Our Hope

     “If Christians think about the basis of their hope, about the “human reign of the Son of Man,” then these two ways, of the “great refusal” and the numerous forms of accommodation, become marginal phenomena.  The basis of Christian hope lies in faith in the crucified Son of Man.  It is in him that the wholly other kingdom of God has set foot on earth.  It is therefore “hidden under the cross” (Luther), and becomes present only during  temptation and struggle.  Following the crucified Jesus creates distance of Christians from this “passing world”, which one can only have “as if one had it not” (1Cor.7.29).  The following of the crucified Jesus however also creates the strength for the incarnation of love in those possibilities which one has or finds.  This love grips this life as if it were everything, and yet at the same time knows that that which is is not all there is.  It denies itself as passionately as if everything were over, and yet it hopes in the resurrection of the dead.  It finds God in the concrete, and yet it knows that everything concrete is transcended  by God.”

     Jurgen Moltmann, On Human Being, pgs. 44-45