Title: Hope is Waiting
1 Peter 1:13-21
Hope is waiting.
attribute of hope
That's right. Hope is an event beyond the boundaries of death. What we hope for on this side of death is not really hope. For such hopes are always finite and provisional. The hope of entering a good college or buying a home makes us vain from the moment it is achieved. This emptiness makes us yearn for something else. Then everything we achieve before death is not true hope, because it eventually prevents us from entering life.
Therefore, it should be seen that true hope has to do with what happens after death. Those present at the funeral of John Paul II must have applauded this hope after death. It means looking forward to a hope that does not lead us to another passion or desire.
In this very passage, there is a danger that the Christian faith may fall into fascism. This is the message that all things in this world are in vain, so we should give up and look only at the other world. If you go further up, you can find such a figure in the Essenes, and there are traces of it in the medieval monastic system that distinguishes the genitals. Some Christian sects or parts of the Orthodox church completely deny reality and seek only the world outside. Of course, things in this world may be meaningless because they are completely destroyed by death, but the Christian faith makes a distinction between the inside and the outside, but not dualistically. We can catch up with the reality of Christian faith only by understanding the ontological mystery that the world beyond death and the reality on the other side of death are mutually and dialectically related.
However, people who are engrossed in dualistic thoughts sing unconditionally extraneous hopes on the one hand, or project worldly desires onto those extraneous hopes on the other hand. These days, the latter group of believers is spreading. They say that they hope for heaven after death, but in reality, they aim to live well enough to be envied by others in this world. So, while preaching that the end has come, there are things that cost tens of billions of won to build churches.
resurrection hope
The reason this happens is that we don't understand exactly what the fundamentals of the Christian faith are. Peter states hope in the letter we read today: “Through this very Christ you have put your hope in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory” (verse 21). Peter has already mentioned this hope earlier. “God, by his great mercy, has given us a living hope by begetting us and raising Jesus Christ from the dead” (verse 3). Both verses 3 and 21 point to the fact that the Christian hope is based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
What could be more eventful than our all-destroying death to be overcome? If it were clear that God “raised Jesus from the dead,” and it was clear that we who believed in Him would also be resurrected, we would have nothing more to hope for in this world. Because the foundation upon which everything is destroyed has been resolved.
But the problem is that we have no way of confirming the resurrection from the dead. Not because I don't want to believe it, but because it's not a believable story. The fact that the dead cannot be brought back to life must be acknowledged by anyone who can make the slightest logical judgment of the world. So what should I do? Most Christians stress that only faith can solve this. This is a fact we mentioned once in last week's sermon, but the general view is that Christianity must rely on 'unconditional faith'. Whenever we stand before an event beyond our comprehension, such as the resurrection, we are forced to choose between the two. Whether to believe unconditionally or to give up the Christian faith.
I don't think this alternative is so justified. Not only is it not important in Christianity to give up all our rational cognitive abilities and believe unconditionally, but it is also unwise to dismiss such factors as unconditionally meaningless. Christian faith does not depend on whether or not we believe immediately in some supernatural event that has happened in the past, but rather on whether we hope for the future life toward which it is headed. The Christian faith is neither fanaticism nor scientific positivism. The Christian faith is a prospect for the future. It is about correctly recognizing and choosing what kind of future these life forms we are experiencing today are aiming for.
It is only by accurately understanding the future nature of the Christian faith that we can understand the essence of the Christian faith. We believe in what will happen in the future rather than what has happened. However, that future event cannot yet be proven and is open to the extent that we cannot foresee it. It is the core of the Christian faith that we stake all our lives on a future event that has not yet been proven to us.
This last event, the eschatological life event, is the resurrection. Christianity focuses on the hope of resurrection because this resurrection, which is described as a symbol of rising from the dead, is the future life. Again, since this resurrection is not yet decided or proven, it is the ultimate life that is still open, so we cannot judge the Christian faith in terms of whether we unconditionally believe or deny that we die and live again. You are right to say this. Christianity's identity lies in whether we believe or deny the fact that Jesus happened to be a life event that can no longer be accurately explained except in the way that we died and rose again. The New Testament always apologizes for the fact that we experienced this eschatological life by pulling it in advance from the historical Jesus event. This is the minimal or decisive factor that can assure us that we are Christians.
faith in waiting
So Peter exhorts us to wait. “Therefore, make up your mind and be sober, waiting to the end for the grace that will be bestowed upon you at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (verse 13). The appearing of Jesus Christ means His Second Coming. Some may think that Jesus will return in the clouds, but that is an ancient myth. To them, such mythical events seemed so natural that they only described the Second Coming of Jesus in that way, but the reality was different. The second coming of Jesus is an event in which all things in this world will enter the world of perfection. Its consummation is the resurrection from the dead. The life of waiting for this perfect life to come to us is the Christian's existence.
Now it is clear what our Christian life is like. The answer lies in waiting for the ultimate life, perfect life, or resurrection, to come upon us. That waiting is hope, and hope is waiting. Hope waiting for life is the essence of Christian faith.
To wait means that we have not yet experienced something finished. Whatever we achieve in this world, it is still not complete. Any social status or moral achievement that others would envy is still only provisional. Even those who have attained artistic or spiritual depths do not say that they have reached a certain state of perfection. The very high state we see also only indirectly confirms the fact that there is a world in which we must wait.
The fact that the existence of life is waiting ultimately means that this form of life we experience in this world is not complete. Here are some beautiful flowers. At present, it seems to us the pinnacle of beauty, but this is not a perfect life. What about us humans? These forms of life we live in, the content and forms of eating, drinking, getting married, having children, earning money, and governing are not yet perfect lives. Think of it this way. Why are flowers and people so different in this world? Why are flowers only flowers and humans are only humans? Why is there no existence that is both a flower and a person? These life forms and conditions that seem so natural to us are by no means absolute or complete.
All living things in this world eventually go out towards death. Not only because we are afraid of death, but because all living things experience existence and non-existence on the border of death, we do not absolutize all living beings living in death, but seek something beyond it. Just like Jesus' parable about the virgin waiting for the bridegroom, we are people holding lamps and waiting for that life. This is our resurrection hope.
traveler's fear
Before we enter the world of absolute life, God judges us. His judgment is ‘fair’. To be fair means to be different from our standards. Furthermore, it cannot be thought of as 'achievement' to say that you are judged fairly according to 'achievements'. The achievements mentioned in today's text are not things that we consider to be good in our judgment. Our actions and achievements cannot be the standard by which God judges because we can create while hiding ourselves. Our achievements are our own. Only God can judge ourselves accurately. Those who keep in mind the fact that God judges us accurately according to God's standards have no choice but to live day by day with fear. The fear that can only be felt when faced with an absolute life event that is called God's judgment is what Schweitzer calls 'awe of life'.