Hope in the promises of God: Some New Testament Reflections on Christian Ministry

“Cheap hope” and “costly hope”

As a minister in an urban parish, I am struck by how much pastoral work focuses on the notion of Christian hope. Baptisms and weddings are encounters with people at pivotal stages in life, and the rites of passage we offer look into the uncertainties of what lie ahead. Marriage and baptism mark moments of joy and confidence, but the relationships we establish through the ordinances of the church carry a tacit awareness of the dangers and risks that the ordinary things of life contain.

In the baptism of infants, we encounter the fragility and vulnerability of new life, a sense of the grace of God that comes through the gift, a desire to provide in family life and in the life of the community of faith a stable place in which to find strength for the various challenges that are part of growing up.

In marriage, the coming together of two people to make promises in the sight of their witnesses and before God is an act of deep faith that the stresses and dangers that lie ahead can be overcome, that the love declared is strong enough to withstand everything that future life will bring. In marriage preparation the reality of the breakdown of relationships is acknowledged. In putting together wedding services in conversation with couples who are getting married I am also impressed by the importance that is placed on the traditional words, “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health”. Not all contemporary Christian marriage services, such as those in the most recent edition of the Church of Scotland’s Common Order, include these words, and yet those preparing for marriage often request specifically that this formula be included. In so doing, they acknowledge their awareness that the path that they have chosen is one that is full of risk, full of challenge. The request to have a Christian marriage is a recognition that these risks cannot be withstood simply by the strength of those who enter that covenant.

Another significant issue in the practice of ministry is offering support at end of life. The Christian minister and the community of the church often accompany people who are coming to terms with the loss of physical power, or with a diagnosis of terminal illness. They offer support to people who recognise that the end of life is close, and accompany people whose are caring for loved ones in the final stages of illness. They provide pastoral care at a time of bereavement. In all of these settings questions are raised about whether hope can be found in the midst of unimaginable pain. Conversations open up about what it is right to hope for, about how meaning is found in the midst of the reality of different kinds of loss.

Right at the heart of Christian ministry, whether in the practice of those who are ordained, or in the service offered by all of God’s people, is a sustained reflection on the nature of Christian hope.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously wrote about “cheap grace” and “costly grace”:

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ…”

“…Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’” ¹

Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship is an extended reflection on how one moves from a conventional discourse and practice of Christian theology to one where not only the promise but the demands of the Gospel on the Christian community are fully realised. Perhaps a similar distinction between “cheap hope” and “costly hope” might be instructive in helping those engaged in Christian ministry go beyond the conventional language of Christian discourse. Bonhoeffer’s work may also serve as a reminder to us that, while Christian ministry is a significant engagement with the intimate personal moments in the lives of individuals and families, it has a much broader horizon.

Christian hope relates to a world-view that is presented in the New Testament that embraces experienced reality. It recognises the pain and struggle that characterise so much human existence, and nonetheless asserts that God is present in the world’s pain and is transforming it. Christian distinctiveness stems from the placing the story of the dying of Jesus at the heart of this understanding. The Gospels present the story of Jesus’ death as the apparent triumph of principles which deny the power of God, the power of death, the evil intentions of human agents, the inability of even those whom Jesus has called to understand or to be faithful when all hope for the future is stripped away. Everything we experience as life-denying, as a sign of the absence of God, is set against the assertion of resurrection. The story of Jesus’ resurrection as it is recorded in the Gospels is not simply about the return to life of Jesus, but about the relationships that result from it. God is able to bring new life out of everything that seeks to destroy, and forgiveness to those who have been guilty of the worst forms of betrayal. Christian hope takes this story to be both an assertion of a reality, and an underlying principle of God’s action in the world. It recognises that to realise Christian hope it is necessary to engage in the world’s suffering in order to overcome it.

“Cheap hope” is the proclamation of transformation, without the commitment to the transformative power of the Gospel working itself out through human action and experience. Some of the most difficult moments in pastoral conversation come when there is an expectation that somehow hope should be present without the recognition that God is present in suffering. It is the ability to perceive that what makes Christian belief distinctive is the opportunity for God to be active through suffering, the centrality of the story of the cross as the way in which God’s love is displayed. This becomes crucial in moments of extreme personal distress, but perhaps even more so in considering the experience of the majority of the world’s people at most points in history, where poverty and inequality are so much in evidence. The resilience of Christian theology lies in its ability to affirm the presence of God in the darkest of human experiences, not as a simple affirmation that poverty and exploitation, slavery and extreme inequality are expressions of God’s will for the world, but rather as a focus for resistance, for aligning Christian action with the movement of God in history.

