Talk given at SFX Hereford as part of the “Horizons of Hope” series
Um welcome all of you again and over David thank you very much father Brendon it’s a it’s a great privilege for me to be here with you tonight can you hear me at the back lovely if you when you can’t you know just go like that um it’s absolute Delight to be with
You here tonight I’m very impressed uh they’re only just about to Ann announce the holy year uh based on pilgrims for hope of Hope next week or so in in a year’s time 2025 and you’re already planning for it so you’re really ahead of the game here in in
Herford okay um if we look out I’ll have to go backwards and forwards to this one better if we look out over the present World present we live in the recent pandemic global warming in shifting weather patterns Rising Seas wildfires loss of biodiversity Wars in Ukraine Gaza the gulf 11 current Civil
Wars millions of displaced people and migrants oppressed communities like the ugar weas in China uh virtually uh in the their re-education camps virtually a form of cultural genocide you could all of you add to that list it can be hard to sustain hope as we see our daily
News and there are lots of approaches we could take we we could start tonight with our own English literature and poetry famously the essay on man by Alexander Pope uh you know the quote Hope Springs Eternal in the human breast man never is but always to be blessed
You know we could start from there um we could start from a philosophical approach uh some like er block the great writer on on hope the Hope principal three volume massive volumes in the 1960s which got him thrown out of Eastern Germany as an atheist Marxist for being too
Religious and he traced Hope from children’s sort of nursery rhymes to Beethoven’s night you know it’s extraordinary piece of work could have looked at that um there’s psychology of hope these days big uh industry in the universities Now with uh all sorts of people showing how a bit more hope you
Do better at school better at University better in your career and we have psychological approaches to help you hope more so that’s another approach and then just at Christmas time I read a lovely book by Jane good all uh who some of you probably know who is probably our
Most famous naturalist she’s just on the edge of 90 she’s the one who did all that work with Chimp panz in tangena all those years ago and showed us about the intelligence of animals changed our whole view of the relationship between humanity and animals and now goes around
The world trying to raise awareness about the planet all of the above could have been a good place to start but the title of this session is what is the source of Our Hope and specifically the hope we have as Disciples of Jesus the source of our hope is much more ancient
And so my treatment tonight will focus on the Jewish and Christian scriptures and the hope of the communities that produce them and that still celebrate them and live out of them today that that’s my aim anyway um I I’ve produced in my far too much material I couldn’t do in 40
Minutes but I’ve it’s all there i’ I’ve written it all as a piece and I’ll make sure father Brendan has it and so anyone who wants more uh than I say tonight that you can get it from him online right okay the source of Our Hope as I said is
Much more mentioned in the scripture hope arises out of an encounter with the Living God and the revealing of God’s name the foundational experience is the encounter of Moses with the utterly free God who names himself yah in Exodus 3 the Holy Name that an orthodox Jew won’t use I’m going to use
It tonight if you don’t mind with your permission because it’s so important and it’s a very unusual word it appears in no other languages uh Semitic languages and it we normally translated it I am who I am when Moses asked him who well who’s sending me to to pharaoh to the most
Powerful man on the planet at the time and the word comes back y I am who I am am but in Hebrew that can mean I will be who I will be and it can mean I will be where I will be in other words you haven’t got a clue who I
Am you never will have a clue who I am you’ll never be able to Define me you’ll never be able to put me in a box you’ll never be able to create an image of me God which opens up that whole amazing mystery of the Divine in our heritage through this encounter between
Moses you know the story of the burning bush and what follows Moses is freed from his previous World from the the noble life he had in the court of Egypt a fixed life with a religion that was amazingly uh static and ordered structured never changed um
He’s freed from that world of the the the Egyptian gods including Pharaoh himself who had to be plated to keep everything the same as it always had been in a cycle he’s freed for a new reality the creation of a new people founded on this encounter with the free
And living God who chooses to come alongside the powerless in compassion and in doing so gives them hope of a different future because they had no future in this system at all they were down here they just made bricks and they died their children made bricks and they died
This encounter with the Living God opens up a new unexpected unhoped for future it brings an alternative perspective capable of critiquing dismantling even the the dominant consciousness of this age this cyclical turning around of time every year same old things and the hope that emerges is capable of energizing individuals and
