the very opposite of Christian hope

Dear First Pres SLO Family,

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Risen Christ, the one whose life shows us how to love and serve and sacrifice…and thrive.

I share more than a few characteristics of my parents. My dad was a history teacher who loved to cook and to listen to music and watch movies and argue politics (if you know me then that should sound familiar to you). My mom taught English and prepared me well for the writing I had to do in college and graduate school. She’s also a relentlessly positive person—she can find a silver lining on just about anything, and most of the time it’s really there.

It's fun to see the ways in which I inherited that mostly positive outlook from my mom. I expect good things to happen—I expect people to be true to their word and to behave in a way that benefits others. Now don’t get me wrong, more than 30 years in ministry has taught me that bad things happen sometimes, that people can be deceptive and even cruel in the ways they interact with each other. I know bad things happen, but I choose to be surprised when they do, rather than giving in to the feeling that those negative outcomes are inevitable.

Because of that, one of my least favorite traits in other people is cynicism.

Now the dictionary has a definition of what this means. It says that to be cynical “implies having a sneering disbelief in sincerity or integrity…to have a deep-rooted distrust and dislike of human beings and their society.”

See what I mean? What an awful way to live—it feels hopeless to me.

The punk rock musician and poet Nick Cave had something to say about the impact of cynicism. The tragedies he experienced in his life could have broken any of us—in the years that followed he could have retreated to the darkest of places, but he didn’t. In a moment of reflection he wrote this:

Sitting around in my own mess, [angry] at the world, disdainful of the people in it, and thinking my contempt for things somehow amounted to something, that it had some kind of nobility, hating this thing here, and that thing there, and that other thing over there, and making sure that everybody around me knew it, not just knew, but felt it too, contemptuous of beauty, contemptuous of joy, contemptuous of happiness in others, well, this whole attitude just felt, I don’t know, in the end, sort of dumb.

Years later he wrote more about the dangerous trap of cynicism, and I think he has something to say to us church people. He wrote:

Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils.

Cynicism is the very opposite of Christian hope. And the problem is that it’s easy—it takes little thought or effort, and yet it can ruin relationships and communities with ease. In a faith built on love and sacrifice and forgiveness, there simply isn’t any room for that sneering disbelief in sincerity or integrity,” or to have a “deep-rooted distrust and dislike of human beings and their society.”

That’s not why Jesus came.

That’s not why Jesus died.

That’s not why Jesus rose again.

It’s tempting to respond to being disappointed by someone or wounded by someone to allow your capacity to trust to wither and fade away. I know that some of that has happened here in this church. In this season of Easter it’s my job—and my pleasure—to remind you that you do not have to be bound by that past. Holding on to the courage to trust is our healthy and faithful response to the miracle of the resurrection. Why?

Because no one had more reason to be cynical and hopeless than Jesus. Betrayed by friends and left alone to die, he came out of the tomb ready to give everyone (everyone) a second chance…and a third, and a fourth, and a…

During this Easter season, and as we prepare for a new chapter in this church’s history, let me invite you to leave your cynicism behind—leave your lack of trust and hope behind. We’re all getting another chance to be the church of Jesus Messiah. Let’s take it.

Blessings to you as we walk in the miracle of Easter,

Pastor John