Speaking of dying and rising again

The earliest Christian texts give a number of different foci for the interpretation of Christian hope. For Paul, the dying and rising of Jesus become the touchstone for interpreting the lived experience of the Christian. On one level this seems to be focussed on the participation of Christians in the resurrection of Jesus, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, when speaking of the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection, that “if for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (15.19). Perhaps in the realm of personal religion, it is this aspect of Christian belief that has the most obvious afterlife. In pastoral conversation with people facing death, or in time of bereavement, the idea of resurrection finds many different popular forms of expression, living for evermore with Jesus, going to be with Jesus in heaven, finding union with one’s loved ones, being released from the pain and distress of the present world to a life in the peace and rest of God.

The Biblical witness is rather less specific than many people understand it to be about the nature of resurrection. Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 15 shows a deep conviction, but is less assured on exactly what can be said about the resurrection, asserting that it is a bodily resurrection, but also that it will be “spiritual” (15.44). Similarly, the sayings of Jesus as they are recorded in the Gospel tradition are better at imagining what the life of the resurrection is not like than stating what it is (for example in the question about the status of husbands and wives in heaven, Mark 12.18-23).

Pastoral conversations surrounding loss and bereavement often seem to be fraught with difficulty exactly because of this lack of specificity. Perhaps this lack of specificity also allows an opening in pastoral conversation to help those who face the uncertainty of death and the pain of loss to articulate more fully what hope might be for them. Is it the release from pain and suffering, a sense of finding rest and peace? Is it a sense of leaving this world behind, of completion and fulfilment? Is it finding some sort of union with those who have gone before us into the mystery of death? Is it a reassurance that in the passing into death something that is lasting, something that is of immeasurable worth is being left behind?

In pastoral practice the notion of “cheap hope” may be exemplified by the offer of platitudes that simply speak of “going to heaven”, without using the tradition to explore what gives meaning and shape to the loss that is being experienced. In my own encounter with people who are coming to terms with a diagnosis of terminal illness, constantly I come to a simple question, “what is it that you hope for?” At different stages the same person may articulate a range of different answers which are authentic to the progress of the person’s illness and the changes in their spiritual understanding. As circumstances alter, the return to this question encourages growth in awareness. Hopes for complete recovery may give way to a desire to be at home surrounded by people they love; hopes for a long survival may be replaced by signs that in a younger generation of the family flourishing and future life are opening up. The exploration of hope can initiate a journey in prayer, sometimes taking confidence in a future cure as a starting point, and moving to an acceptance that with the inevitability of death the love and care of God are not broken, a search for the strength to face what lies ahead.

The story of the dying of Jesus allows an imaginative interplay with human experience in a way that addresses the fears that surround human loss. The cry of Jesus, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15.34), the abandonment of Jesus by his closest followers, and the persistence to the end of the few (John 19.25-27) open up avenues for exploring isolation and loneliness, fear of abandonment, anger and consolation. In contrast to “cheap hope”, reflection on these difficult aspects of the story of Jesus and how they allow fears to be acknowledged and openly spoken about offers the potential to move beyond fear with reassurance. The resurrection story of Jesus is not about the reanimation of a corpse, but about how relationships are healed, new futures forged, new possibilities become vibrant even in the face of the dreadful reality of death. In the changing circumstances of life, particularly for those who face the extreme reality of death, the reframing of hope is at once costly and life-giving.

From the personal to the global

Above we noted that the intimate and personal is one of the foci of Christian hope, but Christian faith also addresses questions of more universal significance, not simply about the future fate of individuals, but also about how God is active in the world of power and politics. How should we interpret those situations in which God is witnessed more obviously as absent than as present?

Among the treatments of resurrection in the writings of Paul, 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18 are the most frequently quoted. More difficult, and therefore less commented upon, is 2 Corinthians 5.1-10. In the previous chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul has been discussing the difference between the visible form of things and their true nature, “we look not at what can be seen, but at what cannot be seen” (4.18). Paul, who perceives that his work as a missionary in Corinth is threatened by people whose ability in preaching and whose prowess in performing remarkable spiritual feats are more impressive than his, relocates the centre of God’s power. It is not in impressive show, not in great strength, that God is made real. The true power of God is seen in weakness, just as it was seen in the figure of Jesus. “We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to us and not to God” (4.7).

