[AI translation] Dear Brothers and Sisters! When I first read this passage, this poem, it seemed to us a bit long-winded, sometimes a bit tedious. We don't really understand it because it is so full of rejoicing, thanksgiving, exultation, joy in God. Somehow it is as if a great prayer of thanksgiving is bursting forth from the heart of the apostle Peter - it pours out of him like hot water from the fountain on Margaret Island. He can't even stop. It comes from personal experience, which is the value of the whole letter. This is the value, the power, that every word is actually the result of the apostle's personal experience. Behold, as he hears it, he endeavours to echo this exultant thanksgiving: 'Blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has begotten us anew unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead'. In the rest of the passage, the apostle goes on to elaborate on this. In short, the content of this great prayer of thanksgiving is living hope. This was the powerful force in the apostle's life which gave a new turn to his whole life: the living hope in which God had regenerated him through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. What is this living hope? This is what I want to talk about.It's very good to think about what living hope is, because almost every person knows about dead hope in their own life. We have all had our own visions, dreams, aspirations. We have strived for them, worked for them, hoped for their fulfilment. And then came the disappointments, the failures, the setbacks. It didn't happen the way we wanted, the way we dreamed, the way we imagined. Perhaps the person in someone's life whose coming they had so longed for did not come, or perhaps the widowed mother was left all alone in her widowhood, her children scattered. And she had hoped that in her widowhood, precious little grandchildren would play around her. But it was not to be. Or one reached the twilight of one's manhood, and looked back in dismay to find that one had realised oh so few of one's many fine plans and creative ambitions. Or someone feels that life has slowly passed them by and still hasn't brought them that long-awaited thing. There is no man who has not hoped for something - in vain. The broken hopes, the hopes that have fallen back, almost pile up in our lives. The more we live, the more of our hopes we bury.
The apostle Peter was also very familiar with resignation. There were times in his life when all his hopes were dashed. And how he hoped in Jesus! He hoped for the coming of the kingdom of God. He poured all the passion of his young temperament into this great hope. Then he had a very sad day: Good Friday. Imagine what a terrible thing it must have been for him to see what had happened there in the Jerusalem destruction. Especially on the cross in the middle: there hung the hope of his life, as if his life was in ruins, his life was crumbling, when he looked at that cross. It's all over! Is there any point in living on when your hopes are crumbling?!
Oh, so many people say. "Is it worth living any longer?" Let us see what a great change must have taken place in this man's life, that after the utter shattering of all his precious hopes, he said of Him, "Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." So something very big has happened. After Good Friday came Easter. Jesus is risen! This is the Jesus who enjoyed all the hope. Whose whole hope went to the grave with His death. Behold, this Jesus is risen from the dead. So what seemed to be a collapse, a burial and death and the passing away of hope was actually a new beginning. The beginning of a whole new hope, the very beginning of that living hope. Here is the foundation of all true hope, which will never die, which will never die out. So in this fact, in this historical fact, that Jesus rose from the dead. This is the blazing fire by whose flame all extinct, dormant hope can rise: that Jesus has risen! All hope that is not kindled by this fire of Jesus' vitality will sooner or later become dead hope.
Now, when we talk about hope, Christian hope, I would like to emphasise very strongly once again what I emphasised last Sunday in connection with eternal life, namely that, in connection with Christian hope, we should not think only of this ultimate hope, not only of hope after death, hope in the afterlife. Unfortunately, that is precisely the problem, that in the public consciousness of believers, but even more so in the public consciousness of non-believers, the concept of Christianity has shifted from these worldly problems to the attainment of some indefinable good in the hereafter, salvation. Naturally, this is also implicit in the concept of Christian hope, its ultimate fulfilment. But this hope applies not only to that world, but also to the earthly world and its problems. True faith is also always hope, and if one believes in it, one can look forward to any situation with hopeful expectation of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. But this hope we are talking about here is not the colourless idealism that simply turns a blind eye to real facts and problems, that fails to see them. It is certainly not the cheap optimism that glances lightly over problems without any further thought. It is not in any way an indulgence in a dream world, an illusion of the harsh realism of life. It is precisely these things, this illusion, this escape, this dream world, this optimism, this idealism, that led the poet to write these gloomy lines about hope: 'A heavenly fairy playing with earthlings, a deceptive, blind hope that looks like a deity... just keep to yourself, I am your hope, I believed your beautiful word, yet it deceives me!' This is the hope that deceives. The living hope of which Peter speaks is quite different.
