{"id":31780,"date":"2024-06-26T23:24:13","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T06:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/gospel-express\/2024-heirs-copy\/"},"modified":"2024-06-26T23:58:21","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T06:58:21","slug":"2024-laughter","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/gospel-express\/2024-laughter\/","title":{"rendered":"From Tears To Laughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Philip Yancy<\/p>\n

J\u00fcrgen Moltmann, the German scholar acknowledged as \u201cthe most widely read Christian theologian of the past 80 years,\u201d died on June 3 at the age of 98. In one of history\u2019s ironies, the former teenage soldier passed away the very week that the world commemorated the 80th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of the D-Day invasion that would assure the defeat of his homeland, Germany. In a further irony, Moltmann is remembered for his \u201ctheology of hope,\u201d which he developed in a prisoner-of-war camp.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Moltmann was planning on a career in quantum physics until Hitler\u2019s war broke out. At age 16 his entire high school class was drafted to assist the anti-aircraft batteries defending Hamburg.<\/p>\n

\"HopeWhat began as a schoolboy adventure turned into a horror show as waves of U.S. and British aircraft fire-bombed the city, killing almost 40,000 civilians. He saw his friends incinerated, and he only survived by clinging to a piece of wood in a lake surrounded by fire. Two questions haunted him: \u201cWhere is God?\u201d and \u201cWhy am I alive and not dead?\u201d<\/p>\n

Serving on the front lines in 1945, he soon realized that he and other poorly trained recruits were mere cannon fodder to keep Hitler alive for a few more months. Hands in the air, he approached a trench full of startled British soldiers and said in English, \u201cI surrender!\u201d From there, Moltmann spent the next three years in prison camps in Belgium, Scotland, and England.<\/p>\n

When the Third Reich imploded, exposing the moral rot at its center, he saw how other German prisoners \u201ccollapsed inwardly, how they gave up all hope, sickening for the lack of it, some of them dying.\u201d As he learned the truth about the genocidal Nazi regime, Moltmann felt an inconsolable grief about life, \u201cweighed down by the somber burden of a guilt which could never be paid off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moltmann had no religious background. He had brought two books with him into battle\u2014Goethe\u2019s poems and the works of Nietzsche\u2014neither of which nourished much hope. But an American chaplain gave him an army-issue New Testament and Psalms. \u201cIf I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there,\u201d the prisoner read. Could God be present in that dark place? As he read on, Moltmann found words that perfectly captured his feelings of desolation. Had not Jesus himself cried out, \u201cMy God, why have you forsaken me?\u201d He became convinced that God \u201cwas present even behind the barbed wire\u2014no, most of all behind the barbed wire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moltmann also found something new in the Psalms: hope. Walking along the perimeter of barbed wire at night for exercise, he would circle a small hill in the center of the camp on which stood a hut that served as a chapel. That hut became for him a symbol of God\u2019s presence in the midst of suffering, and out of that symbol grew hope.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Later Moltmann was transferred to an educational camp in England run by the YMCA. The local population welcomed the German prisoners, bringing them homemade food, teaching them Christian doctrine, and never adding to the burden of guilt the prisoners already felt over Nazi atrocities. \u201cThey treated me better than the German army,\u201d Moltmann said.<\/p>\n

Upon release, Moltmann began to articulate his theology of hope. Humanity exists, he concluded, in a state of contradiction between the cross and the resurrection. Surrounded by evil and decay, we nonetheless hope for restoration, a hope illuminated by the \u201cforeglow\u201d of Christ\u2019s resurrection. Faith in a God who has promised to make all things new can transform the present\u2014just as Moltmann\u2019s own hope of eventual release from prison camp transformed his daily experience there. Reminiscing, he mentioned three things that helped lift the darkness and give him hope: a cherry tree blossoming in the prison camp, the humanity of the Scottish workers, and the Bible he received from the chaplain. \u201cThese three things convinced me to love life again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On a visit to Virginia in 2015, I spent an evening with Moltmann, who was lecturing there. I was surprised by his charm and his wry sense of humor. He made some witty comments about US politics, and talked easily about popular culture and current events. Clearly, he sought to apply theology to real-world issues in our broken world.<\/p>\n

Through all of Moltmann\u2019s dense theological works run two themes: God\u2019s presence with us in our suffering and God\u2019s promise of a perfected future. If Jesus had lived during the Third Reich, Moltmann noted, very likely he would have been shipped with other Jews to the gas chambers. In Jesus, we have lasting proof that God suffers with us, as Moltmann explains in\u00a0The Crucified God<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At the same time, Jesus gives a foretaste of a future time when the planet will be restored to God\u2019s original design. Moltmann describes Easter as the beginning of the \u201claughter of the redeemed\u2026God\u2019s protest against death.\u201d A person without future faith may assume from the suffering on this planet that God is neither all-good nor all-powerful. Future faith allows us to believe that God is not satisfied with this world either, and intends to remake it.<\/p>\n

\"Re-purposed<\/p>\n

Only the final defeat of evil will allow the kingdom of God to take shape in all its fullness. In the meantime we establish settlements of that kingdom, always glancing back to the Gospels for guidance. Moltmann notes that the phrase \u201cDay of the Lord\u201d in the Old Testament inspired fear; but in the New Testament it inspires hope, because those authors have come to know and trust the Lord whose Day it is.<\/p>\n

In a single sentence J\u00fcrgen Moltmann expresses the great span from Good Friday to Easter. It is, in fact, a summary of human history\u2014 past, present, and future: \u201cGod weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

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