COVID-19 is an opportunity for people who are similar to my context —Korean American, middle-upper class, live in the suburbs, highly educated — to replace the functional American hope that we all live with, with true Christian hope.
We all know the American hope: to live long, be healthy, and be prosperous economically. But what COVID-19 does for me is that it exposes how much American hope that I hold in my heart.
In my mind, the worst things that could happen are if I get sick or if this impacts me negatively financially. Those are my two biggest fears. It reveals how much of the American hope that I cling to, even though I preach the Christian hope.
This is an opportunity to have my American hope exposed, maybe even have it taken away to some degree, and release it. Then, in its place, to really embrace my Christian hope, which is not to live long on earth but to live forever in heaven. My Christian hope is that one day — in a resurrected, glorified body in a new heaven and new earth where there is no more sin, sorrow, virus, or death — to live with Christ. And while I live on earth, that He will give me all that I need, and that everything will work together for my ultimate and eternal good.
This is a hope that I mentally assent to and affirm. It’s something I’m paid to preach (it’s my job). But I know functionally, on a day-to-day basis, I live by my American hope.
This is an opportunity for me as a pastor of a congregation that’s probably a lot like me to say, “When God exposes how much of the American hope that you’ve been harboring in your heart, repent and release it. Embrace the Christian hope with all your heart.”
The Christian hope has to work and make sense for the young person who dies, and the Christian hope has to work for the person that loses everything. If it doesn’t work for the person who dies young, if it doesn’t work for the person that loses everything, that means it’s not true, stable Christian hope.
Now more than ever, we need to preach the Christian hope. And not only preach it but believe it for ourselves before we preach that our Christian hope is worth everything. It is secure; it is eternal. And that’s the reason why we can have comfort in the midst of loss, in the midst of uncertainty, in the midst of potentially getting sick, in the midst of having our salaries cut, and in the midst of all of these things that we’re functionally afraid of. We can have hope because our hope is Christian, not American.