Guest Blogger: Bishop Bill Frey

Our guest blogger today is Bishop Bill Frey. +Bill is the past bishop of Guatemala and Colorado and the retired Dean of Trinity Seminary.

CHUTZPAH

Do you know the word, “chutzpah?” It’s a good Jewish word. Leo Rosten defined it in his Dictionary of Yiddish by the story of the man who murdered his parents, and when he was arrested, threw himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan.

There is more than a little chutzpah in our Christian faith and it’s one of the more attractive features of our proclamation. I find it in one of my favorite phrases from the Old Testament. In the book of Zechariah, during some dark days in the history of his people, the Lord is quoted as saying, “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope.” “Prisoners of hope!” Could there be a better description of the followers of the risen Christ? “We have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” says Peter. (1 Peter1: 3)

It’s a big mistake to confuse hope with optimism. Optimism is earthbound, frequently stemming from an overly rosy appreciation of human nature. It assumes that, left to our own devices, we’ll all turn out pretty well, just “doin’ what comes naturally.” Anyone who has ever had children knows better than that! Optimism also assumes automatic progress. “Every day in every way we’re getting better and better.” A simple glance at the headlines should disabuse us of that notion.

Hope, on the other hand, is grounded on God’s action in the past, and the promise he makes about our future. Both Testaments make it clear that history has both a direction (you can’t go back to Eden) and a purpose. Despite any evidence to the contrary, we’re going somewhere. And, in God’s hands, that somewhere is secure.

Granted, the intermediate steps may be problematic. How does Paul describe his apostolic experience? “Afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Cor. 4:8-9) However, all this is but a “slight momentary affliction” which is working for us “an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”

This affirmation has been sorely tested recently, hasn’t it? We’ve seen heart-breaking devastation from tsunamis, tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, and mine disasters, not to mention the continuing carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan. How dare we hope in the face of such circumstances? Isn’t hoping a cruel mockery of the suffering of others? It might well seem so and we Christians have sometimes been accused of making light of the pain of the world with our alleluias.

But how can we do otherwise, knowing what we know? We know how the story comes out. The disciples were not singing “Glory!” as they walked home from the crucifixion. But, knowing about Easter, we have the chutzpah to call it, “Good Friday.”

I knew this intellectually for some time, but discovered the reality of it a little over forty years ago when I had to bury the seventeen-year-old president of my parish youth group. He had gone home from school one sunny afternoon and blown his brains out.

He was a popular young man and the event was a tragedy not just for the family, but for the whole community as well. The Church was packed, and I knew that at a given moment, I was going to have to face the congregation and say, “Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.” And I would have to continue, “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee…”

“Give thanks?” How could we? How, indeed, except for the chutzpah of the Christian faith, that hopeful and defiant audacity that can look evil in the eye and say, “You will not have the last word to say on this matter.” We will not be defined by suffering and tragedy, but by the word of the God who raised Jesus from the dead.

Some years ago, as I was waiting in line outside the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Denver prior to participating in the funeral of an Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese, a Rabbi friend turned to me and said, “Bill, I don’t get it. For us, a funeral is a terrible thing and we come to it with great mourning and sadness, but you Christians seem to treat it like a celebration.” A brief pause. “But then I guess you’d have to in order to be consistent with your theology.” And, being a smart aleck, I couldn’t resist saying, “Bingo! Rabbi, thou art not far from the kingdom of Heaven.”

We have some difficult days ahead of us in the life of our Church, and there are events waiting for us whose outcome we can’t control. But one thing we can control and that is our response to trouble. Remember that despair is not listed among the fruits of the Spirit. Have the chutzpah to “return to your stronghold, you prisoners of hope.”” Or, in the words of Peter and Susan, and Edmund, and Lucy in the Narnia stories, “Let us go and take the adventure that Aslan sends us.”