Hope
Mark Gornik has touched on the most important concepts that we’ve learned about this year — repentance, the church’s mission of justice, and the development of leadership, to name a few. Therefore I’d like to use Gornik’s message of a new hope in Sandtown to examine how we in the Emmaus Scholars Program at Hope College have lived a similar approach in our community and neighborhood.
In the words of Gornik, “Perkins’s message is that if you take the gospel seriously, it means that the church must be serious about justice and reconciliation” (167). Although we’ve been involved in the work of justice throughout the school year, I have just begun to connect the dots. After visiting various churches in the DC area, we realized that the work of justice cannot exist outside of the church. The church is not a place where we go to fulfill an obligation of our relationship with God. Rather, it is where we receive strength for the week — strength that is necessary to fulfill our purpose of seeking justice while we reside on Earth. Gornik testifies that “although Sandtown Habitat was separate from [New Song Church], the church provided the energy, vision, values, and resources to make the organization work” (177). Church cannot consist solely of a message, worship, or reception of the sacraments. It must bear the fruit of restored relationships to God, ourselves, others, and creation. It seems that we often forget about these last two in our Christian faith.
Maybe there is a deeper, symbolic, God-given reason that the Emmaus Scholars Program is taking place at Hope College and not at a different college or university. The Emmaus Scholars have given hope to many people — to the neighbors with whom we’ve connected, to the people whom we’ve met while serving at various organizations, and to ourselves as we’ve realized that we are meeting and ministering to Christ every time we serve the needy. I previously thought that we were bringing Christ to them. Now I understand that they are bringing Christ to us.
As we transition out of the Emmaus Scholars Program, our lives will take a new direction. Hope, a new future, lies ahead for us. “We have this hope as an anchor” (Hebrews 6:19) — not as an optimistic outlook but a guarantee of Christ that our work will bear fruit both here on Earth and in the life to come. The name of our college is not just a name. It signifies something deeper, that God is doing important work at this point in our lives. But it even goes beyond a symbol. Our name — Hope — effects what is signifies.
