Waiting for a hope that does not disappoint...

Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk.
                                                         - Walter Brueggemann in The Prophetic Imagination


Around ten days ago President Obama stood before the people of Houston, TX assembled to mourn the loss of five law enforcement officers shot during a Black Lives Matter rally. As he stood there in the role of consoler in chief, a role he has be required to play so many times before,he started with these words:

"Scripture tells us that in our sufferings there is glory, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. Sometimes the truths of these words are hard to see. Right now, those words test us. Because the people of Dallas, people across the country, are suffering." (1)

In that statement he was paraphrasing Romans 5:3b-5. This is one of my favorite passages of scripture. In fact my wife asked me last night what my favorite passage of the Bible is and I talked about Romans 5:3b-5. But as President Obama spoke my mind jumped to the rest of the verse as it reads in the Revised Standard Version (the Bible of my youth):

"More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us."

I was waiting to her President Obama say "And hope does not disappoint us." I was thrusting for that line. My soul was begging for that line. 

In the middle of a long string of shootings and violence that has focused the attention of the country on issues of race, policing, personal rights, and the a host of entanglements tied to all of our personal convictions and fears, it has also been a time of morning in my city and in the community I am a part of.  Anchorage has had a violent year full of murders, and as the news of shootings across the country clogged the news, there was a violent torture and murder of a woman in our local headlines along with 4 other murders in the last month.  While Anchorage is often violent (in 2010 Forbes Magazine voted it the 5th most dangerous city in the US (2) and Alaska was listed as the most dangerous State by USA Today in 2016 (3) ) the past couple weeks have hit very close to home.  The teen center I work for lost two youth in the span of two weeks - one murdered and one who took their own life.  The violence and pain is/was at all levels - national, local, personal.

So as I drove and listened to President Obama speak I kept waiting, in my disappointment, for him to tell me that "hope does not disappoint us."  Even more I wanted him, or someone, to explain to me how that works.  I'm disappointed when a youth sees no hope and ends their life, or another ends up the victim of the streets and addictions they could not escape.  I am disappointed when innocent people are shot dancing in a club, or marching in a protest, or being detained by police.  Where is this hope that does not disappoint?

Yet Paul is telling us that "More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us"  Well I'm gonna be honest, right now I'm sick of suffering.  Right now I'm exhausted and I'm not sure I want to endure anymore.  Right now I feel like I have all the character I could every need.  But Hope...I don't feel a lot of that and I want to.  I want hope to wash over me, fill me, restore me, transform me and NOT disappoint me.

I love Romans 5:3b-5, not because it is a passage that helps me make sense of my world, but because it screams out from suffering, and things that don't make sense, that "hope does not disappoint us."  We all want good news and a happy ending, but this set of verses speaks a hard truth - a truth the suffering is part of what makes us into the people of God and that hoping in God, even when it feels hopeless, does not disappoint us.

Joel K


(1)  http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/full-transcript-president-obamas-speech-dallas-police-memorial/story?id=40521153  
  
(2) http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efel45mde/anchorage-alaska/ 

(3) http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2016/01/16/24-7-wall-st-most-dangerous-states-america/78819814/