We are God's People hope is our name

We are God’s people  - HOPE is our name

For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Romans 8:24-25).

Introduction to Hope 25

Like it or not, we live in a world where hope is hard to find and without hope, there is little to drive us forward with uplifting expectations. Fyodor Dostoevsky expressed it this way: "To live without hope is to cease to live.  He was correct.  In contrast, Robert Jensen, a Media and Ethics professor from Texas declares that it (hope) is not necessary…I’ve never seen any cause for hope, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given in to despair — I found a way to live without it. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/robert-jensen-how-i-learned-to-live-without-hope/103560354.

His article is worth reading, if only to understand just how far people will go to replace the biblical promise of Hope with something they can construct under their own wisdom and power.  It is no surprise to find it on the pages of the ABC, a god-free zone for Australians.  Jensen’s world is not one in which I would like to live, though millions do dwell in that world of wishing-things -go- well- for them.  He goes on to assert that living without hope does not condemn one to despair or cynicism. 

A world without HOPE

Jensen speaks for many people today in that he talks about how “lucky” he has been in life.  This “luck” has enabled him to move beyond an early life that was defined by trauma, on multiple levels from multiple sources, relentless and with no safe harbour. He lived without expectations of “better days ahead” but “survived”.   That “survival” left him with a light bulb moment.  He had found a way to live that did not require hope.

Jensen did acknowledge how fortunate he was in that he had opportunities for top-shelf education, and employment in an area where he was free to spend time in the pseudo-world of media and ethics scholarship.  Millions do not have that luxury.  They live in the real world of the daily grind of work, debts, anxiety over unemployment, mortgage stress, hopelessness, blended families and a thousand and one other things that make the struggle to lift themselves through their efforts next to impossible.  For many, it must seem as though they are barely managing to survive from day to day.  The future is not something worth pondering.  But surely, we are meant to do more than “survive”.  Hope gives us something in the here and now, something that guarantees light in that very moment of life when darkness oversees everything that is happening.  What hope does that nothing else can achieve for me is to lift me up without necessarily having a change to the circumstances of my life.  Dreadful things may continue but the measure of my life is to be found before the throne of God and not in my earthly successes or failures.  That is Hope.

The world since the sixties has disappointed

It is a generalization, but it is fear, more than hope, which is characteristic of our time.  I am a child of the 1960s, and back then we were optimistic about future hopes for the triumph of justice and something like universal peace.  What went wrong? Today those hopes have given way to increasing pessimism. “No future” scenarios have become plausible to us. Recovering from the Coronavirus has proved we are not as resilient as we thought we might be.  People seem to fear more than we hope. We fear falling behind as the gap widens between the ultra-rich and the rest who are condemned to run frantically in the race to succeed only to find themselves standing in the same place, with little option but to keep falling behind. We fear the breakdown of our usual way of living and feel threatened by people driven by war and deprivation, who find little choice but to migrate to where they can survive and thrive. We see the way these things introduce even more chaos and stress to an already overloaded world. Was Jensen correct?  Is our only hope our inner strength and the luck of the cultural and social lottery of where we were born?

Jesus is the answer to that!

The Apostle Paul has penned some of the most famous lines about hope ever written: For in hope, we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Romans 8:24-25). We have seen the kind of world the Jensens have built up, a world in which it is up to the individual to make the world a better place, to dream about, create and sustain a constantly evolving world. I have some questions: how has that panned out for the world so far? What about those we leave behind, those finding it tough to see light in the future? Do we leave them to sink or swim?

Hope is what we have because of Jesus Christ

In hope – or perhaps by hope – “we were saved,” writes Apostle Paul. In hope, a future good which is not yet, somehow already is. We need to pause and ponder the power of what he is saying there. We can reap the benefits of the Risen Christ now, in our present lives. We do not have to wait until the next life. Living in Christ, under the Holy Spirit transforms the perspective through which we view ourselves, others, the world and what is happening to us. It reassures us of a future perfection we cannot see, but which is guaranteed for those who repent and live lives of Kingdom faithfulness. That certainty is what changes us and makes all things new. We might be suffering or experiencing “hardship … distress … persecution … famine … nakedness … peril … sword … we are being killed all day long” (Romans 8:18, 35-36), and yet we have been saved, and we are saved.

HOPE 2025

Hope 2025 is a pilgrimage, a journey of faith we make with our brothers and sisters around the world. It is a spiritual journey in which we are once more reassured that Hope, a genuine hope that endures and produces fruit is only possible in Jesus Christ.  It is a journey of exploration, listening, discerning and most of all being patient, allowing the Spirit to be our guide into the future God has planned for us.  Here we are today and Listen! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and have dinner with him, and he with Me (Revelation 3:20).

HOPE 2025 is a pilgrimage, a time for us to journey with God, spending more time in prayer, in Bible reading and reflection, in pondering the great mysteries of faith.  We commit ourselves to a greater engagement with our brothers and sisters in faith, with an eye on the divine promises that God’s redeeming grace will do for us and through us more than we have ever imagined, more than we might dare to dream of.  In God, all things are possible, and the hand of God is reaching out to each one of us, daring us, challenging us, inviting us to walk with him, not just for the peace it will bring to our own lives, but for the sake of those to whom God will engage through us.  It is a missionary hope because we are invited to collaborate with God's Holy Spirit in the evangelical vocation of refreshing not just ourselves but the entire world, people of every tribe and tongue, people and nation.

Bishop Michael Hough                                      N0.1                                                 January 2025