“Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer” (Rom. 12:12).
St. Paul takes us out to the margin today, in our reading from Romans: to the boundary between the present and the future. The past is downstream; the present is all around us; but the future is inaccessible to anyone without a crystal ball. Inaccessible, but also hurtling towards us at a furious clip with weighty force. Poised on the thin margin of the present, we know the future is coming, but we don’t know what it contains.
“Rejoice in hope” (Rom. 12:12), Paul says, taking us back to an earlier theme of his letter. “For in hope we were saved” (Rom. 8:24), he writes in the eighth chapter. “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?” (Rom. 8:24). Paul’s point is that if we could see it we wouldn’t need to hope for it: it would already have arrived, and hope would be fulfilled. “But if we hope for what we do not see,” Paul goes on to say, “we wait for it with patience” (Rom. 8:25).
Hope is part and parcel of the margin on which we stand as Christians. We cannot see the future with any certainty; at least not until the crystal ball starter sets are distributed to ordinary mortals like us. The future can be a source of anticipation or a source of terror. People argue about the past, both about what happened and what it meant; and they certainly argue about the present. Small wonder that the future, which really is inaccessible because it hasn’t happened yet, is also controverted. Nobody knows it with certainty but we’re still arguing about it! What we see as we peer over the edge into the future is anybody’s guess.
In spite of this, Christians have hope: hope in the God who saves through Jesus Christ. Whatever the future holds, it holds that. Or perhaps we should say, not that the future holds anything but that God holds the future itself in the palm of his hand. “In hope we were saved” (Rom. 8:24), as St. Paul said. Jesus, through his death and resurrection is the source of that hope for the future, come what may. God raised him from the dead, and he’s become the source of life for us.
When Paul tells the Christians in Rome to “Rejoice in hope” (Rom. 12:12), he’s mindful we’re balanced on a precipice: that joy itself is edgy, just the thing for folk who are living on the margin between present and future. If you’re hopeful then you can be joyful. In contrast with happiness, which is a kind of “put on your slippers and gather round the hearth at home” feeling, a sort of settled contentment, joy is what we experience when we’re on the move, in transition, perched on the edge of what is still unseen.
Joy creeps up on us when we are least expecting it. In fact, St. Paul tells us as much when he says with his next breath, “be patient in suffering” (Rom. 12:12). As he said earlier, “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom. 8:25). Patience is a word rooted in the Latin word for “suffering”: which gives us an idea of just how edgy joy can be, and how much hope is called for as we perch on the margin. The margin can be an uncomfortable place, which makes joy all the more surprising.
St. Paul gives us these brief notes, not because he’s fascinated with hope and joy, with the present and the future, but because he wants to encourage us in the living of the Christian life, in the marginal space where we are placed, in the present moment which is passing away. So he goes on to tell the Church in Rome, to “persevere in prayer” (Rom. 12:12). He knows that, with the present all around us, there will be plenty for us to pray about.
Our perseverance in prayer will be called upon, since what we hope for is still unseen. As a practical matter, people who are hopeful are people who pray: people who turn to God without ceasing, mindful that the future is still unwritten. We pray knowing that God holds all time and all place in hand. Whatever desperate strait we have wandered into, as individuals or as a community, God is in charge, no matter how uncertain the result seems.
In the face of the future, we can always pray! No matter what the circumstance, we can always act. We stand at the margin, at the juncture of present and future, balanced at a dizzying height! God knows it can be disorienting. So, as the Apostle says, let us “Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer” (Rom. 12:12).