Currents of Faith: Open and Unfolding Reflections

This passage from Hebrews, stressing Christ’s unique status, sets the stage for the claim—so central to this writing—that the revelation we have in Jesus is in fact the final revelation. Near the end of Hebrews, however, this sense of fulfillment is balanced by an emphasis upon hope in the midst of unfulfillment, as the author lays out a “pilgrim theology” encapsulated in 13:14: “For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” The Christmas season—and this is especially so for process thinkers—combines the themes of present fulfillment and hope for the future in a powerful way. The birth of the Christ-child signals God’s unconditional presence with us and participation in both our joy and our suffering in the present; but the Christ-child is also a symbol of hope for the world—hope that God’s shalom, or ultimate peace and well-being, will at last be realized on earth. Some years ago, a Roman Catholic nun who has worked for peace and justice in Latin America for many decades spoke at my college. The picture she painted of that region was a bleak one indeed, and so I asked her how she was able to keep hope alive in the midst of the overwhelming problems she had lifted up. Her answer was this: “We need to learn to work for realities that we will not see realized in our lifetime.” That message speaks to me even more powerfully than it did when I first heard it. A native of the deep South born in the late nineteen-thirties, I have lived through times when hope was very much alive. I have seen systems of apartheid dismantled both in this country and in South Africa; I have seen a generation of young people bring an insane war to an end; and I have celebrated as I observed persons of all ages become aware of the injustice of our economic system and the dangers facing our environment. But I must also say that at present hope is harder to come by than at any point in my life, as I watch our government acting more and more like an empire and less and less an avenue for providing for the common good. It would be easy enough to fall into despair. To be a Christian, however, is to be a person of hope. We can work for realities that we may never see realized because we believe that far beyond our own lifetimes, the Christ-child still comes into the world as a sign that God is truly with us, sowing the seeds of ultimate shalom. ~ Russ Pregeant