My
2011 Sabbatical Year
The
year of 2011 was my unexpected sabbatical year. I didn’t plan to have such a
year. I just thought that it was a right time for me to stop serving at my
previous pastorate and plan for what might come in the future. As I get older,
I realize that there is no such thing as perfect timing. The best of time and
the worst of time often occur at the same time. Indeed, both are usually
mingled together as one knot. It is just a matter of how I handle myself in
such a time. The sabbatical year was a period of time for me to do serious
reflection on theology, ministry, life, and people. Generally speaking, I am
often positive about the life of disorientation. God is with his people in
creation, exile, and redemption. The pattern of
orientation-disorientation-reorientation has stayed with me since I learned it
from Walter Brueggemann when I was in college. Of course, I learned it through
his writings, not in person.
This
threefold orientation has given me a theological perspective in life. No one
can stay in one particular orientation for too long. There is a cycle. This
rhythmic cycle has a sanctifying function that we are being purified or purged
from being so attached to the old self. Before we realize that we are too stubbornly
fixed with what we know and have, he puts us off balance through various means.
That’s God’s foreknowledge. Disorientation is such a time that puts us off
balance. The cycle of disorientation is usually unproductive in a secular
sense; however, it is productive in a spiritual sense. It is a “useless” period
in people’s mind. But my belief is that a tree can only grow tall by being “useless.”
If it is too useful, it is being cut off by someone. The cycle of
disorientation is usually stationary. When a snake changes its skin in
mutation, it doesn’t move but remains stationary. Transformation usually occurs
in the cycle of disorientation. David wrote many psalms to articulate his
longings toward God in the wilderness. He couldn’t write those psalms in
palace. It is a slow work because it is a soul work. I think Eugene Peterson
calls it Soul Craft.
I
am positive about the stage of disorientation because reorientation will follow
after. There is no resurrection if there is no crucifixion. It will come. But
God determines its timing. His timing is beautiful (Eccl. 3:11). Beautiful can
be understood as good or appropriate. His timing is always appropriate in his
plan in which I am in, or I am graciously invited to participate in.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 is my theological conviction; it is my knowledge of God; it
is my understanding of time.
The
2011 sabbatical year has become a special year in my life. It is special
because it offered me a broad space to search. Searching is a spiritual act.
“Search for the Lord and for his strength; continually seek him” (Ps. 105:4,
NLT). To the Judean exiles in Babylon, Jeremiah sent them a letter from
Jerusalem:
For thus says the Lord:
When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will
fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the
plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to
give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to
me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with
all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore
your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I
have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from
which I sent you into exile (Jer. 29:10-14, NLT).
Searching,
seeking, and finding are all covenantal languages. They are covenantal because
they are grounded in his promise. His promise functions as an anchor in the
cycle of the threefold orientation. From one orientation to another, his
promise still clings to us: I will bring you back.
Hope
Thinking
Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope has carried me through day after day. “It is
through faith that man finds the path of true life, but it is only hope that
keeps him on that path.”[1]
I encountered Christ through faith. In faith, his righteousness has been
imputed to me. He is my justification. Hope has kept me on the path of sanctification.
God is the God of hope (see Rom. 15:13) who is not beyond me or above me, but
before me. The resurrection of the crucified Christ becomes a transforming
power for me to anticipate the coming of the kingdom of God. It opens up for
new possibilities because his resurrection triumphed over the ultimate
impossible—death. John Goldingay says that “It is unwise to think about hoping
until you know there is a basis for it. It is difficult to face up to
hopelessness until you know there might be an answer to it, a way of facing
it.”[2]
Christ’s resurrection is the basis of hope. Moltmann’s idea of hope is not only
grounded in the resurrection of the crucified Christ, but also the cross of the
risen Lord. Hope without the cross is a form of human-constructed utopia.
Moltmann writes:
Hope alone is to be
called ‘realistic’, because it alone takes seriously the possibilities with
which all reality is fraught. It does not take things as they happen to stand
or to lie, but as progressing, moving things with possibilities of change…Hope
makes us ready to bear the ‘cross of the present’. It can hold to what is dead,
and hope for the unexpected.[3]
It
is this kind of theological thinking that has helped me theologize my journey. I hope for the unexpected without neglecting
the present; I face up the present reality without losing hope. It helps me
sail adventurously along with the leading of the Spirit—“the wind blows
wherever it wants…” (Jn. 3:8, NLT). During my sabbatical year, I realized that
I didn’t have any existing thoughts to help me move forward and solve puzzles
in my mind. I turned to Moltmann’s hope thinking. In return, his hope thinking
has given me a new horizon to see things. I am thankful for this hope thinking
in my faith.
Hope
Lam, Fort Wayne, Indiana
We
won’t stay in this city in a long run. But I believe this place is and will be
a special place because my daughter would say, “I was born in Fort Wayne,
Indiana.” Someone would then ask, “Why were you born there?” She’d say,
“Because my heavenly Father called my dad to pursue a doctoral degree in
theology there. That’s why. And that’s why I talk like a theologian.”
