It is possible that in playing we can anticipate our liberation and with laughing rid ourselves of the bonds which alienate us from real life.
~ Jurgen Moltmann
I have recently been revisiting many of my thoughts about suffering, lamenting, and journeying with those in exile. Having been put off by the dominant self-indulgent and trite approaches that Christians (and the rest of society) tend to take toward suffering I fear that I have been missing a crucial part of journeying with the godforsaken. I have focused on genuinely empathising with such people, sharing in their cry, their pain, and their abandonment. And I still continue to do that… but that's only one part of the picture. The other bit, the bit that I've been missing, is how we go about doing this. If we are the Shekinah that goes forth to be with exiled people then we really do transform tears into laughter, isolation into solidarity, and death into new life.
This means — and this is the key of what I'm getting at — that even as we journey with those in exile, we will be known as delight-full people. This is so for two reasons. The first is because we remember. We remember the goodness of what God has done for us, especially in Christ. Therefore, the corollary of remembrance is gratitude. And this is what I've been missing. I had realised that God's goodness towards me required that I exhibit this goodness towards “the needy” but I was missing the fact that this action is performed fundamentally as an expression of gratitude. It was Christopher Wright's comments in Old Testament Ethics for the People of God that blew this door open in my mind. In my focus on lament I had focused on reminding God of the plight of the abandoned — lest he forget his covenant (yes, there is prophetic precedence for this). But what I was missing was the fact that my lack of gratitude revealed that it was I who had forgotten what God had already done. And, as C. Wright goes on to argue, without gratitude we lose the ethical implications of our own history and end up undergoing a moral decline that leads to outright disobedience.
The second reason why we are a delight-full people is because of our expectation. Not only do we remember what God has done, but we remember God's promises, and what God will do. Therefore (especially since we have already received the first-fruits of this in the coming of the Holy Spirit), we live as a people filled with joy. It is my recent research on the Lord's Supper that really has me thinking about this. Because we are assured that God is making all things new we can operate joyfully even in the midst of brokenness. The anticipatory and eucharistic aspects of the Lord's Supper make joy an unavoidable part of Christian living. This is not because we are cold-hearted or refuse to enter in the pain of others. We will still mourn with those who mourn for as long as they mourn, but sorrow will not have the last word. It is the root of joy that we have in the assurance of our hope that enables us to stay in those broken places. And it is the joy that we exhibit even in mourning that makes our mourning transformative.
Therefore, this allows us to operate with a much more playful ethic. Here Moltmann's comments in The Church in the Power of the Spirit become significant — especially in light of my own personal biases. Moltmann argues that a Western focus upon Jesus' Lordship has caused our ethic to be one that follows the structure of command and obedience. However, when one comes to appreciate the aesthetic side of Jesus' reign (that is to say, Jesus is the Lord of the cosmos but also the Lord of glory) our response can be much more festive. Having encountered the Father who runs out on the road to meet his prodigal children how can we not overflow with joy? As Moltmann also says in Theology and Joy, “Only the innocent, namely children, or those liberated from guilt, namely the beloved, are able to play.” It's as though we move into the margins and join the songs of lament only to discover that somehow along the way those songs have gained new strains and turned into songs of wonder and of praise. It's as though we join those dancing because their hearts are broken and somehow the dance transitions into a dance performed by overflowing hearts. And soon everybody is dancing, and laughing, and we realise that right here, right now, we are participating in the wedding banquet of the Lamb.

