The Ministry of Healing and the Gospel of Hope - Introduction

Today I begin sharing with you a work that I undertook in 2012 that formed a series of lectures given in several settings over the years. I have decided to do some major re-writing and present it here in a serialized form. I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to send your comments. 
 

The Ministry of Healing

and the Gospel of Hope

 

Introduction: Hope and Healing in a World of Despair and Illusion 

“The role of a leader is to offer hope; the people can despair on their own.”

I remember these words vividly.  Archbishop Colin Johnson shared them with a group of clergy who were “graduating” from our post-ordination training. I believe he had heard them from a former Premier of Ontario. I have never forgotten these words and they have shaped much of my approach to ministry. Hope is at core of the Christian gospel. It is one of the three great Theological Virtues.  Hope should animate the lives of Christian people in all we say and all we do.  More often than not, though, we are tempted to despair.  Having spent all of my professional life as a churchman I can safely say that hope is not always articulated by the people of God or by its leaders. Hope is not an easy either to attain or to nuture. It seems to me that we live in a world in which there is an assault on hope.   People who hope are considered pollyannas, starry-eyed dreamers, optimists, fools without grounding in reality.  The successive financial crises of recent years, the degradation and indeed assault on our environment, the growing disparity between rich and poor, and most recently, the political assault on truth, have all served to offer up evidence that we are living in an age of despair.  It seems as if things have gotten so bad, so beyond repair, that nothing short of a complete revolution will change things.  If history has taught us anything, though, it is that revolutionary utopian visions only lead to new systems of domination, control, enforced conformity, and despair.  People will be people. Globalization appears to have taken much of the power out of the hands of individuals and communities.  “What can I do?” and “what power do I have?” are common refrains of despair in a global age.  Fear drives us to despair and helplessness, and in the midst of the frightening challenges that are before we throw our hands in the air in desperation.  Despair wins.  There is nothing we can do.

            Yet, despair is not a place in which we can make our home, and so we seek other ways to run from our fear and hide our desperation.  As Chris Hedges has noted in his 2009 book The Empire of Illusion, we mask our despair with illusion, and thus fulfilling the prophecies of Neil Postman, we “amuse ourselves to death.”   Illusion seems to be the only antidote to despair.  We retreat into a world of illusion, false security, and denial as the only alternative to despair.  We buy, we dream, we insulate, we out-militarize our neighbours, we dream of returning to golden ages which never really existed, we lie; we convince ourselves that all is well or that with a very quick fix, it shall be. However, such a feigned wellness is not built upon truth, but upon an illusion.  We do everything we can to run from our fear, everything except to embrace hope.

But is hope beyond our reach?  And more poignantly, can hope make a difference?  It seems to me that people have not entirely lost hope, and indeed hope can be swiftly kindled when leaders speak words of hope.  The late Jack Layton kindled hope as he offered these words in a deathbed love-letter to Canadians:  “Hope is better than fear.”  These were not simply the sentimental words of a dying man, but a man who had lived in hope, a man who believed that hope breaks the deadlock between despair and illusion.

Hope kindled is one thing, though; hope sustained is quite another.  Living in hope, cultivating the habit of hope is the much harder way and the road less travelled.   This is the road upon which hope becomes more than mere optimism.  This is the road upon which hope becomes a way of life.  This is the road upon which hope actually transforms lives, and yes, transforms the world.  On this road not only do we need fellow-travellers, but we need leaders, encouragers, and believers.   Hope is kindled when leaders proclaim hope to a fearful people that believe their only choice is despair or illusion.  However, hope is sustained when leaders lead a frightened people between the Scylla of despair and Charybdis of illusion out into the wine-dark sea of new opportunity.  Hope is sustained when a leader raises his or her staff, separating the waters of despair and illusion, and leads a people who have been enslaved for generations dry-shod through the sea toward the Promised Land of freedom.  Hope is sustained when in the wilderness leaders direct a starving people toward the manna and the quail, and reveal to them that living water can flow from stones.  It is not an easy task to lead the people through such things.  We often rebel and want to find the easiest way. It is not easy at all.  But it is not impossible. 

It is not impossible because I believe we are wired for hope.  To be sure, our brokenness, our sinfulness (whatever we choose to call it), and our fear tempt us to despair and illusion.  This is a condition of our broken humanity.  We are not God, but we are God’s. We are created by God, we are in the image and likeness of God, and our purpose, our end, what the Greeks called our telos, is union with God.  We are created, as St. Peter wrote, to partake of the divine nature.  The Incarnation of God in Christ brings the healing that makes this hope possible.  Despair and illusion are tempters that ever seek to draw us from that hope.  Together and with God’s help, we shall not be overcome.  In gentleness, in humility, in love, in faith, hope wins

I am not a leader.  If anything, I am a failed leader. For many years I thought it was my call to lead. I was wrong. I have learned a lot about leadership in my life.  I know a lot about how it works and what makes a good leader. I have known both good and bad leaders.  I have been both at one time or another.  Leadership is a rare gift. It is a holy charism. Not everyone has it. Yet, we are all leaders in some small way. How we choose to lead our lives is an act of leadership.  How you and I choose to live in this beautiful but broken world is an act of leadership. One need not be an anointed leader to lead. And one need not be a leader to live in hope.

To lead and live with hope is to proclaim the reality that despair and illusion are just that. They are aberrations, they are distractions, they are afflictions, but they are not the truth of who we are. To lead and live with hope is to testify to our true nature and purpose.  To lead and live with hope is also to live in a certain reality that can be painful.  It is not a reality without suffering.  It is not a reality without hardship.  It requires endurance.  Yet, endurance comes in knowing whose we are, to whom we belong, and whose divine life we reflect.   Hope is a healing journey into authenticity, out of falsehood and out of illusion.  Hope is a healing journey into the discovery of our true identities and the shedding of false identities.  Hope is the healing journey that banishes despair and casts out illusion.   Hope is a journey into who we really are and what life (and indeed the cosmos) is really all about.

THE MINISTRY OF HEALING AND THE GOSPEL OF HOPE CONTINUES TOMORROW...