Several participants at the young adult “wine and paint” on Thursday were talking about the reasons we liked various colors. One of them told a fascinating story from a book by French artist Sophie Callé. According to Callé, a woman who was born blind was asked what her favorite color was. Surprisingly, she had a favorite color! It was green! Her discussion partner asked her how she could love a color she had never seen. She responded that when she asked people about the various colors of things, the objects that she loved were always described as “green.” So she knew, without a doubt, that green was her favorite color. She could love something that she had never seen, because she loved the things that pointed to it.
Today’s readings deal with what theologians call “eschatology,” or the “last things.” They deal with the unseen “end of the story,” the source of our hope in the present. Episcopalians aren’t as comfortable talking about eschatology as some other Christians are. We don’t follow those who cobble together scripture to invent the “Rapture.” We proclaim Christ’s triumphant return someday, but we shy away from talking about it. We emphasize the glimmers of God’s Kingdom in the present, rather than its fulfillment in the future. We encourage one another to do good works, rather than waiting for some sweet “pie in the sky, by and by.” Without ever articulating our future hope, however, it’s easy to wind up in hopelessness and despair when things are going badly. Without the vision of a future where all will be made right, where there will be no more hunger or thirst, where Christ will sit with us and wipe the tears from our eyes, we have no hope to move toward. If the past and the present and are own weak efforts are all we have, we sit in our own kind of blind darkness. Today’s troubles are all that we have.
The Feast of All Saints is a good time for the lines between past, present, and future to blur, as we remember the saints who have gone before, the saints that we ourselves are, and the Church Triumphant in heaven. As we read the beatitudes from Matthew’s Gospel today, note the use of verb tenses in Jesus’ teaching about joy. Jesus begins each statement by introducing who is blessed, who is deeply happy: he names a virtue or character trait of each, in the present. It’s a surprising list, compared to our society’s understanding of happy blessedness. There’s no mention of wealth here, no mention of being carefree, secure, healthy, or smart. Instead, Jesus claims joy for those who are running out of energy, those who are grieving over the state of the world, those who are giving what they have for others, those who are trusting that God will act, those who are acting with integrity, those who are working for peace, those who are persecuted and reviled.[1] These qualities sure aren’t what the check-out lady at the grocery store means when she calls out, “Have a blessed day!”
When I look at Jesus’ list, I see admirable qualities, certainly, but not ones that I would align with “happiness.” Why are these self-giving, difficult virtues the “blessed” ones? The answer lies in the second part of each phrase—the part that is mostly expressed in the future tense. Jesus proclaims that we are joyful now, because of what will be, in the future. Preacher Tom Long explains it well: The Christian community “sees its life in two frames of reference. First, it sees the world of human history, a world of struggle in which the church works and serves and lives out its mission. Based on evidence from this world alone, there is little reason for hope or joy… But the church also … sees what others do not see, that God is at work in this world even today and will surely bring all creation to a time of peace and rejoicing.”[2]
According to the author of 1 John, we can’t know exactly what the future will look like, any more than the blind woman in Callé’s story knows what “green” looks like. We do know some things, though, that can point to what awaits us. We know that, in Christ, we have become children of God. We are each beloved, each worthy of love and respect and dignity. We are all “saints,” vessels of God’s light, into which Love shines into the world.
For 1 John, the way we know this Love is to participate in Christian community. We know God’s love in the daily work and actions of our fellow saints on earth. We know God’s love in the hand that lifts us up when we are down. We know God’s love in the casserole that feeds us when we are sick. We know God’s love in the interest that others lavish upon our children, or our dreams, or our projects. The “purity of Christ” that the Johannine preacher talks about here isn’t some sinless holiness. Christian “purity,” or holiness, is manifest in all the concrete acts of love that we share in Christian communities like St. Ambrose.
Since we experience Christ’s Love through the hearts and hands of our fellow Christians, says 1 John, we can know that this love will continue, even in the world to come. On of my favorite prayers from the Rite One burial service goes, “Remember thy servant, O Lord … and grant that, increasing in knowledge and love of thee, he may go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in thy heavenly kingdom.”[3] Our whole lives long, our experience of God’s Love continues to grow and deepen, so why would it stop at our deaths? Why wouldn’t the love that we know in the present continue into the future, ever greater, ever deeper to the end of time?
Like many of you, I’ve been sitting in my own hopelessness these days over the situation in the Middle East, as I listen to news of so much unjust suffering. I’ve been wondering what our Palestinian Christian siblings are thinking. When I was in the Holy Land in 2007, I met and worshiped with Palestinian Lutherans in Bethlehem, and I met their pastor, Mitri Raheb. Even back in 2007, this Christian group did amazing work for peace and justice in such a complex and seemingly hopeless situation. So this week, I googled the Rev. Dr. Raheb and noticed that he has been called upon numerous times in the past few weeks to speak in the American media. He, of anyone, should have something to say to us today about Christian hope.
First, I found what he said about hope in 2017:
“As Christians we continue to live in a broken world and thus the tension between the "the world as it is" with all its ugly and painful realities and the "the world as it could be." We have to balance that tension. Being too absorbed by "the world as it is" makes us resentful. Dreaming too much about "the world as it should be” makes us fundamentalists. [To hope is to] live … with our two feet deeply grounded in the reality of this world, and, at the same time, with our two hands engaged in creating the "the world as it could be."[4]
Just last month, in a recent Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to the Western Church, Raheb and others end with a quotation from another document, “Kairos Palestine.” Kairos is the Greek term that we refer to as “God’s Time,” the unknown time that is the fulfillment of human time, the time in which God will act. Listen to what our suffering sibling-Christians write to us:
“’In the absence of all hope, we cry out our cry of hope. We believe in God, good and just. We believe that God’s goodness will finally triumph over the evil of hate and of death that still persist in our land. We will see here ‘a new land’ and ‘a new human being’, capable of rising up in the spirit to love each one of his or her brothers and sisters.’[5] Your Kingdom Come.”
Can we, too, join these Christians in crying out our cry of hope? Can we name the acts of self-giving Love that we experience each day from our siblings in Christ, from those who work alongside us to create the world as it could be? What color are the acts of integrity, peacemaking, and giving that you experience? What color are the generous outpourings of love in your life? For that will be the color of the future Kingdom of God, its richness ever deepening, as we move from strength to strength.
[1] Thomas C. Long, Matthew (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 48-50.
[2] Long, 47.
[3] BCP, 488.
[4] Mitri Raheb, “Bible Study on Luke 4,” Leipzig, June 2017. https://www.mitriraheb.org/en/article/1499178857
[5] “An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians,” October 20, 2023. https://www.change.org/p/an-open-letter-from-palestinian-christians-to-western-church-leaders-and-theologians?fbclid=IwAR3qwHsbR8dliRBKsioBlB-ByRW4gqu2U533UO1x9ohCjDE1Ddext_EM2FU.
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