The Scandal of Hope

Man’s Search for Meaning

The last several weeks have given me a fair amount of time to think about things. Now, sometimes that’s great, and sometimes that’s not so great. Generally I’m an optimist and I have been quite busy with just all of the things that are going on, so I haven’t spent much time living in fear of what this new world might have in store for me or for us as a people. But even in those moments where I find the fear creeping in, I’ve found refuge in replaying stories in my head. Stories where even when all seemed lost, something happened, and good prevailed. Stories like Lord of the Rings, or Narnia, or Harry Potter have played through my mind. It almost seems as though my childhood reading regimen has created a category in my mind for what this looks like and how to deal with it… With an Epic Adventure! Except… they keep telling me that I need to stay home.

Shortly

However, there is another story that has been right in the forefront of my mind for the past few weeks. It’s a story that is told in another one of my all time favorite books, and this story is the real deal. It’s by an Austrian Psychologist named Viktor Frankl, and it is poetically named Man’s Search for Meaning. Now I want you to read this book, so I’m not going to ruin the entire thing. But the gist of it is that Viktor was a Jewish man who practiced psychotherapy in Austria until the time that it was annexed into Nazi Germany. He then moved through the system of Concentration camps, including the infamous Auschwitz, losing more and more of his family at each.

While Frankl was living in the most dire of human circumstances under the thumb of the most atrocious human evil, he studied people, he was shrink after all. And what he found was that those who were most likely to survive their circumstances were people who clung to one thing. Hope. Hope that they would be able to someday fulfill their purpose. Hope that their life would have meaning. For a baker it was that he would again be able to have a shop and bake bread. For Viktor it was that he would once again be able to see patients. And for us now, I think that this resonates more than normal. For so many of us our lives are just not how they were two weeks ago. And there is fear, and there is uncertainty, and it is like the perfect storm of chaos has whipped up. And so we are left with really one simple choice, a choice that Viktor Frankl puts rather bluntly.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” -Viktor Frankl

So in our circumstances, that are changing constantly right now, where we are largely confined to our homes and to a dwindling set of bingeable shows on Netflix, we have been given one last freedom. To choose to cling to a hope that has been given to us in Christ. We cling to the hope that God can and will make a way for us through this storm and deliver us safely, and changed on the other side. We cling to the hope that God has set forth for us in the scriptures, a hope that he can and will make a way for us.

Walking on Water

Back before all of this started, we were travelling through the Gospel of John, specifically looking at the signs that Jesus performed that would allow readers of the book to believe that Jesus is the Lord, the God of Israel. And so today we find Jesus and the disciples just after Jesus has performed the miracle of feeding the 5000. Jesus has just shown himself to be a provider, much like when the Israelites recieved manna from heaven in the wilderness thousands of years earlier.

So thats just a little truth for us to hold on to- Jesus provides (with the help of truck drivers and grocery store workers.) We can all relax, there is more than enough to go around for all of us. Fill up your cart like its 2019.

However, the people see what Jesus has done and he perceives that they are going to overwhelm him and try to make him the king, and he’s not into that, so he practices a little social distancing and retreats to the mountain to be alone, and this is where we are going to pick up with the story in .

John 6:16–18 NRSV

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing.

This is a pretty well known story, It’s recounted in Matthew and in Mark’s Gospel, all with slightly different details. But remember John’s purpose, that you might read and believe that Jesus is Lord. And who was John’s immediate audience? Jewish folks and Greeks. So kind of hidden in this is some stuff that we as 21st century Americans just don’t quite get.

Now for the ancients, just about everything in the world had theology behind it. Especially water, especially large bodies of water that had a tendency to cause destruction, which the sea of Galilee did. The greeks would attribute control of this element to the god Poseidon, which I would assume most people have at least read a little bit about.

However, the mythologies that went even farther back and are attributed to Israel’s neighbors to the east Babylon, and it is actually their story of creation. Essentially the Chief god of Babylon, Marduk, gets into this massive war with the god of the primordial sea, and upon defeating her makes it possible for the earth to be created.

