Hope as Virtue and Discipline

This comes out of pastor Larry Kamphausen's notes for and from the discussion at the Theology on Tap: Hope as Virtue and Discipline, November 18, 2016

“The arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards Justice.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used this aphorism in a sermon delivered at Temple Israel of Hollywood.  This is a hopeful image.  The aphorism is a snapshot of hope as virtue and discipline, before we unpack and interpret this aphorism, we need to ask some questions.

What is Hope? Hope can be a slippery thing to lay hold. We may by a lottery ticket and in hoping to win the lottery.  A child might hope that she is getting from her parents a gift that she asked to receive. Such hope doesn’t seem to be either virtuous nor does it require any discipline.  The second case approaches more what we mean when we speak of hope as virtue and discipline. In the case of the hope of a child for a gift from their parents, is hoping in someone for something There is a difference between hoping to win the lottery and hoping to receive something one has asked for at Christmas.. The hope of the child is rooted in the loving relationship between the child and their parent. The hoped-for outcome isn’t guaranteed, but it is more likely and is bound up with a relationship.  In this second type of hope what one is hoping in is distinguished from what is hoped for, yet they are bound up together. Even so, in the hope of a child for a Christmas gift hasn’t yet brought us to hope as virtue and discipline

All instances of hope aren’t virtuous. So, we need to ask what is common across various instances of hopefulness. So that we then can lay hold of a hope that is something we can call a virtue and about which we can be disciplined. What covers all connotations of hope is that hope looks to a fulfillment; it also lives now in anticipation of that fulfillment.

Given this sense of hope, what then does it mean for hope to be both a discipline and a virtue? Hope is a virtue and discipline if what is hoped in is a good that is more than a desire for only oneself and more than wishful thinking. Hope that is a virtue is a hope bound up with a movement toward the good, something that in hoping for it we are moved towards our betterment. For hope to be a virtue and discipline requires something to be hoped in and for that can lead us to something greater than we are now.  Hope that is a virtue and a discipline is hope that moves us toward what is hoped for.  Hope as virtue and discipline is anticipation that actively waits for what is hoped for. This sort of hope isn’t passive; it is moving towards a goal or an end.

Hope can be a virtue because hoping in something that moves us towards that which we hope.  Such a hope requires an expansiveness, to borrow Obama’s phrase, it requires an audacity. Simultaneously it also requires humility to admit that what is hoped for isn’t yet realized. Hope as virtue and discipline is magnanimous and humble.

The enemy of hope as virtue is presumption. This may find itself in too great a confidence, too much assurance that at any moment what is hoped for is coming to fruition or fulfilment and completion in that moment. Thus, it is destructive of hope to use hope as part of a political campaign as Obama’s campaign did.  This is so, largely because, what we hoped for in Obama wasn’t going to be completely fulfilled by Obama’s admiration, rather a virtuous hopefulness in a political party or a factional politics, or a politician is in there being able to bring us closer to that which we hope, not for their ability to deliver that for which we hope.  What was hopeful about Obama and his campaign and subsequent presidency was only hopeful to the degree that that hope was what propelled Obama, not in his or his administration’s ability to fulfill and deliver that for which we hope.  Thus, to the degree that Obama was hopeful with us and not the object of our hope then we have a truly hopeful politics, but the moment we hoped in Obama or his administration, we ceased to have hope in a way that is virtue and discipline and which can lead us toward a goal greater than ourselves.

Hope as virtue and discipline needs the humility to understand that there is in this life always a remainder of what is hoped for in any movement towards what we hope. For hope as virtue and discipline there needs to be the simultaneous magnanimity of claiming to be able to achieve what is hoped for with a sense that the fullness of what is hoped for can’t be found in any one moment.

What sort of things might we say we hope for in this manner? What is it that we can both be audacious about and about which we can be humble?

Hoping in God and of the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

The God revealed to us in the Hebrew Prophets and the divine human Jew Jesus of Nazareth, is a god who is about justice and who defines for us justice as the concern for and right treatment of those who are marginalized, most vulnerable and who are outcasts. Captives, prisoners, widows, orphans, those who can’t easily and financially hold on to property and means of production to provide for their daily lives, food, shelter and clothing.  In the letter from the Apostle James, we are told that true religion is one that has solidarity with the poor and the vulnerable.

Thus, hope for this sort of justice can reside not simply in some future wished for utopia, that may or may not be achieved, nor something that may or may not be realistic and realizable rather this hope is bound up in the very fabric of the universe and in the source of all that is.

