Two Types of Hope: A Christmas message from Dewsbury's Reverend Neil Walpole

The first is that of the crossed fingers. This is the type of hope that says: ‘I do hope I win the big one in the lottery tonight - I kind of need it.’ Or ‘I do hope Town win the premiership this year.’

It is a hope often based on desperation, a forlorn hope that, despite the advert’s claim, the truth is ‘it probably won’t be me!’ Very much a hope against all the odds type of hope. A type of hope that involves crossing one’s fingers and touching wood ‘for luck’.

And then there is another type of hope. BSL has it as a free right hand flowing gracefully down towards an open left hand and rising with a clutching right hand to grasp something solid. This is the type of hope based on a promise by someone who has forever kept their promises, a hope that is based on complete trust in something or someone which or who has never let you down and who never will let you down. This hope is sure and certain - a solid hope that you can fully take hold of and grasp.

And then there is the British sign language for fear. It is simply a motion of both hands heading towards the heart and gripping that area of the chest where the heart would be. The intention is to identify something that grips and paralyses the heart. Like the second sign language for hope it is very real and while a certain hope is life giving, fear can be very much life controlling.

I wonder then what you hope in or what you hope for in the coming year? And what type of hope are you putting trust in? Is there more than a hint of ‘touch wood’ in your hoping or is there a hope that is sure and certain, a hope that will never ‘in the whole of history’ let us down, a hope that will never fail? I wonder too, what might you fear?

In a year that has been difficult for so many, in a year where our world feels constantly broken, where we have seen children and babies lives so horrendously taken around the world; more locally in a year where poverty has struck thousands of households, where our local council appears to be on the verge of bankruptcy, where here in Dewsbury we have seen murders and stabbings on our streets and at least one around our schools, there is one question on my mind and it is this: where will our hope come from?

There is a Christmas carol that goes:

O little town of Bethlehem,

How still we see Thee lie!

Above Thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by.

Yet in Thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting Light;

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in Thee tonight.

Anyone who has been to a nativity play this year might immediately recognise that the carol is about baby Jesus, born in Bethlehem, sleeping in a manger which is a feeding trough for the cattle. We love to watch our children perform these plays and they give us a certain warm ‘Ahh’ factor - ‘wasn’t our Joseph and Mary lovely this year?’ And it is right to enjoy these plays in this way, to watch the joy on the children’s faces as they retell what is for me the most wonderful story of all time. It is important, though, that we don’t leave baby Jesus in the manger.

From seven hundred years before Jesus was born there were prophecies recorded in the Old Testament about a coming king, a saviour figure who would be born in Bethlehem to a virgin and who will bring light into people’s darkness. For Christians, the prophecies (why not check them out?) are clearly referring to Jesus.

Also foretold is that this baby will grow up and bring healing to the blind, the lame, the deaf and to all who are sick, that he will even bring back to life those who have died, that he would bring hope to the hope - less. This is One who was born to bring light into the darkness of the world, who was to set free those living in spiritual oppression and oppression caused by injustice, as he lives a perfect life of love. It was both because and despite this love that Jesus was taken to the cross to die the most horrendous of deaths, this too was prophesied.

But according to Christian witness, love didn’t die on the cross. Also foretold by the prophets was that this one who just loved and loved and loved unto death ‘will see the light of life’ - this king wasn’t going to stay dead but will rise again, and so even the thing mankind fears most in life - that is death - was defeated.

And there you have the greatest clue as to what sure and certain hope looks like. ‘Perfect love’, says the Bible, ‘casts out all fear.’ Christians look to Jesus in order to replicate that love in their own lives, though we are so very much aware that we too often fail. And even for those who don’t believe in Jesus, it is worth thinking about the love that he reputedly shared with others, because it is in love that we can place our hope. The love planted in each one of us (I believe by God - because the Bible says ‘God is love’) is what can bring true hope into our broken world. Things can change when people follow this way of sacrificial love.

From all of the ‘Churches Together in Dewsbury’ - have a most blessed Christmas and a hope filled new year!

Reverend Neil Walpole is Associate Priest at Dewsbury Team Parish.