And then, of course, we have our creation story. A story in which the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the primordial sea. And then in a few creative acts, God separates the chaotic primordial waters and causes dry land to appear. The book of Job illustrates it in this way:

Job 38:8 NRSV

“Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?—

Job 9:8 NRSV

who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the Sea;

God’s mastery over the water, in ancient Hebrew eyes, is the reason that life can exist, but the sea is still treacherous, the sea is dangerous, the sea brings with it the potential for death and destruction.

And so John, has all of his potential audience on edge. This is bad. The sea is chaos. The sea brings destruction. What is going to happen next? Well, I’m sure you’re interested too so here it goes:

John 6:19–21 NRSV

When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

John, in writing this knows that all the people who might read it, Hebrews, Greeks to the west, and left over Babylonian/Persians to the east all would recognize that the one who can control the destructive power of the sea is someone worth paying attention to. It’s John saying this is a sign that this Jesus, he’s the one you’ve been looking for.

Deliverance

One of the really cool things that happens here is that John gives a very abbreviated version of the events. Matthew gives an account of Peter walking on the water. Mark says that the disciples were afraid because they thought Jesus was a ghost. But John, well for once John is sparse on details. He just says they saw Jesus and they were terrified. Were they terrified of Jesus, or were they terrified of the storm? John doesn’t really say, maybe all of the above. But what all 3 Gospel authors tell us is that Jesus is walking on the water, and his words to the disciples are “do not be afraid.”

One of the really cool things that happens here is that John gives a very abbreviated version of the events. Matthew gives an account of Peter walking on the water. Mark says that the disciples were afraid because they thought Jesus was a ghost. But John, well for once John is sparse on details. He just says they saw Jesus and they were terrified. Were they terrified of Jesus, or were they terrified of the storm? John doesn’t really say, maybe all of the above. But what all 3 Gospel authors tell us is that Jesus is walking on the water, and his words to the disciples are “do not be afraid.”

John doesn’t tell us that Jesus calmed the storm. All John wants us to know, or deems important for us to know is that Jesus delivered the disciples to the land that they were heading to. So we, and even John’s readers are left with some theological tension to deal with.

On one hand, Jesus is clearly in control of the sea. He’s walking on it. This is the sign that John is pointing us towards: Regardless of your theology - This is the guy that subdues and controls the sea, this is the guy that can protect you from the chaotic and destructive force of the storm. But as far as John wants us to know, Jesus doesn’t do what we would expect. I think, just calm the waves, make the threat go away. But I think that John wants us to think a little bit differently about this than his colleagues.

By the time John wrote his Gospel, the church was being horrifically persecuted. They had become public enemy #1 in Rome. So I think that John was acutely aware of the danger that could come from just preaching that Jesus calms the sea, because his audience, well his audience just might never see the actual calming of the persecution they faced. It wasn’t about calming the sea for John. It was about the deliverance that came, in the midst of, and despite the storm.

So I’m not going to stand up here and preach that Jesus is going to calm the storm of the Coronavirus Pandemic. I’m not going to preach that Jesus is going to fix your 401k, or give you your job back, or any of those things that I really really hope happens. I’m not going to do that, not because I don’t have faith that he can’t, but because I don’t know if that’s what he plans.

John and the disciples knew that Jesus could calm the sea, heck he had just been literally walking on it. He made his point, he’s the water master, YHWH of the Hebrew Bible. He was the master of nature. But along with all of that Jesus was and is the master deliverer.

Which is an interesting word. We use the word deliverer to describe Jesus all of the time, and yet we still wish deep down in the bottom of our hearts that he wouldn’t be a deliverer. See being delivered means that we have got to go through some stuff. We’ve got to move from one place to a new place. What we really want is to stay still and for God to change our current reality, our current situation, to calm the storm that is raging in our life, when all the while he wants us to take him into the boat bring us through to the land towards which we are going.

