“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.” Red to Andy in the classic (I think) film The Shawshank Redemption. The clip can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDGNsbLayJw

Since my sabbatical began, and indeed before, I have begun to discover that hope is not actually dangerous; indeed it is foundational to most things that we, as humans, consider good. Hope, for me as a Christian, is that which God has planted into our hearts, that cries out: ‘life is remarkable’, ‘things can change’ and ‘there is purpose and meaning’.

Hope is found in the stories of men, women and children.

Hope is found in the lives of some who have been forced to flee their own countries, for political, religious, and yes, economic reasons. Hope that a new context will reshape the contours of life. It is interesting that one of the greatest gifts to the Church in England has been the number of Asian, African and Latin American Christians who have settled in the UK and brought fresh life to communities. Their hope is fashioned on the altar of experience, as they connect their stories with the sacred narratives of the Bible. They do not do so in a way that rubbishes the problems and complexities of the text, but in a way that improvises with the divine impulse found in the large narrative. For individiduals that I have discovered in Manchester and London, they follow in the footsteps of Abram and Sarai.

Hope is found in semi-detached house on a housing estate, where a woman and her daughter have lived for 40+ years. Despite changes in attitudes, of neighbours, and chances offered to those who live in that patch of urban Sheffield, hope is still there, as mother inhabits the story of grace and grit she finds in the Christian story, shaped as it has been by the liturgy of the Eucharist. For daughter too, there is hope as she inhabits the story of Peter, battered and bruised on Holy Saturday, beginning to hear bewildering stories from her brother that something life-changing can still happen.

Hope is found in the vicarage in a seemingly desolate town. Where a clergy family, acting on the impulses of their faith, pour out their lives for people, believing that the Christian hope can change the world. This is not done in a ‘colonial’ manner, bringing middle class values to a place where they jar and become worthless. Rather it by connecting with the divine story they have couple and their children are beginning to discover that a bias to the poor is more than lip service to a theory, but a costly opening of homes to those with much to teach.

Hope is not a dangerous thing. It is essential and life-transforming.

It is an anchor. For without hope, people can be driven insane, to turn Red’s quote to Andy on its head.