THE SUN RISES BEHIND THE CROSS

Jurgen Moltmann on Hope and the Future

By Jurgen Moltmann

[Germans seem to be losing their confidence. According to polls, a majority is skeptical about the future. The protestant theologian Jurgen Moltmann insists: Whoever believes has a future. Whoever takes seriously Christ’s promises need not worry. Moltmann’s book “Theology of Hope” was published 40 years ago and is still current today in its 13th edition. This article published in: Sonntagsblatt, 3/7/2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,  http://www.sonntagsblatt-bayern.de/news/aktuell/2004_10_04_01.htm.]


Is Germany a vale of tears? Whoever researches the mood of citizens encounters misery. What has become of the promise of the Apostle Paul? “May the God of hope fill you will all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope,” he wrote to the community in Rome (Romans 15,13).

The God of hope is unique. Nowhere else in the world of religions is God joined with the human hope for the future. The God who is in heaven, the God who is from eternity to eternity, is well known. But a God of hope who is before us and ahead of us only exists in the Bible. God who not only is and not only was but who comes and meets us from the future is new. This is the God of Israel’s exodus from bondage, who leads his people in the pillar of cloud by day and in the pillar of fire by night. This is the God of the resurrection of Jesus who leads his own into eternal life in the fire and storm of the Holy Spirit.

This God awaits us and comes to meet us from his future. In the Promised Land, God will dwell with his people. In the new creation of all transitory things, God will dwell with all people. Behold, I make all things new (Revelation 21,5) is the great invitation to his future. New horizons open up in the biographies of people who expect and hope for this future.

We are ready to set out and begin again. Faith in Christ is a confident hope, an orientation forward and a life in expectation of the coming. Future is not only an accent of Christianity but also an element of its faith, the tone in which all its hymns are tuned, the color of the dawn in which all its pictures are painted. Faith is faith in Christ when it is Easter faith. Faith means living in the presence of the resurrected Christ and reaching out to the coming reign in heaven and on earth. In expectation of the coming Christ, we make the everyday experiences of life. We wait and hasten, we hope and are patient, we pray and watch because we know: We expect every morning and every new day and when we die, we know that Jesus shores on the other shore and awaits us at the feast of eternal life.

How can one report about coming events without being there? Aren’t groundless dreams, visions of fear and the principle of hope like whistling in the dark forest? No, the hope of Christians does not speak of the future in itself and generally. Christian hope starts from a certain historical reality and announces its future. In this hope, Christians speak of Jesus Christ and his future. They want to live in his future, not in any kind of future. Their hope is grounded in the remembrance of Christ’s coming, his birth, his life, his death and his resurrection from the dead. Remembrance is a very weak word; visualization and being mindful are stronger. They point to the presence of the historical and coming Christ in the Lord’s Supper. The justification of all their future expectations in the person and history of Christ is the touchstone for all utopian and apocalyptic spirits in Christ’s community.

This visualization of Christ opens up vast horizons in the future of history and beyond. Because the crucified Christ has a future with God on the ground of his resurrection, everything that we say about Christ contains hope for the future that he brings from God. If I believe in Christ, then I hope in his coming reign. Faith in Christ makes us ready for departure, to live toward him.

Here I must dispel an understandable misunderstanding. According to the confession of faith, it seems as though Christ disappeared from the earth since his Ascension, is now at a certain place in heaven and waits for the moment to return again to the earth to judge the living and the dead. The word return is used in this picture. To me, this term as misleading.

We sill experience his presence in word and spirit, in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in community and in the poor and sick. The more intensively we experience his presence, the more we cry Maranatha, come Lord Jesus, come soon (Revelation 22,20).

The longed-for coming of Jesus is translated in Greek as “Parusia,” in Latin as “adventus,” and in German as “Zukunft.” When we say “Christ’s return,” the present is empty. Only waiting for a distant day is left. But if we say “Christ’s future,” Christ is understood as coming for us. In the power of hope, we open all our senses for him today for the experience of his arrival. By Christ’s future, we mean a future that is already present without ceasing to b future. Jesus comes. With this confidence, Christoph Blumhardt in Bad Boll made his daily experiences of healing mental and bodily suffering. That was his forward-oriented hope.

