Christmas Hope

"Adoration of the Shepherds
G. vanHonthorst, 1622

Professor Lewis Smedes said “Keep hope alive and hope will keep you alive.” Those powerful words have stuck with me over the years. For most of us, it is natural to hope for our own well-being, to hope for a good future. It’s a way of affirming the life God gave us and generating excitement about future possibilities.

It’s natural and healthy to hope for ourselves, but it is narrow-minded and self-destructive to hope only for ourselves. Biblical hope, the hope that accompanies the celebration of Advent and the birth of the Prince of Peace, “has a wide-angle lens.” That’s how Neal Plantinga describes it and I have learned much from his insights.

Biblical hope takes in whole nations and peoples. It brings into focus the entire created order. In Plantinga’s words, “this webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets called shalom. We call it ‘peace,’ but it means far more than just peace of mind or cease-fire between enemies . . . In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, all under the arch of God’s love. Shalom, in other words, is the way things are supposed to be.”

For years, my colleagues and I on the staff of the American Studies Program (a public policy work-study program in Washington, D.C.) taught our students that injustice and oppression in our world need to be addressed by Christians who respond by saying “It doesn’t have to be like this!” We encouraged our students not to become cynical or hard-hearted, but to become agents of hope.

In the middle of the world’s brokenness and pain, we need to center our hope on Jesus Christ, the Lord of the cosmos. There are no other gods, no other foundations, upon which to base our hope. That’s the great joy of Christmas. God intervened in history and gave us his son -- and this son is the promised Prince of Peace.

Jesus taught us how to be people of hope, how to creatively live according to his commandments, and how we will one day see him return in glory. Our biblical hope looks forward to a whole “new heaven and new earth” in which pain, mourning and death will no longer be present. This is the “big picture” seen through Advent’s wide-angled lens. Let’s celebrate!

So What?

• Cornelius Plantinga Jr.’s book, Engaging God’s World, is a treasure and I would encourage you to get a copy. I read and re-read it regularly, especially when I feel overwhelmed by the challenges I face both in Russia and here in the States.
• Have a blessed Advent season and work on expanding your sense of hope so that it becomes a “wide-angle lens.”

Seek the Peace of the City

Building a Community Garden

There are times when I feel like I am in exile in a foreign land, both when I am in the States and in Russia. Trying to follow Jesus in a post-modernist world, where religion is privatized and marginalized – and often treated as irrelevant to life by the opinion makers – can be a struggle. In times like this, I can identify with the Jews who were literally in exile and to whom the prophet Jeremiah shared powerful insights about how to live in these conditions.

Let me briefly set the context for the exile of the Jews. Jeremiah lived during the tumultuous days when the Kingdom of Judah was a pawn battered about by the “superpowers” of his day. The land of Palestine was a battleground for the ravaging armies of Egypt, Assyria and Babylon and the Jews were caught in the middle of the violence. As if this weren’t bad enough, Jeremiah told the people of Judah that God’s judgment was coming for their disobedience and that their sins of idolatry and injustice would result in the collapse of their small, beleaguered kingdom.

After they had been carried off into exile by the Babylonians, Jeremiah sent them a letter with a surprising message: build houses, plant gardens, marry, have children and “seek the peace and prosperity of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7) in which they had been relocated. Jeremiah gave them a message from God to seek shalom within the borders of the empire that had just conquered their land and deported them.

Sometimes followers of Jesus are caught in political situations beyond their control. They are forced to flee their mother country, are trapped in nations with repressive political regimes of the Right or the Left, or are politically powerless because of economic deprivation or other reasons. Or, like disciples in secular societies in Western Europe and America, are treated as narrow-minded sectarians because they believe the Bible to be God’s Word.

Building Homes
(c/o Habitat for Humanity)

The Biblical message for practicing peacemaking has relevance in all of these contexts: seek the peace of the city where God has put you. Even if you are not able to have an impact on the national or international level, everyone can be peacemakers in their city, neighborhood, and family.

Like the exiled Jews, followers of Jesus can be people of hope because they know God’s promise: “For I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV). The practice of peacemaking for ordinary Christians begins right where we are.

So What?

• Can you identify with this sense of being an exile? Often, when attending foreign policy conferences where religion is ignored or quickly dismissed by secular-minded analysts, I get this feeling of being an exile. Does this happen to you in your work place or school setting?
• Can you think of some practical steps you can take to “seek the peace of the city” where you live?

Peace and Justice

Pastor Tim Keller’s book, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just, gave me some fresh insights on the topics highlighted in the title of this post. In fact, this topic of the relationship between justice and peace will be a subject frequently discussed in this blog. Keller brought in a third dimension and I want to share his insights with you.

Keller’s discussion is set in the context of the creation story and how radically different the Jewish Scriptures are from every other ancient account of the beginning of the world. Except for the Bible, most ancient cultures depict creation as the result of a battle or a struggle between warring cosmic forces. But the people of Israel, unlike any of their neighbors, did not believe any other divine power was on par with God. They believed that creation was the work of God without a rival, and that God created the world like an artist paints a picture or shapes a sculpture. God is a craftsman, an artist.

The Old Testament uses two kinds of imagery to describe the creation of the world. One image is architectural – God built the world like a person constructs a home or a royal dwelling. But the Bible also describes the creation of the world as the weaving of a garment. The fabric metaphor conveys the importance of relationships. If you throw lots of pieces of thread onto a table, no fabric results. The threads must be carefully woven together, one thread over and around many others.

This, in Keller’s judgment, is what God did at creation. He created “all things to be in a beautiful, harmonious, interdependent, knitted, webbed relationship to one another. . . . This interwovenness is what the Bible calls shalom, or harmonious peace” (p. 173). Keller is in agreement with the argument I made when I began this blog -- the English word “peace” simply does not adequately convey the true biblical meaning of this word shalom. Keller defines shalom as “complete reconciliation, a state of fullest flourishing in every dimension – physical, emotional, social and spiritual – because all relationships are right, perfect, and filled with joy” (p. 174). I think this is a great definition!

When sin entered the world, it defaced and marred everything that God had made and ripped apart the harmonious relationship between God and human beings. The whole world stopped “working right.” Because our relationship with God has broken down, shalom is gone.

Keller argues that if we desire to “do justice” as God commands us, we need to live in a way that generates a strong community where human beings can flourish. To “do justice” means to go places where the fabric of shalom has broken down, where the weaker members of society are falling through the fabric, and to repair it. Keller stresses that “the only way to reweave and strengthen the fabric is by weaving yourself into it” (p. 177).

This is a powerful metaphor and it accurately describes how Jesus lived his life. He spent his time and energy repairing the broken and torn “fabric” of first-century Palestine. If we choose to follow Jesus, we need to learn how to repair torn fabric and re-weave the broken strands in our society.

So What?

• To be a peacemaker, we need a vision of God’s shalom and an ability to articulate what it is that we are working for in the context where God had placed us. Making “right relationships” so everyone can flourish is a big vision -- but we can participate in this venture.
• Buy Keller’s Generous Justice – it has helpful insights and you will be blessed by this short book! Keller’s strength is highlighting biblical truths and then giving them practical application. Let me know if this book was helpful to you.