Communities and groups promising it’s always an element of Promise promising an alternative Vision an alternative reality to which they can work they can participate in the building of the absolute claims of Pharaoh’s Empire are blown away by the revelation of the free God y the Egyptian gods legitimated an
Ordered Society the order of the Pharaohs they kept things as they were there those who have are protected at the expense of those who have not but of course the plague show up there the essential weakness of this whole system show the lack of power underpinning the politics of
Oppression which had now failed to control its nobodies the Hebrew slaves the myth of Pharaoh’s power is revealed and the structures of his Empire exposed in their weakness and this reflects the revelation of the vision of God’s Freedom God’s permanent capacity for the new which is the basis of our
Hope so Moses the prophet proposes to the Hebrew slaves a religion of God’s Freedom as opposed to the state religion of order and control a politics of justice and compassion as an alternative to the Imperial politics of Oppression oh no I need that still sorry I hope that
Stays but no if it changes let me know sorry but note the starting place for Hope in Exodus chapter 2 I quote the people of Israel groaned under the bondage and cried out for H and their cry under bondage came up to God and God heard their groaning
Grieving is the most visal response to things not being right like our grieving today for Ukraine or for the children of Gaza it is often the beginnings of prophetic imagination and criticism of the hope that things could and need to be different the word Zak in Hebrew to cry out
Zak has a double meaning it’s both a cry of misery like uh when young grunberg appeared at the United Nations and in trying to put a message across she started to cry most she because she saw the future being wiped out as it were was extraordinary moment deadly silence all those powerful
People it’s both a cry of misery Zach but it also means the filing of an official Complaint Hebrew is a funny language you know and there’s an expectation that the wrong which has been carried out will be responded to and answered this grieving the revealing that all is not right is the first
Moment in prophetic imagination and awareness it’s the beginning of turning to Hope and God acknowledges this crime which begins our religious history quote from again from Exodus 3 I have seen the Affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their task
Masters hope emerges among those who suffer and who come to articulate their grief and suffering hope does not appear among those in control the managers those committed to the present power structure to keeping it the same they do not want the newness of God in the history of Israel you can see
This played out regularly between the Kings and their priesthood in the temple and their status against the prophets who are the people’s Voices of Hope King a Ahab regards Elijah the prophet as a troublemaker in one Kings amiah the high priest banishes Amos A Century later Kings and governors plot to execute
Jeremiah because his mocking words Echo echoing them go I quote shalom shalom wellbeing wellbeing peace and prosperity he’s taking the proverbial from the leadership yeah show up his words show up the real situation and point to the need for Hope for an alternative future Ezekiel accuses those in control
Be they Kings priests or false prophets of whitewash theyve created a false image of what’s really happening covering the reality to keep their own power and labeling those who hope for something different grieving people as treason in Jeremiah conspirators in the Book of Amos and blasphemers of course in Mark’s gospel about Jesus
Himself nor does Hope arise among the intellectuals who control the interpretation of society law and advise their patrons the Kings or the temple priesthood they do not expect anything new from God either you see their work in the Book of Proverbs yeah do you know the Book of
Proverbs very well it’s always worth dipping Into the Book of Proverbs is about how you survive in the world how you survive at court without causing too many Rials uh how you survive in the countryside how you survive when you go to another country uh how you survive with your
Spouse it’s it’s all about the sort of basic advice for keeping everything pretty calm much as it should be much as it always it’s about surviving there’s no discontinuity there’s no disruption there’s no change really there’s no hope and the culmination of this you find in the Book of
Ecclesiastes whereas you know the refrain is there is nothing new Under the Sun yeah what has been is what will be and what has been done is what will be done and there is nothing new Under the Sun nor is there hope among the suffering silent oppressed who have not yet allowed their
Grief to find voice they remain nameless the nameless victims of History we rarely have their words it’s very important we remember them though so it’s a risk to choose the free God but to act in Hope is always a risk towards the future for the followers of the free God