To hope is to count on the possibility of God. This new dimension that comes into one's life is the dimension of God's possibility. This is what it means to hope. To reckon with the possibility of God in all our situations. So it doesn't just mean counting on things getting better, counting on getting out of this dog-eat-dog situation that I'm in, counting on things happening my way. It means hope: counting on the One who, once before in history, on Easter morning, proved Himself credible and capable in the face of the most hopeless problems. That hope is the absolute certainty that the God who raised Jesus from the dead is here now. This God is still reigning, this God is still taking action, in all kinds of situations. Living hope expects that with the appearance of Jesus on earth some great divine action has been set in motion: the process of redemption, and that God will continue this action and bring it to its full unfolding, to its complete triumph. "He who began the good work in us will finish it until the day of Christ Jesus." (cf. Phil 1,6) Therefore, the Christian man can see the whole world under hope. However hopeless the situation may often be, he can see the whole world with hope, like the man who has sown the field and the promise and hope of the future harvest is already sprouting there. This man can always hope above any vicissitudes of life, he sees God there above suffering and sin. Above the present and the future of his people, above the tense world situation, above the negotiations of the great powers, he sees the ultimate reality: God. The absolute, final victory of God, which began at Easter in the resurrection of Jesus. Let me put it much more simply: You have heard it said many times that our hope is never in anything, but always in Someone, and that is the most important thing. Not towards something - that somehow I will be, that my destiny will turn around, that I will escape from some kind of trouble - but always towards Someone. The living, powerful, gracious, redeeming God Himself.
Brothers and sisters, that is why there is no hopeless situation, no matter how tangled the threads of events in someone's life may be. No matter how intractable a problem may seem, or how endless the time of distress may seem. No matter how hopeless the prospect, it is never hopeless, because our hope is based on the fact that God has revealed his heart to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus - not his ways, mind you, but his heart! So we don't know what he wants for us, where he is leading us, what he is bringing us, his ways are hidden, but we do know one thing for sure: that God is in control of our destiny and in control of events. He has stood by us in Jesus, and in all that he has yet to do for us, he will always remain faithful to what he has revealed in Jesus. And in Jesus he declared what the name of Jesus himself means: 'God is with us'. To this He always remains faithful. That is the basis of our hope. Our Christianity should never be based on a passive attitude of folding my hands, waiting, simply hoping, because nothing can be done here anyway, at most we can only hope! We usually hope when nothing can be done. When one has reached the limit of one's actions, of one's capacity, one says: "There is nothing I can do now, I can only hope." But in fact there is none! Rather, hope should be the basis on which we stand, and on this basis we can calmly muster all our strength, all our human capacity for action. So let us never separate these two - either I act or I hope - but rather let us connect them: let us hope by acting and let us act by hoping. So let us not push Christian hope beyond the limits of our human capacity, but let our hearts, our words and our actions be all the more filled with hope, with action! So let us act with hope and let us hope with action! This is what the apostle calls us to do.
You know, the great thing is that hope shines brightest when life seems darkest. If ever there was a moment when Jesus could have seen darkly, it was when he stood before the General Council. He was mocked, stoned, blindfolded, slapped in the face. Yet he endured it at all times with the utmost divine serenity, and then he said, "From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the mighty right hand of God." (Mt 26,64) Imagine what a victory this was over a hopeless situation! Bound with both hands, and yet He speaks of Him now sitting at the right hand of the supreme divine dignity. With bound hands, swollen lips, and bloody face, He proclaims, "Victory is mine! And He was right, the centuries have proved that He was right. He has won the victory. But the wonderful thing is that He proclaimed it at a time when He was completely at the mercy of human arbitrariness. Then He said, "Henceforth ye shall see the Son of Man at the mighty right hand of God." He did not say, "Someday," but "now" you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God! So what actually happened here? He has made His future victory, its consummation, present. And that is the secret of Christian hope, that already in the problems of this world He lives in the consciousness of God's ultimate victory and in the consciousness of His own salvation. Yes, I am almost bringing into the present what is mine only in the future, as a promise. The apostle Paul writes of this, "Having laid hold on the goal of your faith, the salvation which the power of God has in store for us."
