(By Jody)
What is hope?
This seemed like one of the more relevant topics we could end the year on. By “end the year” I mean October and most of November, which is towards the end of the Western calendar year, half-way through the Māori Maramataka, but the very end of the Christian year, which begins again with the season of Advent before Christmas.
From pandemic to war to cost of living to climate crisis and maybe this morning, local body election results, we all recognise the need for hope; the conviction that things can shift, and improve, go extremely well. It’s a bread-and-butter notion, most of us reference it daily: I hope your exam goes well. I hope you feel better soon. I hope you find your keys. Let’s hope so.
But Christian hope is more than our everyday invocations of optimism and best-case scenarios, well-meant kindnesses though those are. Christian hope is quite particular, it has to do with Christ Jesus, that pattern of life and death and resurrection, and with the Holy Spirit, present and active, and with the kin-dom of heaven, planted among us and growing, and with the church, imperfectly but tenaciously bearing witness to God’s determined love, and with God: the beginning and end and foundation of everything.
Seven or so years ago we were very fortunate to take part in a trial program where student NZSL interpreters were put on a placement in a church context – ours. Two students would pre-read my sermon, song words, and any other available material, then attend on Sunday morning and take turns standing up the front and interpreting the entire service. The two students would alternate – we’ve since seen in Parliament press conferences what an intensive task interpreting is. The idea was to see if any Deaf Christians would be interested in attending a church like Ponsonby Baptist if access was available. The answer it turned out was: no.
But for as long as they were here, it was amazing to watch the interpreters work, and such a privilege to learn a little from them about one of the official languages of NZ, about communication within their field, and a tiny bit about the Deaf community and the barriers to access and inclusion that exist.
One memorable moment was when one student, who attended church herself, corrected another student on her translation of “hope” in the service. One had signed “hope...” (holding up crossed fingers) which is indeed correct according to the NZSL dictionary of sign. But the other student told her “Yes but here [in a church], hope is…” (holding up a strong clasped fist “towards God”).
You don’t need me to explain the difference between a wishful finger crossing, and a solid grip in the symbolic direction of God.
(Though I should say, finger crossing may originate from the cross of early Christianity… or it may predate and symbolise an intersection of good spirits anchoring a wish until it could come true.)
But the solid grip in the direction of God captures the essence of hope in Christian spirituality, because it is first and foremost confidence in God to carry the long project of creation through. There is more to it, which we’ll explore in coming weeks, but hope, for people who follow the Way of Jesus, starts with confidence in God – that God created, that God loves, that God is faithful, that God won’t forget, abandon, or give up.
So when Christians hope – that we can reduce our carbon emissions, that the war in Ukraine will end, that disabled people will be spared death by covid – there’s a layer to our hope that prefigures Council’s care, Putin’s plans, and public health programs. That layer is a decision to trust God and God’s Love to be at work within God’s world, even when the scale boggles our minds and calendars.
We know it won’t all go our way in our time. That often, things will look quite the opposite. And yet we dare to bother to hope.
The bible reading came from Isaiah Chapter 40, and in the service sheet I printed the opening verses (which are adapted in the gospels to refer to John preparing the way for Jesus) and the final words of the chapter, which urge hope despite everything.
Good news would have been very difficult for the original hearers to process. Isaiah 40 speaks to the end of the Babylonian exile. (Danny, and the Bible Project, helped us understand more about exile and return last year.) Some exiles had a pretty decent time in Babylon, others less so, but return was not easy for anyone. The land had been devastated, the temple and protective walls destroyed, home-coming was disorientating and demoralising, not an easy switch back to glory days.
Yet the poet tells them to hope:
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
does not faint or grow weary;
gives power to the faint
strengthens the powerless…
those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
Hope takes flight only after it hatches in the nest of God’s love. And we are always welcome in that nest.
To be people who hope, and whose hope can change the world, we hold firm to God’s goodness, and let that us lead us forward.
We’ll finish with a short Bible Project video on “hope.” They cover details I could bumble around for hours and not express usefully, and by the end of the video you will understand why we had a reading without the word “hope” in it.
And then the lovely hymn He came singing Love, inviting us into the mystery of how God holds hope for and with the world through Christ Jesus.