Y and it’s always unfinished work hope is an unfinished virtue yeah uh because the future is still yet to be as we all know with the wars raging and we all pray and hope and those of us who can work for resolution the the planet we work for biodiversity For a more modest lifestyle living simply that others might simply live Etc whereas servitude you see the servitude that the Hebrews had experienced for many of them was always a bit attractive because you know where you are when you’re a slave you know what you can and can’t expect and so
Again and again the Israelite supervisors turn back to the Pharaohs in Genesis 5 the great German uh poet Theologian Dara in her wonderful book suffering shows how the redirection of grief addressing cries to where they can be answered rather than where they are ignored is often the beginning of Hope and
Empowerment then a previously powerless people begin to make their own history and we’ve seen this in our own age with the the black American Civil Rights Movement when Martin Luther King gave his grace I Have a Dream speech remember on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in
1963 I remember it very very well as a child it was a transformative moment because people were able to look Beyond The Suffering and of so many years to another Vision the effect of Gandhi’s teaching of Aima truth Force nonviolent resistance to the masses in India remember his famous Salt March to refuse
To pay the British salt tax but it was a turning point excuse me in Exodus 11 and 12 two cries play out the Cry of the people of the Hebrew slaves and the Cry of the Egyptians and Pharaoh whose power is being dismantled before them around them but it’s too
Late a new history had begun which is still being worked out today a history that is the opening up to a free and promised future in hope the Jewish people would have to relearn this time and again above all at the time of the Babylonian exile when as you know 10 of
The 12 tribes disappear from history forever and we would be very foolish if we thought the church is free of this learning and that we will experience the move into the Hop for Kingdom of God’s spirit as something easy and simple the challenge
To die to the old and open to the new in Hope is always part of prophetic imagination it doesn’t come cheap or easy as Pope Francis cidal process Bears witness Jesus starts his own Ministry with this awareness remember when he says metanite metan turn around and hear the gospel we translat
Of repent it’s a we that’s a weak word it means literally turn 240° woo see the world in a different way and change and change it’s a huge challenge that challenge and that in a way is what what lent is all about to end up seeing and hoping differently turn your mind
And heart around and believe the good news so let me pick up the keep an eye on this right um so the prophetic imagination seen in Moses story is to provoke alternative ways of seeing alternative possibilities to generate hope remember Mrs satcher’s famous acronym Tina there is no
Alternative well that’s what the Empire of Egypt thought look what happened to it um everything was as it was with no expectation of the new and we can fall into that trap ourselves and the church has at times in its history said no that’s not possible you know can’t have married ordained
Priests Etc and all the other things we we we say and yet we should never say that about what God Spirit can and can’t do God in the history of Israel and of the church doesn’t seem too worried about tradition in the narrow sense of the word the prophets provoke us to imagine
And step out towards truly new Futures that are not simply derived from past practice and you see that again in something like Pope Francis L where he takes a word we all know simply poor the poor but he stretches it to include the poor planet and all its life
Forms and he does this quite often virtue but instead of it being about courage or truthfulness whatever it’s the virtue of political virtue or uh social virtue stretch to Encompass our time this is for later actually forget this at the moment what I’ve got now is a whole section on the the actual
Biblical foundation for the things I’m saying so I’ll open up a little bit of it but it’s too much to try and do now um where are we at the moment Austin in terms of um maybe another 15 minutes okay right so after the experience of The
Exodus Moses Leading the People out into a new world a new of promise and hope the people of Israel will look backwards and forwards from that experience trying to interpret them how yah has been involved in their history and their Origins and is calling them what sort of future is yah calling them
Into and so they remember the lives of their ancestors Abraham and Sarah Isaac and Jacob and they tell their lives a new through the perspective of yah’s given hope and at the heart of these stories is a Divine promise that we all know of that is open-ended great gradually being
Fulfilled by God’s gift through all sorts of things an unexpected birth of an heir of a name Abraham of a new country Israel a blessed Community among the Nations remember the king melkisedek from the neighboring Canaanite people comes out in genes Genesis 14 and blesses God’s chosen Abraham bless
