After a difficult calendar year, it is natural and good to look forward to the turn of the page and hope that what follows will be better than what we’re leaving behind. What sane person would say, “More! Please, sir, may I have another?!”
Of course.
But, as your feed fills up with “Good riddance 2020!” and hopes that 2021 will be better and confidence that surely it must, be wary. Be wary of allowing those sentiments to define your approach to life, daily and otherwise.
For that’s not the Christian take on time, life, suffering and hope.
It just isn’t.
To begin to understand the Christian take, start with the traditional hymn sung on the last day of the year in the Catholic world. Te Deum.
What is the prayer of the Te Deum? “Please make the coming year better than last year?” “Why did you let us suffer last year, Lord?” or “Thanks for a waste of a year, God!”
No…it’s not that at all. It’s a prayer of praise to God and the few petitions embedded within are not about rescuing us from our present earthly difficulties in favor of earthly healing and comfort, but to bring us closer to Him and save us from sin.
We praise your name forever.
Keep us today, Lord, from all sin.
Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy.
Lord, show us your love and mercy;
For we put our trust in you.
In you, Lord, is our hope:
And we shall never hope in vain
As I keep saying over and over, the words of the Old Testament prophets were proclaimed in the midst of the great suffering of God’s people. Jesus entered a world of empire and oppression, of material poverty, division, violence, sickness and death. God’s Word was proclaimed, the Good News shared and lived thousands a years ago to suffering people…and so today.
And so, his coming isn’t about “Now he’s here, next year will be better.” It’s about something different, which you know and live if your mental and spiritual framework is first, God’s Word and secondly the Body of Christ’s reflection on that Word, lived, written, sung and spoken over two thousand years.
This season is one of rejoicing…but for what? Why do we rejoice?
Of course we seek an end to our earthly suffering and we work to alleviate the suffering of others near and far, in ordinary ways in daily life, and in our big projects and grand visions.
But our hope and our joy doesn’t rest on “it will be better tomorrow.” Because, you know…it won’t. We will still get sick, we will still die, we will still live on this earth restless and unsatisfied at our deepest levels. And even if earthly existence is eased a bit for me…what suffering is being endured next door? In my neighborhood? All around this world I live in?
To preach that Jesus is Real and Jesus is Fantastic because I feel physically and materially better today is a false Gospel. It has nothing to say to the terminally ill child or her parents who are holding her in her last hours, the family dwelling in abject poverty with no hope of surmounting it, to the whole world, suffering, groaning and waiting.
It is worth sitting with this truth, this irony, this tension: The Body that has done the most, through human history, to alleviate physical suffering and ameliorate material poverty, that has done the most to fashion beauty out of the raw stuff of this world in every way, is also the Body that reminds the world, day after day:
Yet the world and its enticement are passing away.
But whoever does the will of God remains forever.
The Good News that reminds us that God answers prayers and cares for every hair on our head also, paradoxically, reminds us that God is present here and now, no matter what is happening. It’s that Jesus Tension: strengthening, helping me grow, but leading me deeper into friendship with him in the midst of weakness and suffering that, if it’s overcome, is overcome with his strength and grace. We pray, with the Psalmist and with every believer through space and time for deliverance from what burdens us in the present moment – and pray for the grace to accept what is.
A paradox.
This time next year, at the end of 2021, some things about your earthly life will be “better.” Some will be “worse.” You might have successfully overcome some problems, and been surprised by new ones. You might have met your goals. You might have changed in some ways and remained exactly the same in others. You might be empowered to tackle problems in your community and lead change, you might be empowered to help people live fruitfully in difficult circumstances.
Who knows, you might even be dead.
The faith, hope and joy we celebrate and sing about doesn’t rest on the “good” things on that list happening and the “bad” things disappearing.
Radical acceptance. Radical change. Life with Jesus isn’t about one or the other. It’s about both: lives of radical acceptance and openness to radical change.
The Kingdom of God is within you.
They dropped their nets and followed him.
That’s the Christian journey, a non-binary lifestyle choice if I’ve ever heard one. How does it work? There’s no formula. No set of steps. It’s lived out, first, in listening and paying attention, and then, as long as our hearts keep beating and our lungs give us breath, it’s lived in tension, questions, joy, pain, strangeness, and paradox, as in the midst of suffering, we raise our voices:
Come then, Lord, and help your people,
Bought with the price of your own blood,
And bring us with your saints
To glory everlasting.
Save your people, Lord, and bless your inheritance.
Govern and uphold them now and always.
Day by day we bless you.
We praise your name forever.
Keep us today, Lord, from all sin.
Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy.
Lord, show us your love and mercy;
For we put our trust in you.
In you, Lord, is our hope:
And we shall never hope in vain
Charlotte was Both 