LENT Photo #32 'Hope'

"To hope is to dream. Of what might or will be. Of the possible and the mere possible — hope against hope. To hope is to strive for the best. To build on glimmers of new beginnings. To hope is to never give up. To remain expectant, against hopes dashed, disappointments, falsities. To hope is to believe there is a way."

   This was a 'chalked' response to a worship time at a Winter Camp a few years back when punters were sent out to write or draw their response in chalk on the concrete surrounding the main building. Chalking is great because with a quick hose or the next shower of rain it washes away yet is a creative tactile medium in the short term, whether colours or white...

   My hope is in the durable notion that God as Creator offers us love, grace and compassion... seeks the best for us in values and call. Jesus lived and exampled this in his growing, learning, engagement with faith and constant redefining of what it meant. As he met those on the edges and people who struggled he consistently sought inclusion and value and we have been reading about some of those people in the last four weeks. 

   He stood and offered that 'another world' is possible and reinforced ideas that empty religious practice that had forgotten why or was an extension of power, was perhaps worst of all oversights. Robbing people of hope and consistently holding out on that were not part of his leadership.

   This disturbance of the powers that be led to his cruel death, a sign of hope that he stood in solidarity with all humanity and his claims and promises were trustworthy. 'If you've seen me you've seen the Father [God' and our way of speaking of God and the stories handed down from oral to written culture show him fulfilling the promises of a hoped for 'messiah', Son of God, Spirit of God, God!! It's written that Jesus said "I am the way, the truth and the life" and people rule their own line of emphasis under those words, mine is ruled under I. Jesus called us to 'follow' and being a Christian is about following, being a disciple, scribing in the lines made by the teacher. It's in that following relationship we learn about the way and the truth, the values, the outlook, the hope for the world. The imperative to share that is in him and in God's values he exemplified, there is hope and life... life tied up with all the creation and life beyond this human existence. 

   This crazy faith is fuelled by Jesus commitment to enter Jerusalem, knowing trouble was ahead... that typical of humanity looking for hope, we would lay down coats and palm branches to celebrate the 'hope' people saw in this man and the kind of community he was making. Jesus was killed, through the brutal punishment of 'the cross'...Rome's way of symbolising what happens when you refuse to remain subdued. That same crowd seems unable to hold onto the hope they glimpsed... or the writer is keen for us to see that...

   I believe the indescribable story of Jesus resurrection. That death couldn't beat God values. Let's not rush ahead though. One of the great struggles for us is to do a 'Ron Howard'... how do we maintain the tension and stay in the story of Good Friday and Easter Saturday, when we know the next few pages... Ron Howard is very good at this as a movie maker... Apollo 13 did make it back to earth and we know this, yet for 2 hours the film grips us, holds the tension and allows us to feel the gap in the meantime!! We knew the story of Nikki Lauda and James Hunt but the film 'Rush' brings it to life using the people's own story to fill out the missing details. It's grief... at loss, at life sucking sometimes, at the bumps and scratches that come along... which grips people in the Easter Saturday darkness... hopes dashed... 

   'Hope Exists' and God calls us to build it and be sustained by God's promise of it... it's stronger when we participate, when we focus on what unites, rather than divides, what builds others up, rather than tears them down... and we in the comfortable part of the world don't really get it sometimes because it is not 'all we have' we have possessions, distractions and preoccupations... well, not all of us, but we also forget others who do struggle alongside us... anyhow, that's a glimpse of hope and what I think about it today...