Hope as the unfathomable promise of the Mat 6:33 Imperative

The social, political, and religious milieu of Christ’s time cried out for hope, and yet when hope landed in its midst, it could not be recognized, ^{Jn 1:11} “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”   Israel’s history in biblical times was a history of hope; hope was the very fibre of their ancestral foundations.  How could the hopeful go back on hope when they needed it most?

People have written about hope in many directions, Ernst Bloch in Marxism, Paul Tillich and Jürgen Moltmann in theology, and Viktor Frankl in psychiatry.  A common thesis in most writings on the notion of hope is that hope is perhaps the strongest driving force in human existence.  A person without hope is as good as dead, says Paul Tillich in his sermon, The Right to Hope.  Frankl (1984) is fond of citing Nietzsche’s famous maxim on hope, “He who has a why to live for, can live with almost any how.”

Why then are we so hopeless if we can be so hopeful?  In the words of Tillich, “nobody can live without hope, even if it were only for the smallest things which give some satisfaction even under the worst of conditions, even in poverty, sickness, and social failure. Without hope, the tension of our life toward the future would vanish, and with it, life itself.”  Hope is what the abyss of the human soul cries out for.