For you, there'll be no more crying,
For you, the sun will be shining,
And I feel that when I'm with you,
It's alright, I know it's right.
~Fleetwood Mac
This is the sort of people that we should be if we genuinely do believe that there will come a day when Christ will return and make all things new. For we are those who do affirm that one day there will be no more crying, one day all wounds will be healed, one day the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. If we believe this then this should be clear in our interactions. We should journey with those who are crying and those who are in darkness so that they too may glimpse this assurance. So that when we are with them they will know all will be right.
And the songbirds keep singing,
Like they know the score,
And I love you, I love you, I love you,
Like never before.
~ Fleetwood Mac

Over against the contemporary emphasis upon “being in the moment” and living within the “Eternal Now,” Christians are to be a people marked by remembrance and expectation.
The most definitive stages of history are the past and the future. The past is definitive because of the death and resurrection of Jesus and the out-pouring of the eschatological Spirit; and the future is (even more) definitive because it is in the future that all of history will be consummated and all creation will be made new.
This is not to say that Christian avoid the present through cheap sentimentality or utopian dreams. What is does mean is that Christians live within the present very much shaped by the past and the future — we do what we do now because we remember and we expect.
People with no memory or hope are trapped within the “Eternal Now” where they are unsure about what to do, or why they do what they do.
Slowly I am learning how to live with memory and hope. I firmly believe that understanding ourselves historically is essential to living transformatively.

But we should also note that [current] attitudes [held by the frustrated general public] fall far short of the ideas that animated the democratic revolutions. Working people of nineteenth century North America did not plead with their rulers to be more benevolent. Rather, they denied their right to rule.
~ Noam Chomsky
And, once again, this is where those who belong to much of the “Christ transforming Culture” approach (especially as it is presented by H.R. Niebuhr) essentially miss the point. They choose to operate from within the structures of power pleading for a little more morality, a little more social consciousness, a little more benevolence. If we fawn at the feet of the king perhaps he will throw us a bone.
Yet when Christians recognise that Jesus, and only Jesus, is our king and ruler we do not bow and scrape before corrupt powers that try to claim the authority of Christ. Instead we deny their right to rule over us and live within a Church that exists as its own polis. Of course, when we deny the lordship of these “satanic” powers (for these powers also try to claim the throne of heaven as their own) we can be assured that we are on the right track to genuinely transforming culture.

Gordon T. Smith, author of A Holy Meal: The Lord's Supper in the Life of the Church, suggests that there are seven motifs that give definition to the Lord's Supper — Remembrance, Communion, Forgiveness, Covenant, Nourishment, Anticipation, and Thanksgiving.
In speaking of remembrance Smith argues that celebrating the Lord's Supper as a memorial causes us to anchor our minds and hearts in a past event. Over against cultural voices that urge an ahistorical lifestyle, Smith argues that we must be able to remember otherwise our love becomes untruthful and our lives become meaningless. Therefore, it is the memory of Jesus' death and resurrection that takes priority over all the other memories that swirl around us.
However, remembrance is not merely an intellectual activity. This is especially evident in the Old Testament. The primary power of remembrance is that it causes the past to be made present. Remembrance is not nostalgic or cheaply sentimental, it is not an escape from the present into the past, but it is living within a past-shaped present. Not only is the past made present but the one we remember also becomes present — not that Christ is made present but we are awakened to the fact that Christ is already present in our midst.
Yet there is another side to remembrance in the Old Testament that Smith does not pick-up on. Not only is remembrance something that the people of God must focus upon but there are also times when the people of God must cause God to remember. This is particularly the case for those who are experience exile — for Christ is not always present in our midst. Exile, after all, is the experience of godforsakenness. Thus Exodus 2, the lament psalms, and several passages within the prophetic books, all speak of those who have been abandoned now crying out for God to remember the covenant he made with his people. As Exodus 2 says, “And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. So God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the sons of Israel and God knew them.”
Now, I am quite convinced that much of the Church in North American is experiencing something akin to exile (I don't think this is the case because the Church has lost socio-political power; rather, I think that the fragmentation, disunity, and spiritual emptiness of many churches points to exile). In such a situation the Lord's Supper as a memorial can serve a dual purpose. It will cause the people of God to remember their true identity, and — when celebrated as a cry to heaven — it can also cause God to remember the new covenant that was inaugurated by Christ. In the Eucharist we remember who we are and remind God of who he is. Thus, there can be times, especially in exile, that celebrating the Lord's Supper does make Christ present once again.