The Beginning of Hope Is the End of Our Story

The Lord said to Abraham,

“Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child when I am old?’ Is anything impossible for the Lord? I will return to you when the season comes round again and Sarah will have a son.”

Then Sarah lied, saying,

“I did not laugh,” because she was afraid.

But the Lord said, “No! You did laugh.”

Genesis 18:13-15

Then as they went into the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has been raised! He is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples, even Peter, that he is going ahead of you into Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you.” Then they went out and ran from the tomb, for terror and bewilderment had seized them. And they said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

Mark 16:5-8

Reading on the Girardian Reflections site I came across this reference to James Alison's book "Raising Abel." Christian hope does not arise from God's "Yes!" to who we are and what we do. Christian hope arises from God's resounding "No!" to who we are and what we do. God says, "No!" so that he can say "Yes!" to who Christ makes of us and what Christ does in us. But--as Alison so ably portrays--between God's "No!" and God's "Yes!" there must be a complete end and totally new beginning.

Quote:

If you would like a more fruitful pairing of this story (all 15 verses) with a Gospel text, James Alison has a great one in Raising Abel, pp. 160ff., where he pairs it with Mark 16. When Sarah hears the promise, she laughs; and when God questions her about it, she lies because "she was afraid" (the Greek Septuagint: ephobethe gar). When the women at the empty tomb are confronted with the promise, they didn't tell anyone for they were afraid (Gr: ephobounto gar). He uses this pairing to begin a discussion of Christian hope: "I want to focus on this because there is nothing pretty about Christian hope. Whatever Christian hope is, it begins in terror and utter disorientation in the face of the collapse of all that is familiar and well known." [p. 161] To give you one other crucial paragraph from this chapter as a follow-up:

In the light of all this we can begin to understand Christian hope as an unexpected rupture in the system. What do I mean by system? Every system. As humans we all live and inscribe our lives within a series of systems, of games whose rules we know and to which we adapt ourselves to a greater or a lesser extent. By 'the system' I mean every way of ours of having a story, of organizing our thinking and acting, every way of forging our lives and of talking about them as something sure. And this system is, for many people, most of the time, quite livable. It is moved neither by great hopes nor shaken by great despairs. However, as I have tried to show throughout these pages, every story, in as far as it is grasped, is a system structured by the murderous lie, whose security depends on some exclusion. That is, every system is dominated and shaded by the definitive impossibility which comes from death, the impossibility of moving the stone. [pp. 173-174]

End Quote

All of us develop a "narrative"--a story--we tell ourselves about ourselves. We narrate ourselves into existence, always with little ability to tell the truth about ourselves to ourselves. Of necessity we protect that narrative, dividing it into public and private components. Our "self-defense" system--as Alison says so vehemently--is quite capable (indeed Alison says its "inescapable") of killing in order to maintain the purity of our narrative. The first victim is the truth, then those who tell the truth, and eventually, the source of truth itself--Jesus Christ the Word of God.

But God's Word will not be silenced! In one way or another this Word from outside of ourselves confronts the word we tell ourselves. Just there, there in that instant, the confrontation of Word against word, of God's narration vs. our narration, of truth over lie, we are exposed and fearful. God's truth puts an end to our lies. Our "story" by which we spoke ourselves into existence is silenced: we die. And there in that silence God's Word speaks us into our new existence; such is the birth of hope.

Jesus Christ--and him crucified--is not just another "addition" to our narrative. He just doesn't become one more character in the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. He puts our story to an end so that his story begins "for us."

Read more here:

"Fracture: The cross as irreconcilable in the language and thought of the biblical writers" by Roy A. Harrisville

"Raising Able: the recovery of eschatological imagination" by James Alison