Lent is a time for reflection, with an eye to what St Theresa of Avila called "looking forward to the joy of Easter." Certainly it seems there is much to reflect on at this time. Some of it personal, some of it bigger picture reflections about where we are in our society and the wider world.

This is not an easy moment in our culture. The much talked about recession has not quite gone away. Economic outlooks are far from healthy. There must be a question as to whether small changes of growth in the economy herald the end of a recession which has been primarily in the banking sector. It is likely that more people will lose their paid employment. Some economists think that we are in a property and assets price "bubble" and that further losses will ensue. In short, there’s not a huge amount of hope around.

In the wider world, there now seems to be a somewhat passive acceptance that the so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are falling off the world agenda. The MDG Report 2009 made the following observation: "More than halfway to the 2015 deadline to achieve the MDGs, major advances in the fight against poverty and hunger have begun to slow or reverse as a result of the global economic and food crises." This in itself, when you consider the optimism around the setting of the MDGs, is somewhat hopeless news.

Hope is a key theme in the New Testament. When Paul reflected on the resurrection of Jesus he was forced to conclude that, "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all people." In other words because of the transforming power of God in raising Jesus from death, hope is born not just for this life but for eternity.

The loss of hope is indeed a loss. Both individuals and groups are paralysed without hope. To be without any hope is effectively to be disempowered, to see no way out. Despite the promise of Jesus that He would rise from death, those around the Cross on that first Good Friday experienced the hopelessness of it all. They wondered whether the past three years they had spent with Jesus had just come to an unfortunate end.

The resurrection brought hope then and it can bring us hope today. This event, Paul would have argued, is primary evidence that the promises of God will be fulfilled. Without it, the hope that faith in God can bring would be unavailable to us. It would be in doubt.

The resurrection means that God can take the most impossible and hopeless situations and transform them; that His power to change things has been ultimately vindicated.

Do we believe that things can change in our lives, in our churches, in God’s world? If our answer to that question is uncertain then we have not grasped the power of the Resurrrection hope and we will never know that "joy of Easter" of which St Theresa speaks. If we constantly tell ourselves that "nothing around here will ever change very much", the likelihood is that this will simply become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s true of my life, our churches and God’s world.

To rediscover hope is to be changed and to believe that, however awful the circumstances, things can change – in my life, in our culture and in our world. This envisaged change will take sacrifice, cost and hard work. It may seem impossible, but Jesus teaches that with God all things are possible, not least his rising from the dead.

Have a very happy and hope-full Easter.

March 2010

This page was last updated on 06 March 2010