Waiting with Hope (Eric Stiller)

Jae-Im Kim, “The Garden of Eden” (2006) (used with permission)

Jae-Im Kim, “The Garden of Eden” (2006) (used with permission)

In a Netflix comedy special filmed last year, Asian comedian Ronny Chieng takes several well-deserved shots at American consumer culture, especially our demand for instant gratification. It was hilarious and true, but one bit in particular landed with an irony I’m guessing even Chieng himself could not have intended. 

“Amazon Prime every day. Send that [stuff] to my house every day. In America, never leave your house. Land of the free and land of never leaving your house.”

In 2019, “never leaving your house” could jokingly be seen as a privileged aspiration. In 2020, it can feel like imprisonment. It reminded me of the Israelites in the wilderness, clamoring for meat (Numbers 11:4), but then perishing on the abundance of quail God sends to them (v. 33). They got what they wanted! Or did they?  

The global pandemic has moved us from being glutted to being emptied, and it raises the question of what we really want out of life. We long for love, intimacy, flourishing, and joy. But that’s not often what we get, as times like these – filled with sickness, anxiety, loneliness, depression, and death – reveal. 

One response to such disappointment in life is to seek escape. Even when things are going well, life often seems haunted by the tang of emptiness and unfulfilled desire. And as a result, we turn to all kinds of escape strategies – alcohol, drugs, sex, politics, gaming, shopping, tv, social media, exercise, work, and more. T.S. Eliot described it perfectly when he wrote “humankind cannot bear very much reality.” And so we end up being “distracted from distraction by distraction.” That’s like being distracted from Netflix by cat videos on YouTube. And then being distracted from that by Twitter. When reality is too painful, too disappointing, or even just too boring, we often seek escape into virtual reality.

But now, like the Israelites with their quail, we are gorged on virtual reality. And while remaining grateful for the technology that allows us to stay connected, I’m willing to bet we’re also hyper aware of how unfulfilling this virtual reality can be. That’s because the escape strategies we use are never ways of getting what we want out of life. They are ways of numbing the pain of not having what we really want. What we really want is not a screen. It’s embracing. It’s feasting, dancing, hugging, and kissing. It’s a material, embodied reality.

That is exactly the reality promised to us by the physical resurrection of Jesus. If what we really want is escape from a world of suffering, there are many options available, all of which present our ultimate hope as some kind of escape from a material world that is either an illusion or fatally doomed to annihilation. Each of these options make sense within their beliefs about ultimate reality. If the material world is an illusion or is doomed, then escape is the best we can hope for. But if the material world is good (albeit fallen) and destined for renewal (as the resurrection promises), that is a radically different hope: not just the material renewal of humanity, but of the whole cosmos.

And if we can transform our understanding of hope, we can transform our experience of suffering.

In Romans 8:23-25, the apostle Paul encourages us that living in light of the resurrection doesn’t mean escaping, it means waiting. Specifically, we wait “eagerly” (v. 23), and we wait “patiently” (v. 25). Both are crucial. If our waiting is all patience but no eagerness, we drift into complacency, apathy, and despair. “Nothing will ever change. I give up.” But if our waiting is all eagerness and no patience, we drift into pride and triumphalism. “Things aren’t changing fast enough. We need to take control!”

Patient, eager waiting exists between complacency and triumphalism. It is a spiritual discipline that hopes humbly and joyfully, not just in the promise of renewal, but in the foretaste of it.

Paul says Christians have the “firstfruits of the Spirit” (Romans 8:23). Firstfruits is a preview and promise of a future reality that makes a difference in our present reality. When the Holy Spirit takes the firstfruits of the resurrection (that’s Jesus! cf. 1 Cor. 15:20, 23) and makes it real in our hearts, that doesn’t change our circumstances. It does change the way we experience them.

We don’t pay good money to sit in the darkened silence of a movie theater unless we hope that at some point the curtain is going up and our waiting will be rewarded. We know from experience that our hope is justified, so we wait eagerly, but patiently. 

As we sit and wait in the darkness, silence, solitude, and yes, even the suffering of this present moment, having the firstfruits of the resurrection can transform our experience so that, instead of seeking to escape or endure these things, we can practice them spiritually. We can wait with hope, because the resurrection life of Jesus has begun. We can remember that the word “apocalypse” doesn’t mean “destroy.” It means “reveal.” One day the curtain isn’t coming down on creation. It’s going up.

Eric Stiller is a Carver Project ministry partner and founding pastor of Central West End Church in St. Louis.

 

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John InazuComment