Religion — ‘We Christians must dare hope’– His Beatitude Anastasios of Albania, on visiting the Community of Sant’Egidio, Rome, in 2009

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/12/2010 (5765 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It does seem that the season of Advent is done for. The day after Hallowe’en, shelves are stacked with Christmas goods and our ears soothed by incessant carols. The Advent motto of trembling hope has been replaced by the certainty of Yuletide, even though it’s some way off. And it’s an easygoing, sentimental certainty.

Some carols, like "The Holly and the Ivy":

 

Herod the King, in his raging,

Chargéd he hath this day;

His men of might, in his own

sight,

All young children to slay.

 

And the "Coventry Carol":

 

The holly bears a bark

As bitter as any gall;

And Mary bore sweet Jesus

Christ

For to redeem us all.

 

… actually have quite sharp words, but these are neutralized by soloists swooping lazily from one note to the next in the modern manner, rendering them innocuous.

It’s all to do with marketing, of course. Religion and nostalgia are only devices to help sell us lots of stuff, but let’s not be too sniffy about that. Mary and Joseph only ended up in a manger because of a hike in hotel rates. Christmas was commercial from the start and the modern festival, whatever name they give it, no doubt sets off gestures of goodwill and reconciliation that might otherwise never happen. It’s just a pity Advent had to be the sacrificial lamb.

Hope is so vulnerable. The other two members of St. Paul’s trinity — faith and charity — are robust enough to look after themselves, but hope is a fragile thing, rarely prayed for, unlike peace and justice.

These days, when the blogs are full of brash statements to the effect "I’m too intelligent to be a Christian," it’s now smart to be cynical, not at all hip to hope.

Hope mustn’t be confused with expectancy. The last 30 days of the Chilean miners’ rescue were simply ones of expecting their appearance on the surface. Only the first two were raw, agonising hope, before contact had been made — in their case fulfilled, in the case of the poor New Zealand men, not so.

Those two incidents give the lie to the idea that we’re too smart to hope. The world held its breath when each tragedy went viral. Also, the near hysteria that greeted Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 revealed a lot more than a heartfelt cry for a better president. The fervent but quite unrealistic hope was that he would bring about a better world — in the form of reconciliation and social justice.

It was a genuine hope, too. The odds were stacked heavily against righteousness and peace ever kissing one another (Ps 85:10), but the whole world still dared like mad to hope.

Like all tender plants, hope starts by people reaching out to others in the simplest of ways — a moment to spare for the lonely and unpopular, a genuine compliment to a longtime enemy, a word of encouragement to those up against it, a helping hand to the strugglers.

It’s in that spirit that we dare hope for more impossible things: wrongs to be righted, a dead relationship to be revitalized, a reconciliation even, joy (or closure) for parents whose child disappeared inexplicably years ago, politicians focusing on serving their electorate, rather than seeking power for its own sake, for aboriginal peoples — and the Québecois, for that matter – to be integrated fully into the life of their own country, for the unjustly imprisoned to receive justice, and for those ruined by disgrace or addiction of any kind to see a way back up again.

The opposite of hope is despair, no matter how it’s dressed up as common sense or realism. Secular society’s encouragement of positive thinking and the use of cognitive behavioural therapy when dealing with depression and despair acknowledges that spiritual truth. Our thoughts influence our outlook on life, how we act and how we affect others. Depressed people depress people. Christians know that their minds can be a barren place if they have lost touch with God by allowing despair to take hold. What a farce it has become, though, when the cynical person is admired for being wise and the hopeful one patronized for being a simpleton.

We shouldn’t underestimate the forces that make for the current mood of pessimism. We live in a postmodern age, we are told, which means that there are no moral signposts, so loud voices somehow become self-authenticating. We are seeing not only the familiar distrust of politicians and contempt for religion, but a fatalistic sense that nothing can be done — in other words, a lack of hope.

That is the reason we must regret the disappearance of the only church season that proclaims it.

Even then, the church’s message has been mixed. We say Advent looks forward to the coming of the Messiah, but we know he’ll come. We’ve read the last page. Some of us even know it to be true, personally.

What we must try and do is enter into the Jewish mindset, where there is hope but no inevitable happy ending. It is only in that slightly apprehensive frame of mind that we can dare hope for world peace, for all the angry people to cool it, for a more sensible use of the world’s resources and equitable distribution of its bounty — in other words, as the prophet put it poetically, for "the time when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them" (Isa 11:6).

What’s the likelihood of Iran cosying up to anyone at all after Wikileaks, or the United States to China, or even of Chinese-backed North Korea to U.S.-backed South Korea? Will any of even our little local enmities melt away? Fat chance.

That’s what makes them genuine hopes — ones we dare pray for.

 

» Rev. Michael Skliros is a retired Anglican priest in Brandon.

 

» Comments or criticisms on all aspects of contemporary religious faith and practice are welcome and should be emailed to: life@brandonsun.com.