God’s promises that awaken our hope often appear in contradiction to present experienced reality. Hopes do not arise out of experiences but awaken expectations for new experiences. The present and the future, experiences and hopes actually appear in contradiction to each other in the life of Christians. Why is this? Because the remembrance of Christ’s crucifixion by the powers of this world stands between the two. The sun first rises behind the cross.

Hope proves its comforting and its resistant power in the sufferings of this time. It is comforting to hold out in the knowledge that this is not the end but that something comes. It is courageous not to capitulate before the unchangeable but to remain upright in protest. In the strength of hope, we do not give up but remain restless and dissatisfied in an unjust and unredeemed world. In the strength of hope in God’s different new world, the oppressed tell counter-stories to the course of this world. The prophet Ezekiel (chapter 37) tells resurrection stories to the people: here the field of dry bones of his people and there God’s breath of life raising the dead to life. Counter-stories appear in the Revelation of John of the great whore Babylon who will be overthrown. Babylon symbolized Rome that persecuted Christians and Jews at that time. The picture of the heavenly Jerusalem that is coming on earth and remains eternal is the counterpart to imperial Rome that glorifies itself as the eternal city. The title “Lord” for the Jesus of Nazareth executed in Rome’s name was a counter-title against the Roman Caesar who boasted of being lord of the world. In this regard, the proclamation of God in Christ’s name was and is a subversive announcement of God. Other masters and powers still rule over us but we hope in God alone, the captive people in Babylon said to their God (Isaiah 26,13). We also want to hold to God alone.

In this hope, we experience signs and models of God’s coming reign. When the powers of the future world (Hebr 6,5) stream into us, we experience healings of souls and bodies. In the strength of this hope, we will even become co-workers of god’s reign in this world. Through Jesus, the coming reign has come so near that we no longer only expect it but can also seek after it. This reign is so near to us that we can make the kingdom, its justice and its peace into the goals of our conduct.

There are conditions in our world where death and killing rule that contradict the justice and peace of God’s reign. These conditions must be opposed; we must overcome them where we can. However there are also conditions of love for life that correspond to God’s reign. These conditions must be promoted and produced where we can. Then signs of the coming kingdom arise in the present and we anticipate today what will come on God’s day.

Faith depends on the power of hope. Through hope, human reason gains vigilance over all the senses. If this is true, the misery of unbelief lies in the loss of hope. Human reason becomes irrational where there is nothing to hope any more.

Sin is not first a moral fault but a separation from God and from the life that God gives. The origin of all sin is the arrogance or presumption with which people want to be like God, it is often said. However this is only half of the truth. The other half of the sad truth is much more widespread: the listlessness of the heart, the sadness of the mind and the desperation of little faith. God raises people and opens up the prospect of free vast horizons but people fall behind and break down. God promises the new creation of all things but people believe everything stays the same. God expects much from us but we have little trust and don’t believe ourselves capable.

All despair assumes hope. Its pain is that hope is there without a way to fulfillment. Where an existential hope is disappointed in every regard, this disappointment turns against the hoping one and eats him up. I applied for work everywhere and was refused everywhere. Then the point came when nothing mattered to me, a young burglar in Berlin explained. When no prospects for a meaningful life appear, one resorts to senseless violence: Smash what smashes you. Killing begins where the hope for peace dies.

Cold despair appears in the world-weariness of the rich and beautiful of the glitter world. I want to have my fun, they say, and amuse themselves to death. The rest is entertainment as in the waiting room of death. Many who live on this side of society do not seem to love life any more.

Still these different forms of hopelessness cannot stand up against the power of hope making alive since they are only decaying forms of this original power. Hopelessness spreads where hope withdraws into private life. Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3,15).

If only what happens before our very eyes were important, we would resign serenely or wearily to things as they are. The sparks of ineradicable hope in us lead to the abundance of life so we do not resign. His hope keeps us moving and journeying to new experiences.