What is hope?
This seemed like one of the more relevant topics we could end the year on. By “end the year” I mean October and most of November, which is towards the end of the Western calendar year, half-way through the Māori Maramataka, but the very end of the Christian year, which begins again with the season of Advent before Christmas.
From pandemic to war to cost of living to climate crisis and maybe this morning, local body election results, we all recognise the need for hope; the conviction that things can shift, and improve, go extremely well. It’s a bread-and-butter notion, most of us reference it daily: I hope your exam goes well. I hope you feel better soon. I hope you find your keys. Let’s hope so.
But Christian hope is more than our everyday invocations of optimism and best-case scenarios, well-meant kindnesses though those are. Christian hope is quite particular, it has to do with Christ Jesus, that pattern of life and death and resurrection, and with the Holy Spirit, present and active, and with the kin-dom of heaven, planted among us and growing, and with the church, imperfectly but tenaciously bearing witness to God’s determined love, and with God: the beginning and end and foundation of everything.
Seven or so years ago we were very fortunate to take part in a trial program where student NZSL interpreters were put on a placement in a church context – ours. Two students would pre-read my sermon, song words, and any other available material, then attend on Sunday morning and take turns standing up the front and interpreting the entire service. The two students would alternate – we’ve since seen in Parliament press conferences what an intensive task interpreting is. The idea was to see if any Deaf Christians would be interested in attending a church like Ponsonby Baptist if access was available. The answer it turned out was: no.
But for as long as they were here, it was amazing to watch the interpreters work, and such a privilege to learn a little from them about one of the official languages of NZ, about communication within their field, and a tiny bit about the Deaf community and the barriers to access and inclusion that exist.
One memorable moment was when one student, who attended church herself, corrected another student on her translation of “hope” in the service. One had signed “hope...” (holding up crossed fingers) which is indeed correct according to the NZSL dictionary of sign. But the other student told her “Yes but here [in a church], hope is…” (holding up a strong clasped fist “towards God”).
You don’t need me to explain the difference between a wishful finger crossing, and a solid grip in the symbolic direction of God.
(Though I should say, finger crossing may originate from the cross of early Christianity… or it may predate and symbolise an intersection of good spirits anchoring a wish until it could come true.)
But the solid grip in the direction of God captures the essence of hope in Christian spirituality, because it is first and foremost confidence in God to carry the long project of creation through. There is more to it, which we’ll explore in coming weeks, but hope, for people who follow the Way of Jesus, starts with confidence in God – that God created, that God loves, that God is faithful, that God won’t forget, abandon, or give up.
So when Christians hope – that we can reduce our carbon emissions, that the war in Ukraine will end, that disabled people will be spared death by covid – there’s a layer to our hope that prefigures Council’s care, Putin’s plans, and public health programs. That layer is a decision to trust God and God’s Love to be at work within God’s world, even when the scale boggles our minds and calendars.
We know it won’t all go our way in our time. That often, things will look quite the opposite. And yet we dare to bother to hope.
The bible reading came from Isaiah Chapter 40, and in the service sheet I printed the opening verses (which are adapted in the gospels to refer to John preparing the way for Jesus) and the final words of the chapter, which urge hope despite everything.
Good news would have been very difficult for the original hearers to process. Isaiah 40 speaks to the end of the Babylonian exile. (Danny, and the Bible Project, helped us understand more about exile and return last year.) Some exiles had a pretty decent time in Babylon, others less so, but return was not easy for anyone. The land had been devastated, the temple and protective walls destroyed, home-coming was disorientating and demoralising, not an easy switch back to glory days.
Yet the poet tells them to hope:
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
does not faint or grow weary;
gives power to the faint
strengthens the powerless…
those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
Hope takes flight only after it hatches in the nest of God’s love. And we are always welcome in that nest.
To be people who hope, and whose hope can change the world, we hold firm to God’s goodness, and let that us lead us forward.
We’ll finish with a short Bible Project video on “hope.” They cover details I could bumble around for hours and not express usefully, and by the end of the video you will understand why we had a reading without the word “hope” in it.
And then the lovely hymn He came singing Love, inviting us into the mystery of how God holds hope for and with the world through Christ Jesus.