Blessed Be Abraham by God most High maker of heaven and Earth and blessed be God most high who has delivered your enemies into your hands and God’s promise is that in you all the families of the earth will be blessed that still being worked out in various ways but this drawing of Abram
And Sarah out from the Civilized comfort of Earth one of the great cities of the ancient world into the completely unknown to follow an unknown God into an unidentified land it’s this living memory of a God who would promise a new birth to an aging couple that kept the people’s hope
Alive the spiritual descendants of Abraham and Sarah Jews Christians and musl Muslims will again and again trust in this promise and in the worst of times continue to act in Hope remember Jesus retort to the Pharisees and the Sadducees who are trying to catch him out in Matthew
3 were they’re criticizing his practice that it’s not faithful to the tradition of Abraham you brood of V says when was the last time your Parish priest says something like that too do not presume to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our ancestor for I tell
You God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham now this was a radical rereading by Jesus of the original Divine promise and of Hope for the marginal of his world it was as radical a retelling as Jesus could have spoken and at that
Point he’s in trouble with those who want to keep everything as it is as at The Exodus so in his teaching and practice the future is blown open to New Hope in the Living unfettered God and across the centuries the people of God continue to look backwards and
Forwards from this foundational hope of Exodus and their Liberation now I’ve got a pile of this here I just might pick up one or two of them before I go on to some of the more specifically New Testament material but um I’ve written a little mini course
Called Echoes of God for the God who speaks that Flo persuaded me to do it and I’ve used this method of looking backwards and forwards from The Exodus to try and understand the books of the Bible it’s just seven short sessions and if if that’s fairly new way of looking
At the scriptures to you please have a look at it it’s free it’s on online okay Jesus um story of the Good Samaritan which we all know is where he refocuses on the values of the Covenant with Moses on Sil where God says to the PE his people at the center
Of your nation of you as a people there must be the most frail the the the Widow the stranger the O the powerless ones the migrant worker is the stranger of course but in the story of course that Core teaching at core memory of the renewed people of
Exodus is reflected back to the teachers of Israel by a hated Foreigner the Samaritan at that time the Samaritans and the the Jews were in complete opposition to one another for I’d love to tell you the stories you could ask me if you want to question but the
Horrendous hatred of each other and you know the story about how the Samaritan looks after the Jew who’s been um mugged and his own people don’t Jesus Is Telling of that story causes crisis a crisis in those listening if they carry on with their current practices of separation and
Ritual Purity taught by their leaders they’re guilty of breaking the Covenant God revealed to Moses if they accept the Samaritan can be the minister of God’s compassion then they have to break with their National story and step into what Jesus Calls the kingdom of God a free bigger
Space bigger story story than State and religion and then their simple certainties about their own religious superiority are blown away the structures of Temple and hierarchy are relativized they have their place but it’s a relative place and the original open mystery of God as yah I am who I am where I will
Be the undefinable uncontrollable creative Divine Spirit Flames forth again as at the burning bush and they will be in touch again with the disturbing mystery of divine presence in the ordinary in the everyday because Jesus the way Jesus does this normally is to refer to yah as AB yeah
You can still hear little children in Palestine running down the street AB you know it’s the word for dad daddy or your favorite uncle in the middle of the mess of domestic life and Jesus uses that just as the that word was given to Moses to emphasize the complete Transcendence and
Impossible uh any the impossibility of defining God so Jesus deliberately uses to say God is closer to you than the person who on this planet loves you most which can be wonderful or terrifying depending on what life you’re leading Jesus reawakens the prophetic storytelling tradition of the prophets
Of Elijah and Elisha and I won’t do this now but we have the book of Kings where which celebrates all the kings of Israel but especially Solomon you know especially Solomon but a third of the book one and two book of Kings is an absolutely terrifying taking apart of
Solomon’s Reign by um Elijah and Elisha if you haven’t read it read it and I mean Solomon comes out as a very very shady character right running a very very shady Middle Eastern powerful overtaxed uh economy depending on terrible misuse of his own people say nothing of other slaves from
Elsewhere that would take us ages to get into it’s fascinating it’s really fascina in his first sermon Jesus deliberately identifies himself with this prophetic critique and he does it by his appeal to the Jubilee values yeah we we know this in Luke four here and he opens the
