When you think of Christian hope, there are a few things that likely come to mind. What happens after we die? Does that matter for here and now? What is heaven? What will it be like? Where is heaven? What is salvation? What is the church? What is the resurrection? What does any of this have to do with today?
When I bring up what happens when we die, I often get the response that it doesn’t matter too much because we will find out when we get there. In one since there is truth in that because we have no idea what things will fully be like (as Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 13:8-12). On the other hand, what we believe about what happens when we die shapes what we believe God is doing in the world today and how we should live our lives.
Over the next seven weeks we are going to go back to the Bible and look at some basics in Christian theology that sometimes is misunderstood. We are revisiting the foundations of Christian Hope. There are a lot of things in life that leave people feeling hopeless. Some big events of my lifetime: 9/11, Tsunami in India, Hurricane Katrina, 2008 crash, mass shootings, political tensions, the pandemic, and the like (as Paul would say) all have left people feeling hopeless. There are hundreds of other things I could add to this list. What message of hope do we have for people who are feeling hopeless? When we only offer people a future hope of what might come later our words are often received as empty. Is there hope for the here and now? What does the Bible have to say?
There are two types of hope found in scripture. First, hope is what lies ahead and is promised by a God who loves to bring hope to each of us. Second, hope is about how the Kingdom of God is breaking into our present-day realities where hope then spills out into the world today. We’ve tended to lean into the first aspect of hope while ignoring the second. What we believe about what happens in the world determines what we believe God is doing and what we are called to do in the world. We will be looking at a lot of scriptures in the coming weeks to establish a biblical foundation for hope but here are a few to investigate for this week: Isaiah 11, Revelation 21-22, and 1 Corinthians 15.
Paul’s imagery in 1 Corinthians 15 is something I want to hold throughout this series. All the good we do in this world is planted perishable for God to raise imperishable. Everything we do in bringing about visions of God’s good creation in this life will be raised in the New Creation. When God calls us to partner with him in bringing the new creation, it means that what we do in this world will be realized fully in the next. We aren’t merely rearranging chairs on a sinking ship. We are the people who are so invested in the hope to come that it spills out of us in the here and now. We are the people who live between God’s redemption in Christ on the cross and the redemption that will come in his second coming. The hope we share with others are sign posts pointing to what God has done, is doing, and will do in this world.
Over the next seven weeks we are going to cover these topics of hope following the video series by NT Wright, “Surprised by Hope.” You can watch the videos here. If you do not have Right Now Media, you can access it here. You can purchase a participant guide for this series here. Use this for your personal studies or as a small group study (now or in the near future). I recommend you watch these videos each week and study what the Bible says about the hope we have. I’ll continue to provide my blog and podcast to help prepare for Sunday’s lesson. Let’s dig deep and reconnect with the foundations of the Christian faith and the hope we have to offer the world.
June 19 – Hope for the World
June 26 – The Hope of the Resurrection
July 3 – The Hope of Heaven
July 10 – The Hope of Jesus’s Second Coming
July 17 – The Hope of Salvation
July 24 – The Hope of the Church
July 31 – Reclaiming Hope in the Church