The great Christian ethicist and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope.” As we enter this season of Easter we might benefit from reflecting on these words. During the latter portion of the nineteenth century there was an incredible optimism within Western civilization. Through the “progress” of history and science spurred on by the discovery of evolution, many believed the golden age of humanity was right around the corner. World War I shattered such naïve optimism. Subsequent events in the twentieth century have left many wondering how long of a future humankind even has on this fragile and threatened planet.
As we face the challenges of our time and our children’s future, we must prepare ourselves for the long haul. Nothing worth doing in our kind of world can possibly be completed in our lifetime. Poverty and hunger continue to take their grim toll on the world’s poor, especially women and children. Although the threat of nuclear war seems remote (compared to the danger during the Cold War), our world continues to suffer from civil wars, “ethnic cleansing,” religiously motivated violence, and a growing polarization of the world’s peoples as intolerance multiplies. The problems of our society from the horror of inner city life to the drug epidemic to the violent crimes which paralyze old and young alike appear to have become permanent if not expected features. The painful and desperate lives of our world’s 40 million slaves (more than 25% of them children) continue to demonstrate how heartless and cruel human beings can be (Search freetheslaves.net for more info on modern slavery). And any solution for the continuing ecological demise of the cosmos as we lose forever more and more of our planet’s plant and animal species seems to be beyond our capacity to even imagine, much less initiate.
No, we are not likely to complete anything worth doing in our lifetime. Such a realization could lead us to apathy and despair. But in this Easter season we are not allowed to surrender to despair or retreat into apathy. We are allowed to be saved by hope—the hope we see in the resurrection of Jesus. In Jesus’ death, God has embraced the whole world and all of its pain, sin, suffering, and death. In Christ God has sealed our destiny with that of Jesus. This world will not be abandoned by God. In Christ this world has been forever wedded to God, and its future will be shaped by tender hands of grace.
We shall not in our lifetime see the end of poverty and hunger. We shall not see the end of violence and oppression. We shall not see the end of ecological abuse (although if we don’t make radical changes at every level within the next decade our children and grandchildren will reap a bitter harvest from our greed and neglect). But because we trust that Jesus has been raised from the dead and is the “first fruits” of God’s new creation, we also trust that one day this world will be recreated in the image of Jesus. And in ways we cannot now understand or even imagine, our faithfulness to his ways will contribute to that final redemption.
Martin Luther supposedly said that if he knew the world was going to end tomorrow, he would still plant a tree today. Perhaps he would do so because he understood that for the Living God who raised Jesus from the dead nothing is lost. We need “tree planters” in our world today—people who believe that God can be trusted with this creation and its future. And because of such faith, we can live out of hope, even though what we labor for and dream about will not be completed in our lifetime. Perhaps what we labor for and dream about will not even come to fruition in terrestrial history. But nothing is lost to the Living God. All is kept within the Divine Memory, and all can be healed and set free in a dimension suggested by the resurrection of our Lord.
The Talmud, that great collection of Jewish teachings, says that “We are not required to complete the task any more than we are allowed to put it aside.” We shall not complete the tasks before us. But we can find the strength not to put them aside by realizing with Niebuhr that we are saved by hope. May we all be “tree planters” to the glory of God and to the healing of this world.