God certainly is powerful enough to have just freed Israel from Egypt and brought them directly into the promised land. Yet he didn’t. They had to wander for an entire generation. And they complained almost the whole time. But in the midst of that wandering God revealed himself to them, and he revealed to them who they were. Out of that wandering and the revelation that occured over that generation, a national identity was formed. A law code was solidified. Israel’s religion, government, and culture were hard won in their wandering and subsequent conquest of the promised land.

Or even more broad is that God could have fixed the entire problem of human sin and wickedness by simply removing evil from existence. Yet instead, instead he laid out the plan of salvation that culminates in the death and resurrection of Jesus for our redemption from the power of sin, and he plans to restore all of creation and liberate it from the destructive consequences of evil. Could he do this all without making us live through the hardships? Of course, but he has chosen this way. A way of deliverance, where rather than change the specific circumstances that surround us, he has chosen to change us in the midst of our circumstances.

And this is what Viktor Frankl found as he lived life both in and eventually on the other side of the most incredible human atrocity that we have ever experienced. He found that as long as, as long as people looked to the end, to the possibility of pursuing their meaning to exist they would find that in the midst of their circumstances they had already found their purpose. You see while a psychotherapist hoped for and simply looked to the days of seeing patients once again, he began to realize that he had an entire population of people who really needed some therapy at the moment. As long as a baker could cling to the hope of baking again, he could use whatever scraps he found to bake a little something, and remind his fellows of life outside of the camp. In the midst of great loss, great tragedy, great misery, people whose purpose was being intentionally attacked, found their purpose, found the meaning of their lives by clinging to and living out the hope that they had for a future.

Deliverance, it turns out, is much more about the journey and the way that God changes us through it by giving us a future and a hope and inviting us to live out that grander purpose until we reach the shore to which we are heading.

The Scandal of Hope

And so it turns out that hope is a scandal. It takes away the soul crushing, spirit breaking nature of dire circumstances — and it turns them into something beautiful. And I think that you have seen this. You have seen people being good to one another, taking care of one another. You have seen the teachers who drive through the neighborhoods where their kids live honking and waving, creating lessons. Their hope is in the impact that they can have if they just keep teaching. Fitness trainers, yoga instructors, churches, and recovery people are reaching out and reaching right into peoples homes out of the hope that if they can just do what they love, and impact one life at a time, then the circumstances of the world don’t win. Heathcare workers and truck drivers and grocery store clerks and so many more people just keep showing up. Stores have shown that they care by looking out for senior citizens. And the list goes on and on and on. But this is what Viktor Frankl saw, this is what brings us through.

And so as people who follow Jesus, we have found ourselves in the midst of a storm, a destructive force surrounds us. But in the midst of this we know, we know, we know that there is a God who can and will deliver us through this storm. And we put our hope in Jesus, we invite him into our boat, and we look to our future hope in a world where nothing like this ever happens, because it has been fully restored. But until then, we must allow that hope to transform the way that we live in the here and now.

So maybe you are one of those people who has been staying busy by keeping the hope and adapting and finding ways to cling to your search for meaning in the midst of this, and all that I did today was give you words to express why you are doing what you’re doing. My word for you is run the race. Keep going, these are the things that are giving others life and hope all around you.

But if this has been particularly hard, if this has taken a lot from you, if the fear seems to win most days, I invite you look past the storm. Ask yourself — What is the hope that I have for the future? How can I start to live into that today. What steps can I take to make this future hope a reality in the current situation that I find myself in?

I promise that even if all seems lost, God is working through this to mold us into something new and something beautiful, into people who face the storm but don’t see the wind and the waves, but people who see Jesus, walking in the midst of it, who invite him in and simply allow the hope of his deliverance to change us into the people that he has called us to be — God’s people, on God’s mission to seek out and comfort the hurting, the downtrodden, the lost, and to show the world what it looks like to live in a storm with peace, with hope, and with love.