The wonderful thing is that this hope cannot be extinguished by death, because it lives on even when earthly science, power and wisdom can only say, "Man, give up all hope." So even in the face of death, this hope has a future, in the risen Christ. A believer, a man of hope, does not go towards death, but towards eternity, as an heir who knows what awaits him. Thus Christian hope is the ultimate hope, certainty. To live with hope is not to be a vagabond of this life, tossed here and there by the whim of fate, but a wanderer, welcomed home, whose hope grows with every kilometre travelled, as he draws ever closer to the final fulfilment.
Let us try, then, Brothers and Sisters, to always see the path we are on in this way. Let us try to see in this way the intermediate stages of our lives where we sometimes get so sadly lost.
In the end, it is this hope that makes a man live a liberated life. Twice Peter speaks of this, "rejoicing in him, though now you are sorrowing" - so the apostle writes. It is strange that these two words are side by side: "rejoice in him, though you mourn". It is the very secret of Christianity that these two are present in the heart of man at the same time. Rejoicing and sorrow, or let us say sorrow and rejoicing at the same time. We usually know it as either rejoicing or sorrow. When we rejoice we do not grieve, when we grieve we do not rejoice. We rejoice at times, we are in joy, at other times we grieve in sorrow. Well, that is precisely the point, that Christian hope is that when we have every reason to be sad, we rejoice, because even in the depths of sorrow there is joy in the heart of the hopeful person. Even the sorrow of the heart is always illuminated by some pure serenity from above. Of course, this joy is not a mood or an emotion, it is the deep, vibrant keynote of the whole of life. There is a quiet serenity in it, something that can make you rejoice even in the most difficult situations. Of course, his heart aches, then breaks, and yet his heart is flooded with that glorious joy: the joy of our faith in Christ's triumphant power over death, of our hope. Nor could the apostle Paul have been in a very good mood in the Philippian prison, in the calaboose. Yet there was so much joy in his heart that he felt compelled to sing. It was not a mood of cheerfulness, for one is not in the habit of being cheerful in such a situation. It was this joy, this unutterable, glorified joy, the joy of liberation. A joy like that of a mother after childbirth, that there is still much pain, but even more joy in the new life that comes from hope.
Well, Brothers and Sisters, if we have such hope - for you know, the Apostle writes, that we do - then we do not have to walk so uncertainly, so depressed, so depressed. I often see how confident the people with money in their pockets are, or how calmly those who have bought their tickets move among the crowds at the station. This is the way we should walk in this life. We do not have money in our pockets, but much greater wealth. For let us know that you and I are children, beloved children, of the richest Father, the Lord of the world! And we have not a bank note, but a reserved place in eternity - as the apostle writes. Let us live in the knowledge of this!
I know very well that we are burdened, that the worries of everyday life often wear on our nerves. Sometimes life gives us pain, we are not always so cheerful, but that is why we try to start the day always with a living hope that counts on God's possibility. It is with this new dimension - the possibility of God - that we start each morning, with a happy thanksgiving: here is another day, a great opportunity to show my love for the invisible Jesus! I can make it visible to people and help them with the unspeakable, glorious joy that fills my heart with living hope.
Amen.
My only hope,
O God, only you;
Come and see me,
O leave me not alone!
Be not so far from me,
Have mercy on your faithful servant,
Lord God, do not forsake me!
(Canto 276, verse 1)
Date: 15 August 1965.
Lesson
1Pt 1,3-12