Discover & explore: Hope

The first in a new series of Discover & explore services was held at St Stephen Walbrook today. These services, which feature the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields, explore their themes through a thoughtful mix of music, prayers, readings and reflections. Themes for the current series are based on Eric Whitacre's anthem 'Hope, Faith, Life, Love' and, as a result, this series of musical discovery explores the themes of hope, faith , life, love, dreams, joy, truth and soul.

Today's theme was Hope. Next week (Monday 8th February, 1.10pm) we will explore the theme of Faith in a service led by Revd Sally Muggeridge.

Here is the liturgy and reflection from today's service:

Opening responses

Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love. (Psalm 33:18)

Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you. (Psalm 33:22)

For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him. (Psalm 62:5)

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. (Psalm 146:5)

Reflection

Five sixths of the medieval part of the city of London, including 13,000 houses and 84 churches, were destroyed by the Great Fire of London that lasted 4 days in total. This was a disaster zone where everything was lost and people were in despair. Where is hope to be found in such a situation?

Of course, we know what happened. King Charles II invited architects, surveyors and engineers to present alternative plans. Although many of his plans were unrealised, Christopher Wren and others then rebuilt the City in a new way using better materials.

This is the starting point for an exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects entitled Creation from Catastrophe: How architecture rebuilds communities, which explores the varying ways that cities and communities have been re-imagined in the aftermath of natural or man-made disasters.

Disasters are frequent occurrences, “some natural, many more due to man’s ham-fisted neglect of the planet or our inability to get by without recourse to violence.” “The result is always the need for a new start, and how we respond and rebuild colours an uncertain future more than ever. Yet, for all the carnage and chaos that catastrophes bring, an odd truth is apparent: disasters do give us the chance to shape things differently.”

As a result, as Terry Eagleton writes in Hope without Optimism, “the most authentic hope is whatever can be salvaged, stripped of guarantees from a general dissolution.” It is whatever survives a general ruin. This is where we find the writer of Lamentations; bowed down with the reality of exile, yet trusting that it is in the nature of God to bring a new beginning from this disastrous affliction which is “wormwood and gall” to him. Similarly, Emily Dickinson claims that, hope is heard most sweetly in the Gale, “the chillest land” and “on the strangest Sea”.

The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, reflecting on the Arab Spring, recently wrote: “Today, many see “hope” and “optimism” as obscene words.” Nevertheless he still finds “reasons to feel encouraged” despite the fact that, “the physical causes of the revolution on 25 January 2011 – corruption, tyranny and poverty – still exist, and have an uglier face.” In fact, the situation is so dire, he says, “that it is not sustainable; the revolution is still possible because nothing else is.”

Eagleton finds hope in the same place. Hope, he writes, “is to be found in the unfinished nature of the actual, discernible as a hollow at its heart.” “Potentiality is what articulates the present with the future, and thus lays down the material infrastructure of hope.” Hope is about a vision for a future that is different from the present; one which therefore requires imagination and vision. For Christians that vision is of the kingdom of God; which has begun to be realised but is still to come in its full reality.

As a result, in Theology of Hope Jurgen Moltmann argues that “Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present. If we had before our eyes only what we see, then we should cheerfully or reluctantly reconcile ourselves with things as they happen to be. That we do not reconcile ourselves, that there is no pleasant harmony between us and reality, is due to our unquenchable hope. This hope keeps man unreconciled, until the great day of the fulfillment of all the promises of God.

The Church, then, is intended to be “the source of continual new impulses towards the realization of righteousness, freedom and humanity here in the light of the promised future that is to come.” Our hope should “provide inexhaustible resources for the creative, inventive imagination of love.” It should constantly provoke and produce thinking of an anticipatory kind in love to humanity and the world, “in order to give shape to the newly dawning possibilities in the light of the promised future, in order as far as possible to create here the best that is possible, because what is promised is within the bounds of possibility.” “Thus it will constantly arouse the ‘passion for the possible’, inventiveness and elasticity in self-transformation, in breaking with the old and coming to terms with the new.” The Christian hope should always have “a revolutionary effect in this sense on the intellectual history of the society affected by it.”

“Wherever that happens, Christianity embraces its true nature and becomes a witness of the future of Christ.”

Intercessions

We pray for all those currently experiencing natural or man-made disasters and for whom life is wormwood and gall. By living all the way through these experiences of vulnerability may they find their way to a place of new beginning in which power can be plucked from weakness and life made fruitful once again. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

May we find in the unfinished nature of the present, a vision of a better future; a vision of the kingdom of God. Give us the imagination and vision we need to shape things differently and rebuild colours in an uncertain future. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

May your Church be a source of continual new impulses towards the realization of righteousness, freedom and humanity here in the light of the promised future that is to come. May we see the inexhaustible resources for the creative, inventive imagination of love that hope in you provides. Constantly arouse in us a ‘passion for the possible’, inventiveness and elasticity in self-transformation, by breaking with the old and coming to terms with the new. May this hope continue to have a revolutionary effect on the intellectual history of our society. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Blessing

Places of new beginning, power plucked from weakness, life made fruitful once again, the realization of righteousness, freedom and humanity, resources for the creative, inventive imagination of love, visions of a better future, visions of the kingdom of God; and may those blessings of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.

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Bob Chilcott - Even Such Is Time.