… hopelessness can assume two forms. It can be presumption, praesumptio, and it
can be despair, desperato. Both are
forms of the sin against hope.
Presumption is premature self-will anticipation of the fulfillment of
what we hope for from God. Despair is
the premature arbitrary anticipation of the non-fulfillment of what we hope for
from God.
Jurgen
Moltmann
_______________________________
They are everywhere
Those confident and certain ones
Who ask for, and believe they have
By default
God’s blessing
God Bless America!
MAGA!
They know what they want.
And with the power of will
And God’s blessing, they willfully create the future
They hope for
A future when they win
Dominate
Control
Where all their resentments can be satisfied
And all their fear vanquished.
They presume God is on their side
And they act accordingly
Without constraint
Without compassion
God is our God
We are God’s people
We count
They don’t
Power is divinely given
and cannot, therefore, be abused
Thus we have the emergence
of a fascist movement
Thus we have overt manipulation (when possible)
of all systems, economic, political, and judicial
Presumption
And then there are so many
of the rest of us
caught up in hopelessness and despair
all too certain
that God is going to be a no-show
That God, as so often happened in history
will simply not help bring into reality
equity
equality
justice
compassion
Despair
resignation
withdrawal
faded hope
We anticipate that we will lose
and we become caught up in
fight and flight
or, more likely, freeze
During COVID my church sought to move
from “lament to hope”
now we are seeking to “live into hope”
but it feels like we are sliding backward from hope to
lament
How do we actually reclaim hope?
We cannot, certainly, have hope for the wrong things
those things defined by human will
We cannot have an unrealistic hope
so idealistic that it will not, perhaps, ever be
a hope that is perfectionistic and unobtainable
how often do we see progress rejected
and things that are good denied
because they are not “enough”
What we need to hope for is a world
in which those things that are Love
That are God
rule
Where the hungry are fed
the naked clothed
the oppressed set free
the thirsty given water to drink
These are possibilities (are they not)
and hope is constantly moving toward what is possible
Hope (Moltmann says)
is not striving “after things that have “no place”
but after things that have “no place YET”
But we have the belief
that they can
and yes,
they will
We have faith in the one
who make all things new
Right now hope is hard
the presumptive have the rest of us despairing
So it comes down to this
do we believe that God will simply let whatever
the presumptive human will determines happen?
Do we believe, based upon not just this moment, but also
the past
prematurely
that what we hope for will be denied
or do we dare believe that somehow, in some way, at some
time
God will make things new?
Tonight, for me
the answer is too close to call
But I want to,
I really do,
live into hope
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