This week we will consider four aspects of the practice of hope...hope from the God of life, hope toward the neighbor - as Walter Brueggemann says it.
...the classic text on hope is in the enigmatic formulation of Exodus 3:14, that is translated something like, "I will be who I will be," or "I will cause to be that which will be." The enigmatic quality of the statement in YHWH's mouth is to be reckoned as crucial, for the God of hope is profoundly elusive. This is an elusiveness that resists precise, idolatrous formulation. The God who speaks to Moses is the God of the ancestors who long ago made promises...
What counts the most, of course, is that the name of the promise maker who speaks here is disclosed amidst Pharaonic slavery. The disclosure is a counter to Pharaonic presence that was as oppressive as it was palpable in the slave community. The declaration of YHWH's presence has an emancipatory intention, providing a better future for a community that is on the move.
When we are in the days of our lives when all seems lost and there appears to be an oppressive end crashing in on us, we remember the name of our God and how that name is more than what we can see and hear and know. For hope to blossom, there must be that power - that reality - that promise that can and will take us beyond this day and begin to create things anew. Within this name calling, we are pulled into what is not yet and we are not left behind ever again. The God of this name...this reality...this power...and this intention for our well-being becomes our hope. Brueggemann shares a bit of what Martin Buber once wrote. This promise is given unconditional validity in the first part of the statement: "I shall be present", not merely, as previously and subsequently, "with you, with your mouth", but absolutely, "I shall be present." No longer are we left to hang out and dry up. For all who call upon this name, there is a future. We cannot wrap our minds around it all and contain it - as some religious and political people try to do. We can only trust that it is the whole story - a story that will unfold as God unfolds it among us. To trust like that is to be empowered by the one who promises because too often, the promise is so beyond us, we cannot imagine how to walk within its domain.
Connection: It would do us well to practice a simply exercise - say the name in the middle of all that is going on round about us..."I will cause to be that which will be." We have a whole book filled with stories of people like us who did just that...called out that name...and started to live again.
Come, O Future, O Hope, O Promise. Come and give us the courage to call out to you and make this day into something out of our control but filled with intention and purpose. Come, O God, and continue to pull us into your blessed Reign. Amen.
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