When Martin Luther King Jr. affirms the aphorism “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”, this isn’t some generic hope, but a faith statement about the one has aimed the bow and the arrow is on target..  This is faith in the God who is revealed to us in the Hebrew prophets and in Jesus of Nazareth. That is Martin Luther King Jr. isn’t in that moment talking as a politician of a one nation state, but as  a member of the people of God, Israel, the Church. He is speaking as a preacher and a prophet.

The above aphorism. isn’t a hope in humanity’s ability to progress based in humanity alone, but in God’s work in history

Hope then in its activist form is seeking to act in accordance with this goal. This is what makes hope a discipline.  The virtue of living in conformity with the long arc of bent towards justice, is to live in a certain way. Hoping in this manner is especially a disciple when a present moment seems at odds with what is hoped for. As a Rabbi friend says it is to act as if.

The difficulty and the virtue of hope is that some aspects of the current moment will appear to be an argument against having hope.  If hope is merely wishful thinking, if we can’t say truthfully that in some sense justice, wholeness, true life isn’t the goal isn’t the direction of things, then no living as if will counter what immediately appears.

To have hope that is a virtue and can be a discipline is to have hope in something that is true beyond a certain instance. It is to hope in something that is true about our deepest selves and the entire universe and of human being.  Different philosophies and Spiritualties may give different reasons for it being there or exactly how to describe it but it must be an affirmation that our goal forms us into our truest selves.  Simultaneously it must also affirm that this goal is beyond any one of us or any moment. The fulfillment of this hope is beyond us but also realized in us an in moments even if not yet landing its mark.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost,

Scripture Texts: 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21 - Psalm 16 -  Galatians 5:1, 13-25 - Luke 9:51-62

What is the Kingdom of God, basileia tou theou?   How might we address that using “king” and “kingdom” to talk about God and God’s activity often reinforces authoritarian structures that are antithetical to the community Jesus Christ creates in the Church.  We should recognize that exclusive use of King and Kingdom without attention paid to the meaning given to basileia tou theou is part of the problem. We should also note that “king” and “kingdom” are not static terms, and even in our modern contexts can refer to differing forms of governance.  The Kingdom’s of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Kingdom, Sweden and the Netherlands (to list some current kingdoms in the international landscape) all vary to some degree or another from each other.  All are Monarchies in some sense but the role and power of the monarch, the king or queen all differ.  This all suggests that as we run across “Kingdom of God” or “Kingdom of heaven” in the Scriptures we should pause and ask questions about what we bring to that phrases. We should also pay attention to how Jesus or Paul qualify “king” and “kingdom”.

In the United States we have a distant and ambivalent attitude towards of Kings and kingdoms. We have fantastical and fuzzy romanticized view of say the British Royal family which is a sort of celebrity worship, or we think of monarchies and kings and queens in the autocratic and tyrannical version of monarchies that emerged as the kings in Europe developed the notion of absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings.  It is true that Christian theology and the church hierarchy was used to develop these notions of kings and kingdoms.  What we tend to remember in the United States is that God and kings were often elided in this attempt to shore up European royalty and kingdoms, Absolute rule by a singular being was upheld as the natural order of things, and authoritarian hierarchy was put forward as what good Christians and citizens of the nations should accept for good order. If we listen to Jesus’ parables and what in our text Paul describes as being contrary to the Kingdom of God, we can readily see that the above connotations of king and kingdom don’t easily apply to the ways in which Jesus and Paul speak of the “Kingdom of God”.

In order to not bring the above senses of kingdom to what Jesus and Paul seek to direct our attention with basileia tou theou we can use other language in place of Kingdom of God that draws out the various metaphors and stories Jesus tells us about the Kingdom of God”: beloved community, the reign of God (The it remains that monarchs or maybe champions are what reigns, presidents and elected officials don’t reign), the Kindom of God etc. Yet we will still run accoss throughout the new testament we can’t get away from basileia tou theou, which in the very least means “reign of God” and usually translated Kingdom of God.  We still need to understand what is going on in Scripture with this language.  First we can recognize if we are aware of what we bring to “kingdom” and “king” and allow our notions of king and kingdom be disturbed, by the varieties of ways that the seeing God as basilei with a basileia, doesn’t conform to the authoritarian and autocratic.  I’d argue that this is part of what the use of “king” for God and ‘kingdom of God” are to do, we are to experience the dissonance between what God’s revelation tells us about God as “king” and the “Kingdom of God” and what we know of “kings” and “kingdoms”.

The history of God’s people, shows us that we can often miss or refuse this revelation.  God’s intention with the freeing the Hebrews from bondage and bringing the people of Israel to Mount Sinai and presenting them with a Covenant, was that they would understand two things: 1) that there was only one God and one king, and that they were to see this one God as their king.  This wasn’t abstract authority over, but relationship with, a covenant between a people and their king.  In this sense kingdom isn’t territory over which a king has sovereignty and controls all that is within that domain, rather it is a relationship between a people and a sovereign in which each freely enters into tis relation in which each has responsibilities and privileges.

