Lure of the impossible life

At the end of Chapter 13 of the first letter that Paul from Tarsus wrote to the Christians in the city of Corinth, we find the words “Faith, hope and love, these are the great three, and the greatest of them is love.” Then the writer adds his advice: “Pursue love.”

The Christian life is truly absurd. It is absurd, not because of what we believe, but because of the kind of life we are called to live. Faith, hope and love.

When translating the Greek word “pistis,” I prefer the word trust rather than faith. An important part of the Christian message is that we must trust one another. It is not difficult to understand that husband needs to trust wife, and wife needs to trust husband. It is simple to understand that parent and child need to trust each other. When we push to expand the circle of trust into more public arenas, we become a bit uneasy. The need to trust does not diminish in larger arenas. If we embrace the commitment to trust, we know there is more, there is more than marriage and family. There is another chapter to the story.

Christian teaching urges us to trust those we perceive as being untrustworthy. The conviction is that trust begets trust. The practice of trust is contagious. Trust given takes on a life of its own. Trusting gives birth to more trust. Mistrusting other people is not a good experience. Mistrusting others brings out the worst in people. On the largest stages of life, mistrust is the seedbed of war. When the alternatives are considered, the Christ follower decides to trust the untrusting. And there is more.

The greatest challenge is to be a completely trustworthy person. In my own experience people are looking for someone to trust. Trusting is not only contagious, it also acts like a magnet. The magnet of trust turns others into magnets of trust.

Need I add that trustworthiness is one of the fruits of the Spirit.?

The second of the triumvirate is hope. There is really no place in Christian practice for pessimism. I recognize that some depression and the pessimism that often accompanies depression can be a clinical diagnosis for which medical treatment is needed. However, for the healthy minded Christian, pessimism is not an option. Hope is a chosen confidence in the ultimate triumph of the good.

Many organizations find a vision statement helpful in directing their activities. Time is well-spent developing a picture of what ought to be and the destination to which the organization is heading. This is the function of hope. People of hope always have an idea about where they are heading.

Unfortunately, some Christians think only of the sweet by and by. This is not what Christian hope is about. Jesus left us with a prayer that asks “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Christians of hope have a vision of a world of people who are well-fed, well-clothed, properly housed, healthy and at peace with neighbors. They have a vision of an earth that is given proper care, even love.

In our worship service this past Sunday, our benediction prayer included the request for “enough foolishness that we might do what others claim cannot be done.”

That is the stuff of which hope is made.

And then there is love. Our churches are at their best when we sing. Often we begin a worship service with the singing of a round. “Love, love, love, love. Christian this is your call. Love your neighbor as yourself for God is love.”

In our society love is greatly misunderstood. Over and over we hear that people “fall in love.” I am sympathetic to the experience. I accept that falling in love is a valid experience. However, that kind of love is not what Jesus talked about and is not the virtue to which Christians are challenged to live.

In Christian mythology, God does not love human beings because we are lovable. God chooses to love us when we are desperately in need of being loved.

God loves us when we are at our worst, when we are in the midst of our greatest failures, when our behavior is disgustingly bad. God’s kind of love never ends.

In Christian teaching, people are called upon to choose and to live out this kind of love every day in every circumstance.

We love one another, good or bad. We love our neighbors, good or bad. We love our enemies, good or bad. Love will never fail us.

Trust, hope and love. These are the great three. The greatest is love. Choose love.

The Rev. Howard Bess is the pastor emeritus of Church of the Covenant, an American Baptist church in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.