IN THE PAST TENSE

BY AMANDA BERGER

We had hoped for a less serious diagnosis, one with a cure. I had hoped he’d stay, if just for our kids. My family had hoped this round of layoffs would pass me by. We had hoped this time we’d see the little pink plus sign.

We had hope. And then we didn’t. In his sermon, “Hope in the Past Tense,” author and speaker Jonathan Merritt challenges his listeners to think of any sadder word in the English language than that of hope in the past tense. Merritt goes on to talk about the loss of hope within the context of the story of the Road to Emmaus told in chapter 24 of the Gospel of Luke.

Jesus’ disciples knew this feeling: hopelessness. They had hoped for a conquering Messiah who would free them from foreign occupation and the legalism of Jewish law, but instead Cleopas and his unnamed friend and fellow disciple have just witnessed their hope crucified on the cross.

With nothing left, these disciples leave Jerusalem for the seven-mile walk to Emmaus, not their home nor their destination, just some place in between. And as they walk, they encounter a stranger to whom they tell their grief and disappointment. “We had hoped …”

In his sermon, Merritt says that anthropologists have been unable to identify the historical site of Emmaus. So, Merritt wonders if “Emmaus is just another name for any place you retreat to or return to when your world falls apart, when your faith falls apart.”

Merritt goes on, “Hopelessness might have kind of a blinding effect on us. … God is always present on this road called grief, waiting to be identified, waiting to be invited into the conversation, but maybe, just maybe, we can’t make out the silhouette of the divine through the foggy lenses of our own disappointment. Perhaps we can become so hyper-focused on our own pain that we don’t recognize [God].”

For those experiencing loss, grief or disappointment, stumbling along in the dust, Emmaus is the place where our hope is exhausted and we can no longer see God through our suffering.

The Dark Night Of The Soul

Suffering is familiar territory to all of us, and the Christian faith is not an insurance policy against the “dark night of the soul.” This turn of phrase, coined by St. John of the Cross, a 16th century monk, poet and mystic, describes our seasons of spiritual darkness or dryness. The “dark night of the soul” is not exclusive to seasons of intense suffering, though it may include those. Rather, the term comes from the Spanish word “oscura,” meaning hidden. It really refers to those times when God is concealed, unfelt or mysterious in our lives.

These seasons are surprisingly common for those maturing in their faith and deepening their spiritual journey—the longing to grow closer to Christ can often bring us to places where we feel all but abandoned. During these seasons, we may try everything we can think of, but nothing helps. We try to pray, and words won’t come. We come to worship and feel nothing.

Intellectually and theologically, we know we are never abandoned; but like those who journeyed on the Emmaus road not seeing Christ beside them, there are seasons where God is hidden from us. It is a place where we may pray, but can feel nothing, sense nothing, see nothing of God. And though disconcerting, these spiritual dry seasons may actually serve to drive us into even deeper dependence on God.

In his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, author Richard Foster describes it as such, “Can you see how our very sense of the absence of God is, therefore, an unsuspected grace? In the very act of hiddenness God is slowly weaning us of fashioning him in our own image.”

Prayer Of The Forsaken

It is during barren seasons that we can turn to the biblical witness to instruct us in prayer. The faithful of the Old Testament were experts in prayers of complaint—prayers where they were able to balance both their love for God and frustration, anger and despair at the broken world around them. These prayers of lament and longing can teach us how to pray our own contradictions—to hold both fear and joy, anger and praise in tension with one another.

Foster offers this counsel to those who are experiencing the loss of hope or the dark night of the soul. He writes, “Wait on God. Wait, silent and still. Wait, attentive and responsive. Learn that trust precedes faith. Faith is a little like putting your car into gear, and right now you cannot exercise faith, you cannot move forward. Do not berate yourself for this. But when you are unable to put your spiritual life into drive, do not put it into reverse; put it into neutral. Trust is how you put your spiritual life into neutral. Trust is confidence in the character of God. Firmly and deliberately you say, ‘I do not understand what God is doing or even where God is, but I know that he is out to do me good.’ This is trust. This is how to wait.”

We could compare Holy Saturday (the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday) to the Dark Night or shifting into neutral. It is a space of waiting. In this place of unknowing, a place where hope feels broken, all we can do is wait upon the Lord. And though we cannot predict how long we will wait, because we are Easter people, we do know that the resurrection will come and that hope will be restored.