death. At times, the sorrow can be overwhelming.
There is a lot of despair in our world today, and for good reason. Every day, thousands die around the world because of needless wars. There is constant political tension, both abroad and here in the US. We are constantly bombarded by information and overwhelmed with technology and stress. A recent Harvard Youth Poll found that over half of young Americans aged 18 to 29 reported feeling down, depressed, or hopeless at least several days in the previous two weeks. While there are numerous reasons for all this despair, sociologist point to two in particular: a loss of community and a loss of meaning. We need others and we need purpose.
WHAT STORY ARE YOU IN?
One reason we feel a loss of meaning in our world is because we have lost any “big story” of what life is all about. We humans tend to see life as a story, and maybe that’s because, after all, life is a story. But nowadays we all live in our own “little” stories. We no longer have a big story, one that helps us understand where all this is going and how to make sense of this mixture of joy and tragedy. Although the speed of life and the mass of entertaining diversions distract us, we still have “a nagging sadness of the heart, as we sense that the whirlpool of pleasures does not bring satisfaction and that, before long, it may suffocate us. The victory of technological civilization has instilled in us spiritual insecurity. Its gifts enrich us, but enslave us as well….all is a struggle for material things, but an inner voice tells us that we have lost something pure, elevated and fragile. We have ceased to have purpose.”[1]
What does the Christian message have to offer this world of despair? Much in every way, but I think two things in particular: a story and a community. The Christian message is a story–a story about people and about bringing people together so that humanity might flourish.
This story lets us in on one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: that God himself is a community of beings (a community of self-giving love we know as Father, Son, and Spirit). He created humans to be a reflection, or an image, of that community. We only truly become human when we are loved and learn to love others.
God is obsessed with humans and loves us so much that he became one of us. In fact, a part of humanity is forever embedded in God. The “God became man” (which we know as Jesus of Nazareth) is God himself, and to this day he bears the marks of love he suffered with and for us. You and I are in a story alright, and it’s a love story that is full of purpose and people.
THE “GOD WITH US” STORY
What the Christian story has to offer the world is a God who is with us in every way. God is with us even now until, as he has promised, he brings about an age to come in which there is no death, separation, or evil. What we have to offer the world is Jesus. In Jesus, we see that God is not “something up there where humans are not,” but God suffers with us in our suffering. God himself is the one who is acquainted with our grief. God himself has joined us in our pain, suffering, and loneliness. God himself knows what physical pain feels like, what it feels like to be completely alone and “God-forsaken,” what it feels like even to lose a child. God himself even knows what it is like to die as a human. At one time in human history, God felt all of this suffering with us. But as John Stott writes, “there is good biblical evidence that God not only suffered in Christ, but that God in Christ suffers with his people still. Did Jesus not ask Saul of Tarsus why he was persecuting him, thus disclosing his solidarity with his church? Truly his name is ‘Emmanuel,’ ‘God with us.”[2]
But God has not only suffered with us, he has also overcome death and evil. We would have never heard of this Jesus of Nazareth had it not been for the fact that he overcame death. As physicist John Polkinghorne writes, if Jesus had not come back to life, “he would have simply disappeared from historical recollection…. Yet we have all heard of Jesus, and that in itself is a significant fact about him. The riddle of Jesus is why someone whose life seemed to end in complete failure has proved to be the most influential figure in the history of the world.”[3]
But because Jesus did rise from the dead, everything has changed! History now does have a purpose. Because Jesus did rise from the dead, all that he said about God is true! Jesus’ claims to be God “come down” to be with us are true! Because Jesus did rise from the dead, we too are assured that this life is not all there is and that death does not have the final say. That means (as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15) that Jesus is the “first fruit,” and we too will live forever.
The resurrection also means that there has been a regime change; this creation is under a new world order. Because Jesus rose from the dead, death doesn’t have the power we once thought it did. We also know that evil will not have the last say and that perpetrators of evil will not get away with it. God isn’t weak to deal with the world’s death and evil; he deals with evil just like he always has, through his patient, faithful love, but also with putting an end to evil and death. God gives life everyday all over the world, so he knows how to give life. The resurrection of Jesus is the preview of the future, of all that God had originally intended for his creation. The resurrection is our ground for hope in the faithful love of God.
GOD INVITES YOU TO PARTNER WITH HIM
God created us humans to “partner” with him in wisely governing the world he created for us. And in Jesus, God-become-human, he is showing us how to be human, how to love and live wisely. We have certainly made a mess of this world, but he’s not finished yet. He doesn’t give up on people, and he hasn’t given up on you or me. Because Jesus did rise from the dead, the power of his living Presence, the Holy Spirit of God, really can be with us in our daily lives. And we come to know that Presence most fully as we are around other people (Jesus’s church) who are learning to become more like Jesus. Over time, we are becoming “little Christs,” bringing refreshment and healing to our families, our friends, and even our enemies. And because Jesus rose from the dead and is with us now, that means nothing, not even death, will ever separate us from his love or his life-giving power. This is not a dead-end story, it’s a life-end story, a forever story.
One reason for the despair in our world is because the dominant stories of this world are power, money, and fame. But God’s story is refreshingly different. “Our ‘big story’ is not a power story. It isn’t designed to gain money, sex, or power for ourselves…It is a love story—God’s love story, operating through Jesus and then, by the Spirit, through Jesus’ followers.”[4] God wants you to join him in being part of his story to heal the world, “not with the love of power but with the power of love.”[5]
FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE
What we have to offer the world is faith, hope, and love. While these three words are so familiar to us now, they were not common in the first century Roman empire. Christianity introduced them as people began not just to hear them, but to embody them. We have faith because we experience the faithfulness of God in our lives. We have hope because the God of hope fills us with all joy and peace as we come to trust in his love, and, in fact, we overflow with hope by the power of God’s Presence (Rom. 15:13). This hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through his Spirit (Rom. 5:5).
As Walter Brueggeman said:
Hope in gospel faith is not just a vague feeling that things will work out, for it is evident that things will not just work out. Rather, hope is the conviction, against a great deal of data, that God is tenacious and persistent in overcoming the deathliness of the world, that God intends joy and peace. Hope is the deep religious conviction that God has not quit. Resurrection of the dead is God’s capacity to take a circumstance of complete shutdown and hopelessness and make something new from it. The good news is surely an urgent word of assurance in our time, because our society and world are close to shut down and no one can see ahead. But women and men of faith know otherwise. We know because we are part of a story of an alternative of new possibility, grounded in unconditional love, right in the middle of our lives. And we can see it welling up in specific ways when people give themselves over to the goodness of God.[6]
[1] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “We Have Ceased to See the Purpose,” in The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings 1947-2005, ed. Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney (ISI Books, 2006), 595.
[2] John Stott, The Cross of Christ (InterVarsity Press, 1986), 335.
[3] John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World (Yale, 2002), 67.
[4] N.T. Wright, How God Became King (HarperOne, 2012), 241.
[5] Wright, How God Became King, 239.
[6] Walter Brueggemann, A Gospel of Hope (Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 104, 108.