One Hope

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Eternity is the divine treasure house, and hope is the window, by means of which mortals are permitted to see, as through a glass darkly, the things which God is preparing.--William Mountford.

     It was Thomas Carlyle who wrote, "Man is based on hope. He has no other possession than hope." In the Tate Gallery in London hangs the painting by Frederic Watts, simply called Hope. It portrays a wistfully beautiful young woman sitting on a globe. There is one lone star in the sky but the girl cannot see it because she is blindfolded. In her hand she holds a harp on which all of the strings are broken but one. She is gently plucking that string. Her head is inclined to hear its sound. Hope never surrenders even though blinded by circumstances until it cannot see a star. So long as there is one string left on the lute hope refuses to believe there will be no more music.

     Hope is joyous anticipation. It is desire and expectation compounded in exact proportions. It is as if an angelic cookbook said, "Take one cup of desire and mix well with one cup of expectation." If one does not desire a thing he will certainly not hope for it. If he has not even the remotest expectation of receiving it he cannot hope for it. There is more to hope than merely wanting something.

     I think the one hope is hope in the ultimate degree. It is the majestic and transcendent hope. It is the hope which allows you to be free from panic because you know there is a way out of the labyrinth, a secret door which will open when you are trapped by circumstances and there is no way to turn, no way to escape or evade. If I am correct, the one hope is victory over death at the very moment it looks like death is the victor. It is using death which appears to be the key that locks you in as the key that lets you out. It is knowing you cannot lose the final struggle!

     I suspect I was afraid of death for a

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long time. It was what you might call a mortal fear. Death was treacherous. It was sneaky, creeping up on you when you did not expect it. Once it got in its fell blow there was a finality about it. The ties of the flesh were rudely severed. The relationships of earth were rudely broken up, remaining only in the hazy realm of memory. But that was before the real significance of His death and resurrection blasted away my fears.

     Once it seemed to me that no one could get out of this mess alive. Now I know that I am not going to get out of it dead. The hope of life has led me into a life of hope. I no more have to be frightened by death than I need to be afraid of a shadow across the highway or a curtain on the stage. I'm going through death exactly as I drive through a shady valley. And I am coming back out into the sunlight. If death was the end of life, I would not be living at all. I would only be dying!

     I like the way the writer of Hebrews puts it. His purpose was to encourage his readers to have the faith and patience exhibited by ancient worthies who inherited the promises. He points out that hope is grounded in the immutability, the absolute unchangeableness, of two things-- God's promise and God's oath! The promise would have been enough, but men had developed a tradition of confirming their pledges and vows by taking an oath in something greater than themselves. God had no one greater than himself so he took an oath in his own being and nature. "As I live, saith the Lord."

     "That by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we have as an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil, whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made a high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec" (6:18-20).

     The cadence of these majestic phrases resounds in my heart like the tramp of marching feet of an unconquerable army. Of course I cannot see through the veil, but I know Jesus has gone through it for me. He is there and my hope is there with him. I cannot see the anchor nor the Rock in which it is fastened firm and steadfast. But I can feel the tug and strain on the cable of faith. I have fled to Jesus for refuge, and I mean fled! Nothing is going to shake me loose from my mooring. Nothing! I have not one tiny doubt in my heart about the conquest of death. I do not have any fear of my coming victory either.

     I like the way Paul started his first letter to Timothy. "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Savior, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope." My hope is Jesus. He is also my peace. He is my sanctification and redemption. He is my wisdom and power. Jesus is not simply the answer to life. He is the life. He is also the way and the truth. My hope is a living one!

     This is the way Peter, the one-time fisherman, put it. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." That's terrific! God's mercy, so free and abundant, would not leave us hopeless, hapless and helpless. We have been begotten anew to a living hope. The resurrection of Jesus put it all together.

     There is absolutely no sense to the universe if you eliminate the resurrection. Without it evil triumphs over good, wrong gains the victory over right, and death becomes stronger than life. Take away the resurrection and redemption is a farce, while reconciliation becomes an empty dream, a fantasy rather than a fact. By the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the foundation of faith, the basis of belief and the condition of confidence. And I am staking my life on it, not as a gamble but as an investment.

     I know all about the skeptical accusation that this is mere wishful thinking and mental image projection. So far as I am concerned you can tell that to the

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birds! My hope is the result of faith which is based upon the facts of history. The testimony to these facts is not only credible but it is so valid and rational that if I rejected it I could not believe in anything which happened before I was born or which I did not personally see.

     The facts which undergird my hope grow upon you the more carefully you examine them. Take for instance the case of Frank Morison, a brilliant jurist in Great Britain. As a university student he reached the conclusion that the history of Jesus rested upon very insecure foundations. He was deeply affected by German Rationalism and by the so-called scientific dictum that "miracles do not happen." He decided to write a book about the last seven days of Jesus and strip the story of his life "of its overgrowth of primitive beliefs and dogmatic suppositions."

     He ended up writing Who Moved the Stone? In his preface he calls the book "essentially a confession, the inner story of a man who originally set out to write one kind of book and found himself compelled by the sheer force of circumstances to write quite another." He tells why in a statement which ought to affect every honest skeptic. "It is not that the facts themselves altered, for they are recorded imperishably in the monuments and in the pages of human history. But the interpretation to be put upon the facts underwent a change. Somehow the perspective shifted--not suddenly, as in a flash of insight or inspiration, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, by the stubbornness of the facts themselves."

     The stubbornness of the facts! And these facts are stubborn. They are tenacious and persevering. They changed the course of the world when announced by simple fishermen, slaves and social outcasts. They flooded the earth with shimmering rays of hope when it was sick and sorry, tired and jaded, and choking to death upon its own idolatry. And they will change the world again if we will proclaim them joyously, gloriously and resolutely. If we will get over our infatuation with opinions and our intoxication on creeds, and proclaim the resurrection, hope will return and darkness will once again flee away.

     There is one hope, and it is unitive not divisive. It is the common hope of all who trust in Jesus. It is the golden thread woven into the unity of the Spirit on the loom of everlasting life. I am not sure whether I captured that hope or whether it captured me, but it has flooded every nook and cranny of my soul with its penetrating rays. It has caused me to lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord.

     I am no longer hopeless. Now I am hopeful in the true meaning of the word, full of the happy anticipation of what is yet to be. My life is not ending. It is getting ready to begin. I want to share the gladness of this with every person on this whole wide earth. Jesus was resurrected! Jesus is real! Jesus is reigning! Jesus is returning! And the fingers of my heart are reaching out to Him to clasp on the realization of the glorious promises which sustain me now in expectation as they will then by their consummation.

     My hope will not be extinguished by the chill wind of death blowing across my fevered brow, nor by the cold created by the shadow when I walk toward the Jordan and feel "the fog in my throat and the mist in my face." I shall recall the words of Shelley in his Ode to the West-wind, "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" When a Christian dies, he does not leave home--he goes home!