Why on earth do we think seeing hopes fulfilled would remove our hope?
by Danielle Shroyer
Epistle Reading: Romans 8:12-25
For Sunday, July 17, 2011: Year A—Ordinary 16
Oh, Paul. You do love run-on sentences, don’t you? They are so lovely in Greek, holding up that long line of endless-sentenced logical arguments stacking up like artfully poised Jenga pieces.
They are slightly less endearing, dare I say, in modern English. There are plenty of noteworthy bits in this chapter of Romans, with which many of us are overly familiar, but I’m just going to jump right to the end, right to my personal pet peeve, where we read this: “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?”
Well, Paul, I DO. I hope for what is seen ALL THE TIME.
Picking Sides?
I know this verse has gotten plenty of attention, because it’s a good rousing battle-cry when we find ourselves having to hope for something that’s nowhere in sight, and a long time coming. Like world peace. Or the Cubs winning the World Series. But I tend to feel it unfairly forces us to choose sides, as if hope and fulfillment are warring cousins, or rival siblings, requiring us to pick one over the other.
I’d argue, rather, that you can’t have one without the other. What kind of Easter would it have been without the women and disciples seeing the Risen Christ? We wouldn’t have resurrection hope at all if Jesus didn’t make himself seen and heard and poked and prodded and known over those next few days. And if Easter hope doesn’t count for Paul, how insane a definition of hope is that?!
Heart of Hope
Hope is defined as looking forward with confidence or expectation. You can have that outlook even when you got what you wanted, even after you saw the end of the play. In fact, as with Easter, seeing is the very heart of hope, the very center of what we hold onto when the world begins to feel despairing. We may question where we are, but we remember the hope of what we’ve seen.
Tell a parent who has waited years to hold their child that the seeing isn’t hope. I’d imagine, if you wait years to conceive, or years to adopt, that moment of holding that baby is when hope is at its brightest, when it stretches so far into the future that you begin to feel that just about anything is possible. Seeing makes hope robust, real, and near.
Teetering on a Tiny Pedestal
As much as I appreciate the way Paul attempts to give hope a nice platform, it may still be so narrow a platform that it’s cramping her style. There’s something deeply ironic about attempting to treat hope like she’s a fragile lady on a tiny pedestal. Is hope really teetering on four inch heels, looming so precariously that we suck in our breaths in fear and anticipation as we watch her from below?
This is hope, people—living hope! Hope isn’t a plastic Barbie in stilettoes, for Pete’s sake, stuck with impossible dimensions that keep her from being able to stand upright. If we're going to allegorize her, we’d do better envisioning the stout and strong posture of Unsinkable Molly Brown. She’s going to be fine. And because of her, so are we.
The Hardest Question
Why does Paul have such a small view of hope?
Danielle Shroyer is the Pastor of Journey Church in Dallas, TX. She is the author of The Boundary-Breaking God: An Unfolding Story of Hope and Promise (Jossey-Bass, 2009) and blogs at www.danielleshroyer.com. Danielle lives with her husband, two children, and two wild and crazy dogs in Dallas.