Scroll and he says this is what is happening now the prisoners are free the blind see the lame walk Etc and in facing those who were opposed to him for doing these things and for saying these things especially on the Sabbath he cites the Prophet Elijah and he says she looked after the
Foreign Widow of zarafat there were lots of widows in Israel he she could have he could have looked after and Elisha his disciple looked after the Syrian non there are plenty of people with Leprosy in Israel and what Jesus does is he renews the Covenant that places the frail the
Outcast the Widow the stranger and the orphan whoever they may be and wherever they come from at the heart of the concern of the community of the free God he opens up the memory of hope that the prophets has sustained in the Old Testament now in this I what I’ve done
In in the text is I’ve taken lots of prophetic examples to show you how at different periods in the history of Israel in very different circumstances Exile uh under the Kings and so on people held on to the hope that Moses Covenant the Covenant of the Y of Moses had given
Them and how they even groaning from their oppression and so on they opened up to New Waves of exploring hope the kingdom of God is the metaphor above all that Jesus uses for hope when he teaches in his Parables about the kingdom of God he is teaching
About this is what we hope for because of the God we know the God who has come close to us and it’s a form of as you know his teaching of the Kingdom it’s a form of judgment on all other forms of power um and it becomes real and fleshed out
In the way he lives and teaches and I just give you prophetic imagination and hope need song and dance I was that’s what I would have gone on to in there but at the beginning of the Gospel before the birth of Jesus we have this fantastic encounter between two Jewish women Mary
Miriam and Elizabeth and it’s charged with the prophetic prophetic hopefield imagin of Israel Mary’s magnifica which is the longest speech by any woman in the hold of the New Testament is a complete quilt of Hope and prophetic texts from the Jew scriptures um and in them the sort of
The faith of Moses uh Sister Miriam who dances uh before the people of God after they escaped it it comes alive again the child dances we’re told in Elizabeth’s womb the word is the same word that’s used in the Hebrew scriptures for David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant being brought into
Jerusalem and the the two women pour out the purest prophetic imagination of their people and the male voice the patriarchal voice is just not there it’s silent because as you know U Elizabeth’s priest husband Zechariah was refusing to call his son John and until he did uh
God wasn’t playing with him so he he he silenced him made him done and so there they are in the Priestly household but it’s their voices that heard two liberated women who with extraordinary intensity expressed the prophetic imagination and hope of their people and anticipated its renewal as God comes
Close again in Sovereign Freedom this time in the birth of a child in the Incarnation there’s so much we could talk about that AR there um God’s spirit in Mary and Elizabeth is working towards a new unforeseen but hoped for community of Freedom so at the beginning of the
Gospel they sum up in song The prophetic promised hope of the people which Jesus Will enact in his life and Ministry in particular in his liberating stories and acts but above all in his meals Jesus meals were shocking as you probably know anthrop how how long I got now probably just two it
Is anthropologists tell us that to know what where how when and with whom people eat is to know the character of their society right to not to know what where how when and with whom people eat is to know the character of their society Jesus stories of Open Table
Fellowship The Fellowship of the kingdom are shocking his invitations do not map against class or gender or status or moral worth he eats with men and women of any and every station ignoring distinction and as you’d expect in that sort of world he’s fiercely criticized with his enemies saying he’s a a glutton
And a drunker who eats with tax collectors and Sinners and whns implicitly suggesting he’s no better than the people he eats with because in this world they thought if you mix with Sinners you CAU Sin Sin and evil was contagious our lord always acts as though Holiness is contagious
That if he welcomed less than wonderfully pure people into his company and circle maybe they’ll catch something of God’s kingdom and God’s mercy from that experience I mean even his family in St Mark’s gospel they come and they want to take him home because they thought he was beside himself nuts
Yeah and the Pharisees of course in particular clashed with with Jesus and his eating practice because they had done heroic things to keep a pure identity as God’s people in the face of all these Roman and Greek Customs that were taking over their land so they set themselves apart and they followed all
The rules of the priests in the temple but now in their homes so because they thought the temple was pretty corrupt of which in some ways it was but in their homes they followed the priests rules lay men and women so that their table in