For Paul, resurrection is not merely an assertion about the historical Jesus, nor a speculative event that will come at some undefined (but imminent) future time. It is also, and perhaps primarily, an event that suffuses the whole of lived experience in the current age. It is a model which enables us to interpret all sorts of human experience. For Paul, this relates to his own experience as a preacher of the Gospel, “we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down but no destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies” (4.8-10). Paul embraces a costly hope, a belief that engagement in God’s work will engage the follower of Jesus in difficult choices and sacrifice, out of which emerge the revelation of God, interpreted through the conviction that Jesus’ death was the way in which God’s power is most supremely manifested.

And so to 2 Corinthians 5.1-10. Paul contrasts what we might think of as a cheap hope, the longing that the current experience of pain and suffering might simply be removed from us, with a costly hope, based on the acceptance and fulfilment of responsibility. He makes this point through a complicated metaphorical picture, contrasting different kinds of dwelling, an earthly tent, which is the human body, temporary and passing away, to be replaced by a “building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (5.1-2). Mixing the metaphor now, Paul talks of these dwellings as clothes, and says that it is natural not to wish to be divested of the temporary tent, which is passing away, but having the eternal dwelling put on over the top. “We wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (5.4b). Such a model of hope, a transition without suffering, is not viable in Paul.

Paul’s writing is disappointing for those who seek a systematising of belief and experience, frustrating for those who seek consistency and ease of interpretation. Attempts to follow the direction of Paul’s logic will not make his writing more lucid. Rather, it is helpful to look for the underlying conviction that directs his writing. The simple removal from one sphere of life to another, the painless transition from the decaying body to the glorious body of heaven does not correspond to reality, however much we might wish this to be the case.

The current age is the time where hope is experienced, hope is given; faith is cheapened when it is seen as a mere removal from the current age which is the arena in which God’s activity is made manifest. “Walking by faith and not by sight” (5.7) is understanding that the principle of resurrection provides the key to interpreting where God can be seen in the world, where God calls his people to action. In some traditions of Christianity, the stress on “justification by faith alone” has diluted the idea of human responsibility, making the justifying act of God a supreme principle that overrides the call to live in a way that is under God’s rule. The idea that we are not called to account on the basis of our own actions but solely on the justifying work of Christ is often based on a reading of Paul, and particularly on Romans. This section of 2 Corinthians undercuts that understanding with its final affirmation “all of us must stand before the judgement seat of Christ so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil” (5.10). Against those who stress that somehow faith in Jesus is a removal from the world and the responsibilities of faith, Paul reaffirms that the value of faith is in finding the strength to act responsibly irrespective of what it may cost us.

The conviction that the principle of resurrection is the key to understanding human experience and the source of Christian motivation has a profound effect on Christian hope. There is a kind of passive hope, which asserts that somehow in God’s time all will be made well. And there is an active hope, a costly hope, which recognises that through engagement with the sinful reality of the world God’s victory can be manifested. Again, the telling of the story of the cross exemplifies the meaning of this kind of hope.

The human Jesus becomes a figure for the power of God, set against temporal powers which exemplify the power of the devil, the Roman authorities and the court which assume power through the condemnation of the one who is God’s Son. From the earliest telling of the Gospel story in Mark, the human drama is framed with this mythological structure. The “beginning of the good news” (Mark 1.1) asserts through baptism that Jesus’ activity is not merely to be interpreted at the level of the visible world. Emerging from the water, the Spirit comes upon him, not to bless him, but to “drive him out” into the wilderness where he is tempted by the devil (1.10-12). The story is a cosmic drama, with universal implications. Even for those modern interpreters who find the mythological assumptions which underlie the telling of the story difficult, the principle remains the same.

The unfolding of historical events in the human sphere tells the story at one level, in which human power becomes all consuming, and appears to be victorious over the representative of God’s values. By Jesus’ execution the threat has been removed of one who stressed community over the natural ties of kinship and family, who exemplified freedom from oppression and God’s valuing of the poor above the rich, who challenged national power and colonial domination. At the level of the visible world, Jesus’ story is pretty unremarkable, just another in the long history of people who have throughout the ages been executed for their unwillingness to conform to the dominance of worldly power. The level of threat did not seem to be so high, and the response disproportionate.

