Come, O Desire of Nations, Come

The spirituality of the Jews is one of somber yearning: "As the deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God" (Ps 42:1-2). From their perspective, the descendants of Israel still await the coming of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the Temple, that very dwelling place of God's presence on earth. They are to be admired for not being satisfied with the transitory things of this world for, as many others have been distracted by such things that lead us away from seeking the face of God, the Jews have remained steadfast in their search for something more perennial than immediate, short-lived pleasures. It is to their merit that they recognize man's dislocation in this our disjointed world. They are to be commended for holding fast to the hope that help will come in some future event orchestrated by God that will set things aright again.

The Jewish man finds himself in a position where he can be comforted in his long exile from a just world insofar as he patiently awaits a future act from on High. He can "lift up [his] eyes to the hills" (Ps 121:1) whence his help will come, in some distant location, at some distant time. His trust in God's promise of setting things right again is not shaken by a failure to meet an imminent deadline of rescue. As long as that abstract hope remains in the hills of time, he can passively cope with the struggles of this world knowing that God will send help some time, some where.

However, his current position seems to be not much different than that of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt. Having once successfully left the land of their bondage, how often did they return to it with no certainty of definitively leaving it behind? The records of the failure of judge after judge, the disloyalty of king after king, the destruction of temple after temple, seems to place the post-Passover Jew back before his great deliverance from Mitzraim. His help may come in the future again, but who is to say that he will definitively be saved from enslavement? Who is to say that upon being freed from Pharaoh he will not long to sit "by the fleshpots and [eat] bread to the full" back in Egypt (c.f. Ex 16:3)? The story of the Jews seems to be one of a pursuit after God with seemingly no end, a courtship that leads to the Promised Land but where the Beloved is not attained. It is a story that to this day has no foreseeable plans of Temple reconstruction and hence no foreseeable conclusion.

The Christian finds himself in an altogether different situation of faith. Indeed, the Christian's help has come many years ago during the reign of Tiberius Caesar. His courtship has already attained his Beloved by the Beloved's simple invitation: Come, follow Me. The conclusion of his story has already been written from a cave on the island Patmos.

Yet, amid the Good News of the Gospel, the Christian still finds himself existing in the same world that the Jew finds himself in- a world full of natural and moral evils. Far from being snatched away from evil's hold by accepting Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, the Christian, although knowing the Answer, still must continually grapple with the reality of the question: how to continue along the way of hope amidst pain, sin, and sorrow on all sides?

The Jew can say that in the future cancer will be eradicated, famines will give way to rain, the abuse of innocence will be righted, the shell-shock of the soldier will gently cease, the loneliness of man will be no more. In some distant time, perhaps when the Messiah comes, things will be set aright.

But the Christian is left to question why this vale of tears still exists even though his Messiah has already come. The irony of Christ finally fixing things on the cross, only to abruptly descend into the depths of hell boggles the mind. The glory of the transfiguration on Mt. Tabor is followed by the tragedy of the crucifixion on Mt. Calvary - the ransom won by Christ's death is followed by His entrance into the abyss of Sheol - His resurrection and return from the land of the dead is followed by the martyrdom and suffering of His followers. When will goodness be unfollowed by evil? Will evil always have the last say?

As the Jew is taught his hope lies in the future, the Christian is taught that even though his hope has already come in the past he must still bear his cross in the present as a means of dealing with evil's lingering grip. Indeed Dietrich Bonhoeffer says as much in preaching: "To bear the cross proves to be the only way of triumphing over suffering"(The Cost of Discipleship). For it is only with Christ that evil and suffering begin to make sense for the Christian.

On the one hand, the Jew still awaits the Messiah; on the other hand, the Christian has announced His arrival for 2,000 years. Regardless of such drastic differences, both Jewish and Christian hands alike are wounded by lives of suffering. Is it fair to say that even though the Messiah has already come for the Christians, they are any better off than the Jews who still await their help? Indeed, could it not be argued that perhaps when help is eventually received by the Jews, they might be in an altogether better position than the Christian who must continue to toil under suffering although his Savior has already come?

This might be so if it were not for the faith of the Christian making the story a bit clearer. For the Christian finds himself in a unique position- he can fruitfully deal with the suffering of the present knowing that his Messiah has joined him in his anguish. But in addition to this present action, like the Jew, he too can look to the hills of the future as He awaits the final victory of the Messiah's coming "to reconcile to Himself all things"(Col 1:20). For the hope of the second coming of Christ bringing definitive victory over the disorientation of the world is buttressed by the victory of love He already had won on Calvary centuries ago. The Christian's understanding of salvation history is a fluid movement from the past, to the future, back to the present because he sees the defeat of evil, sin, and death as something that already happened in the past, something that will happen in the future, and as something that must happen now in the present. This sort of outlook sees God's help from on High as having been sent, as being sent, and as something to be sent.

Nothing less than this holistic past-present-future trust in God can suffice in bringing comfort to us in this world. It is only by this sight that we can see God all around us as the Author, Actor, and End of our rescue. In spite of the fact that Jews and Christians cannot see with the same lens on who Jesus is, we can still continue to pray together the same psalms of longing that, although differ in context for for both Jew and Christian, share the same intent for: a plea for help to come from on High, a plea for our God to set order once again to our chaos. "How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all the day?"(Ps 13:1-2)