Tim Johnson
26 March 2025
Christians are sometimes accused of believing in “pie in the sky when you die”. We offer nothing for people in the here and now but simply hold out the hope of eternal bliss in heaven when people die. The line originally comes from the song The preacher and the slave written by Joe Hill in 1911 and is a stinging critique of Christianity that does nothing to help hungry people in the present but merely points to a future pie in the sky.
But Christian hope has a very different shape to this. A better image is of being given a tasting sample of an exquisite meal that is being prepared for you. The taster sets our mouths watering and longing for more that is still coming.
In Scripture this is expressed in language of “first fruits” where the first pickings of the harvest are the guarantee of much more to come. We see this regarding the gift of the Holy Spirit in Romans 8 22-23.
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”
We haven’t yet received everything that God has in store for us. The full harvest is still to come, and we are waiting and hoping for this. But we have received the first fruits of the harvest through the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. We have tasted something of what the harvest will be like, and this taster causes us to groan because we know how much we are still missing out on.
Read more: Reaching out in faith
Through the Holy Spirit we experience God’s presence in our lives now but we long for the day when we will see him face to face and bask in his presence forever.
Hendrikus Berkhof sums it up well in these words:
“Christian hope … rises from a possession which opens many more vistas for the future … the very fact that we possess makes us feel painfully what we still miss; it ‘tastes like more’. Hope therefore is the fruit of both possession and lack.”
Christian hope then offers both real benefits for the present and much more for the future. It is both possession and lack, now and not yet.
The Venerable Dr Tim Johnson is senior minister at St John’s Diamond Creek and Archdeacon of the Yarra.
This article is part of a series of reflections under Hope25, a national evangelism initiative that equips Anglicans to share their hope in Jesus. They aim to encourage us to have a sure and certain hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We encourage you to look out for these weekly reflections and share them in your parishes.
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