The Christian imagination will not settle on an interpretation in which the visible is the limit of our sight, and the testimony to the resurrection is the evidence of this. Resurrection is a refusal to believe that the exercise of ungodly power has ultimate victory, an assertion of the triumph of God over the apparent domination of the powers at work in the world who present their authority as ultimate. This is an assertion of hope that is costly, in the first instance because it demanded of Jesus the supreme sacrifice, that he should be subjected to those ungodly powers, that he should die on the cross. It is, moreover, hope that is costly because it demands of those who understand the power of the cross that the pattern of Jesus’ experience should, in some way, become their own. Paul’s testimony to the resurrection is the earliest assertion that the story of Jesus’ resurrection is to be appropriated by those who understand the vision proposed by the Gospel. Jesus’ experience is not something simply to be retold, but is lived out in the lives of those who find in that story the revelation of God active in the world. Christian hope in the resurrection is something in which the believer participates, making the pattern of death and resurrection both the key to understanding our current experience and an impetus for action.

The motivating principle behind theological reflection is the recognition of the way in which the theological tradition of which we are heirs provides understanding and motivation in the current time. Theological reflection is manifested in the interface between faithfulness to the wisdom handed down through the tradition and its particular interpretation in our current circumstances.

Perhaps we might characterise our current age as one of lost hope. Climate change and its effects on food security, the loss of confidence in the ability of financial institutions to bring order and prosperity, the all-too apparent widening of inequality within western societies and between the developed and developing world are among the things that loom large in our concerns. In the face of so many things that lead to despair at both a national and international level, is it possible to rehabilitate hope? In an age when the influence of Christian community in western societies is also on the wane, that same spirit of pessimism can also infuse the church.

Into this deep uncertainty Christian communities need to reassert a fundamental principle that hope is costly. We cannot affirm hope without recognising that it will engage us in difficult conversations that we are tempted to avoid. We cannot affirm Christian hope without recognising that the demand of hope is costly, since it will draw us into the pattern of death and resurrection, of sacrifice, that stands at the heart of the Gospel tradition. The challenges that we face in our times are ones that will require an acceptance of and a commitment to change the way that we live. “Cheap hope” can be a simple assertion that somehow everything will work out, in a way that is not true either to our experience or to the interpretation of how God is understood to be active through the dying and rising of Jesus. “Costly hope” sees the example of Jesus lived out in the world and through believers as the means whereby God’s activity in the world is affirmed. Such an insight has a profound effect on our proclamation and our action as Christian communities.

The New Testament is profoundly realistic, in that it does not engage in extended speculation as to why there are powers in the world which seem to have a destroying effect which cuts against the reality of God. These powers are simply acknowledged, and at the same time, through the story of Jesus, it is shown that they are not ultimate. The cross which is presented as their ultimate assertion of supremacy is in reality their downfall. Nonetheless, the struggle for power persists beyond the local and temporal limits of the earthly life of Jesus. The current age is equally the time of that struggle, and the witness of the church is that through engagement in the struggle the life of God continues to be manifested. Hope is generated by the refusal to accept that the appearance of the current age is the ultimate reality, so that what is experienced is death also carries within it the power of resurrection.

Christian theology bears witness to the realism that stands at the heart of the Gospel. It places the story of Jesus’ passion as the most significant event, not simply in history but as the source of human motivation in the current age.

If life is to be sustainable in the face of climate change, if the economic system is to move away from its current basis of rewarding people on the basis of accidents of birth or geography, then principles of sacrifice, of willingness to live in ways that break the patterns of power that we are led to believe are inevitable, are necessary. These are imperatives not only for Christians. The Church, however, is a community with a self-awareness that it has to become a place of hope. Perhaps we recognise ways in which Christian ministry has been focussed on the offer of cheap hope, and acknowledge that this has been detrimental both to the Christian community and to those who seek support through its ministry. The Church expresses its distinctiveness through the capacity of Christians to express this hope in ways which are costly, and therefore in conformity to the pattern of hope which is revealed through the witness to Christ’s death and resurrection.