Theology 101: The Church has a very specific definition of ‘hope’
Photo: Gerald Farinas.
The first theme of Advent is hope. The Rev. Kristin Hutson featured the word in huge letters on the front of the Order of Worship on Sunday.
When we use the word hope in our daily life, we usually mean something uncertain. We might say that we hope it does not rain. We might say we hope the Bears will beat the Packers next Sunday and remain the NFC top seed. We are not sure if these things will actually happen. The Bears could blow it all—like they normally do. We just cross our fingers and wait.
But in the Church, hope means something very different. It is not a wish. It is not about something uncertain. It is a promise. It is knowing for sure that God will do what He said He would do.
John Calvin was a founding father of our Reformed theology. He taught that faith and hope always go together. Faith believes that God is telling the truth. Hope waits for God to act. You cannot have one without the other.
The Bible gives us a great picture of this. It calls hope an anchor for the soul. You know those big tour boats at Navy Pier? An anchor holds those boats in place when Lake Michigan gets really nasty so they don’t drift away. Christian hope does the same thing for us. It holds us steady when life is hard. It gives us peace because we are holding onto Jesus rather than our own luck.
We live in a middle time. We look back and see that Jesus has already risen from the dead. We know he has won the victory. But we also look around Edgewater, or our City of Chicago, or even our country, and see that things are still broken. There is still sadness and pain being felt by all sorts of people: hungry people, unhoused people, unemployed people, people affected by violence or even war, people who worry about the money not being enough to buy groceries or medicine, or if ICE will get them today.
Hope helps us live in this middle place. It bridges the gap between what Jesus did in the past and what he will do in the future. It allows us to be honest about our suffering without giving up. We do not pretend everything is perfect. But we also know that the darkness will not win. We know the end of the story.
Because our hope is real, it does not make us lazy. Sometimes people think that focusing on heaven means we can ignore the problems on earth. Our tradition teaches the opposite. We know God loves this world and plans to heal it. This makes us want to help heal it too.
We feed hungry people, we help our neighbors, we protest and demonstrate for what we believe in, because we know this is what God wants. Our hope gives us energy. We can face hard challenges because we know our work is not a waste of time. We work with confidence because we know God is with us.
Real hope is trusting that God keeps his promises. It is not crossing your fingers. It is standing on a solid rock. As we live our lives at Edgewater, let us hold onto this truth. We are a people of hope because we trust in our Savior.
