This week I heard the Rev. Dr. Fadi Diab, rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ramallah, speak at the annual Episcopal Parish Network. Having led his congregation through 18 months of devastating war, he spoke with a moral clarity about the war while also holding fast to our Christian commitment to hope:
”If we can locate hope,” he said, “anything is possible. But we don’t go looking for hope. We impact hope. We practice hope. Hope is a Christian practice.”
If we can locate hope, anything is possible. Someone whose church stands amid fresh ruins speaks with a ringing authority when he calls us to hope; our hope does not wish away the hardship of the world, nor does it relieve us of the call to dismantle systems of injustice. Our hope is the promise of rebirth and resurrection that is planted in the very soil of pain and loss, and is watered by tears and prayers as we move through a world crying out to be made whole.
On the same day, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe reminded us that in renewing our church we must start with confronting the “brutal facts” of where the mainline church is in its life cycle while never losing sight of where we feel God calls us to be. We must remain grounded in both – reality and vision – in order to hold on to a hope that endures, a hope that ultimately transforms us.
If we can locate hope, anything is possible.
The Very Rev. Bernard J. Owens