Today's PAYG opened with a beautiful recording of the Kings College Choir (which we all know means Kings Cambridge) singing Thomas Tallis Spem in Alium - which can be loosely translated as 'all my hope on God is founded'. The reading was one of Isaiah's beautiful visions of restoration - the feast for all nation of food "rich and juicy" and "fine strained wines", of the removal of the veil of mourning, the shroud of death, an end to sorrow and shame (Isaiah 25:6-8). The focus of the reflection was on shame, which was helpful, but I found myself drawn to hope amidst sadness and death...
A couple of days ago I had an email from a friend. In the summer she buried her mother, and now her ftaher has been diagnosed with cancer.
Yesterday another friend told me that a school friend of theirs had died suddenly over the weekend, at the age of 52.
This morning I heard that a four year-old child had died after being in an accident on a railway level crossing.
The sadness and the sorrow are easy to identify, for they are all around us and touch our daily lives.
So where is hope in all of this? And what is hope anyway?
Not wishful thinking, clearly, since it cannot change the reality of frailty and finitude, cannot undo what is irrevocably done.
Nor can it be other-worldly, an over emphasis on 'better places' or 'altered states' that deny the reality of anguish, sorrow and grief.
Hope is something other, something not ultimately definable, something tenacious that allows us to cling on, if by our fingertips, to the possibility, the promise that there, is more than just here and now: more than life measured chronologically or by academic or sporting achievement, more than wealth or health, more than pie in the sky when you die... The possibility, the promise, that one day God will tenderly wipe the tears from our cheeks, kiss us better, and welcome us, with everyone else, in the new creation.
All my hope on God is founded... In Christ alone my hope is found... Spem in Alium... whatever hymn/song, whatever language, this defiant assertion continues to sustain frail and failing Christians through the inevitable storms of life.
It makes no snese to me, Lord,
That babies and children die before they have a chance to live
There is no rhyme of reason to the sudden end of life by accident or disease
No hint of justice that same families suffer over and over again
Yet I choose to hope in you:
To believe, against all odds that the promises are true
That you will prepare, are preparing, maybe have prepared
For all a future free of sadness or shame, regret or remorse, death or disaster
Lead me onwards, step by faltering step,
On the upward climb
That leads to fulfilled hope
Amen