We get the contrast between the reign of God under the covenant and what the people of Israel ultimately chose to have a human king. These human kings more or less poorly represent the reign of God and most fail miserably acting as we’d expect kings to act, in autocratic and authoritarian ways exercising power over others, in terms of coercion and force and not covenantal relationship.

What Paul sets up as contrary to the basileia tou theou, the beloved community the reign of God, could be read as a summary of the historical books of the Hebrew scriptures, 1 2 Samuel, 1 2 Kings, and 1 2 Chronicles.  God sends prophets, beginingwith Elijah and Elisha , to call the people of Israel back to the Covenant that their kings lead them away from in their autocratic and authoritarian whims deemed necessary by real politic and the clash of empires and nations for dominance and control.  Israel is as we know eventually overthrown by these forces of empire and real politic of the clash of kings and kingdoms seeking to control and dominate over others and territory.

The reign of God, God as king is polar opposite to the above history of the kings of Isreale.  Paul in our text today says,  the Beloved Community the Kingdom of God is characterized by love of Neighbor- this is the covenant God as king makes with us that we love our neighbor (and enemy)- and Paul further states that what then characterizes the Kingdom of God”, the beloved community is “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control..”  These are the fruit of the Spirit, the evidence of living by the spirit of being ruled by the love of God. To live the life of the Spirit is to live in the freedom of the Kindom of God.

I hope we are being able to experience the tensions and dissonance, that Jesus’ and Paul’s use of the Kingdom of God should elicit.  Of course this troubling of “king “and kingdom when used of God and what God accomplishes in the world and in us, only comes by taking the time to see what Basilea tou theou refers to, and its contrast to the clamoring for power and the desire to have control over others.

We find similar juxtapositions in the icon we blessed today and in the imagery of the beloved community the reign of god used in the iconographic depiction.  Most immediately relevant is the depiction of Christ enthroned in heaven.  This is a diction of an Emperor, a King of Kings, Jesus Christ triumphant and victorious all powerful, Pantocrator in Greek.  The text in the Gospel is from Colossians 1-5-20.  The cross can never be far from any depiction of Jesus Christ.  All depictions of Jesus Christ must have the cross inscribed in the halo, along with the words O ON, in Greek meaning the One or the Being or the one who is, it is a reference to the unpronounceable name by which God names God’s self to Moses.  In the halo and depictions of Christ we have the fullness of the Gospel, the one who is, the unpronounceable unknowable circumscribable one, joined with humanity in Jesus of Nazareth and died on the Cross and rose again and is seated at the right hand of the Father.   But this icon of Jesus Christ isn’t the only icon. On the reverse of this icon we find another depiction of Christ.  Jesus as a child in Mary’s arms.  This is God the all-powerful, vulnerable dependent upon the care of his mother. God in the infant Jesus is God vulnerable dependent upon the love of another. The paradox and tensions of the incarnation.  Here again you will see that cross and the Name are there to remind us this is the same one who is seated on the thrown among the heavenly powers the 4 living creatures.  And although not depicted in this icon at every service upon this alter sits a crucifix and we see the same halo so inscribed the same letters indicating Jesus Christ. The childe the Pantocrator and the crucified are all the same one, all depicting for us God as king and thus the Kingdom of God.

In this icon with Mary Mother of God embracing Jesus Christ and Peter and Paul embracing, we see the Reconciling love of God at work.  In these depictions we are invited into the embrace of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit.  These images draw us in and we may recognize ourselves in the embrace of our mother God, whose pinions gather us in in protection and warmth. We also see God at work Reconciling differing interpretations of who is included into the beloved community and how they may be so included.  Christians and the Church still wrestle with this, and on this Pride Sunday, we are painfully aware that as Christians we are divided on if and how to include and embrace LGBTQ.  Yet, it is in embrace that God’s Kingdom leads us.  These re images of Love, Reconciliation and inclusion, and they are images of God’s reign, of the Beloved Community, the Kingdom of God.  Peter and Paul were divided they were at enmity with each other in the early church, in the Jewish and Gentile factions each seeking God’s will, yet each right and wrong, each had to be drawn into the embrace as each recognized how those seen by the other as unclean or foolish and haughty could be drawn together into the beloved community.

Contemplate these images Scriptural and iconographic, learn from them, let them soften our heart, may these images of God as King and the Kingdom of God, transform your heart, set you free, to embrace your enemy as God embraced us in Jesus of Nazareth and upon the cross that we may live together in the Beloved Community of Father Son and Holy Spirit. Amen