suffering and hope

a brief reflection on my experience easter sunday. we went to our savior lutheran in hanover, new hampshire, where sonja's parents worship. the pastors, susan and michael thomas, were pastors of Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem. from that context, susan reflected on the way in which suffering is intertwined with hope. she said that the task of the the church is to face suffering with hope, declaring our hope to be true because of the truth of the resurrection's vindication of life over death. after church, an elderly german immigrant, sophia, made a bee-line over to introduce herself to me. a friend of my parents-in-law, she had heard that i enjoy thinking theologically so she wanted to quiz me about a few things. she, it turns out, grew up in germany during the nazi era and emigrated after college to the u.s. she studied at ruprecht-karls-universitat heidelberg and is quite intellectually engaged at 83 years old. in the course of the conversation, i told her how I had been moved to tears by the sermon because of my own deep sense of the suffering in the world just now, and that the sermon had brought to mind jurgen moltmann's theology of hope, a book born out of suffering and despair she would understand better than me. she laughed and told me that she had run across the book on her shelf two days before and had read it through! hopeful, indeed, to meet such a faithful, engaged, and lively woman, and to share the joy of 'the hope that is within us' (1 peter 3:15). see pr. susan and pr. michael's reflection on their hope here.