Staying on Mission through Hope

According to Jurgen Moltmann, hope is missional. " Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with the reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably ino the flesh of every unfufilled present." 1 Therefore, when one encounters the resurected Christ one does not hope for a promised future in an eschatological cacoon. The goal of the Christain is not to live in fanciful hope of a better tomorrow. Hope is not impotent or dull....it is piercing and unsettleing...a hope that has a trajectory into mission, service, and change. This type of hope thrusts us into mission. "The Christian hope is directed towards a novum ultimum, towards a new creation of all things by the God of the resurrection of Jesus Christ." 2 Hope keeps us on mission in the present reality of joining with God in the unfolding of a promised future. Hope draws us to be co-creators with God's misison here and now realizing that we can endure and persevere because our hope rests in the realization that God is faithful to God's promises of a promised future--An open future that invites us to join in the mission of God. Is your hope dull and lifeless or does your hope in the Resurrected Christ call you to pierce the realtity of injustice, poverty, racism, etc.? Are we a hopefull community not settled in the present realty but willing to stab into the moments of the unfulfilled present?

1 Moltmann, Jurgen, Theology of Hope, Harper's Collins Publishers, 1991, 21.

2 Theology of Hope, 33.