In the home would be as holy as the altar of the temple they they many of the Jewish people thought they were Heroes there was never probably more than about 10,000 Pharisees at any time in Israel because it was so hard to to to follow they used to group in groups of
12 families so they could take it in turns to follow all the rules and regulations so they could eat purely wasn’t easy but of course here was Jesus I mean he goes out into the desert and 5,000 people follow him and their children and partners and he sits down
And they eat no washing of hands you know no purification and there’s piles left over that was the most terrifying thing of all for both the Jewish authorities because it was a sign of the Messiah the fullness of Messianic times and for the RO it was terrifying because
Anyone who could organize 5,000 people in the desert keep order but teach them for some days had to be reckoned with jesus’ response is clear and direct he locates the center of God’s people differently outside of holy spaces at his meals Outsiders become insiders in an enactment of the coming of God’s
Kingdom he says many will come from the East and the west from north and south and sit at the table in the reign of God that’s you and me that’s you and me and so his meals become rituals of of reversal witnessing to the breaking in of God’s kingdom God’s Reign among the
Very people that the holy ones exclude who can’t belong to the holy huddle you I always used to give me great sense of hope uh working in Birmingham going around different parishes on a Sunday and seeing the sheer range of folk in most of our churches folk who actually
Wouldn’t have anything in common with each other outside of that space and I thought even today something that is still there something of that is still there okay so biblical hope I’ll finish off any biblical hope reminds us the present is provisional we’re not to be seduced
By present systems of of any sort political e economic or intellectual or even sometimes religious they all some serve some and not others what about the marginal B and so on um at the CED recently um the Dominican Timothy radli said a lovely thing which you probably read in the papers if what
Another says is indeed true it cannot threaten threaten the truth that I treasure I must open my heart and mind to the spaciousness of God’s truth Divine truth if I believe what the other says isn’t true well I must of course say so if due humility and then he
Mentions this German word Vision around Vision round he says it’s beautiful I it’s a very odd word but as but it has a lovely meaning it means that the fullness of Truth is in the space between us you don’t possess it totally and I don’t possess it totally but it’s
There to be entered into together the fullness of God’s truth and he says God’s truth is often revealed in empty spaces from the empty space between the the wings of the carim in the Ark of the Covenant in the temple to the EMP now I done more stuff and uh about
Some of the things that are an enemy to hope they’re very obvious things about control about Silence about just agreeing to keep peace and so on and and that are in our world and how and even the affluence that we some of us have been blessed with or the consumerism
Which flows all around us all of them can dull the desire for hope canull the openness to the possibility of God’s holy spirit coming to us as fresh breaking us out of where we are at the moment um I just finish with a little example
Um about 40 years ago um I was invited to join a group of of they were former young Christian workers who met in Birmingham once a month to do a review of Life working life to try and live as good lives as they could in the world of
Work and to make a difference to improve the working conditions of their fellows and so on and they were good at Social analysis and the church’s social teaching that they felt less secure with the scriptures and they they thought I should be able to help them
Well for 40 years I’ve met with them every month as a member of the group they’re my base Community if you like and we’ve worked through some of the most difficult times in the working history of England in the last 40 years but at a conference one year we
Had a worker priest over from France Jean Marie lves Canon Jean Marie l lovely old man who worked in Africa and other places always as a Chaplin to workers and he listened to our Reflections and at the end he got up and said you know you do the analysis very
Beautifully lovely beautiful analysis and you hear the gospel very strongly challenges you that the thing you must do every time you meet and do a review of life you must listen for the sign of Hope sign of hope he said you must look for
It he said if you look for it you will always find it and that’s the point the the moment where you find something that you can work with others to build on it’s sort of the gift of the spirit and you know we started that I think 30
Years ago and we we’ve done it ever since every month and we have always found it even in the most dire situations when half of us were unemployed so we found a sign of hope that we could build up well my dear friends I hope that you
Would always be able to find that sign of Hope in your in your own lives and if you do you’re being you’re blessed and you’re being touched by the presence of God’s hopeful ever created spirit thank you so much