Throughout Lent at St Mark’s, we have been exploring the theme of “Living Hope”. As we move ever closer to our celebration of Easter later in the month, our journey into the meaning of “Living Hope” is about to intensify. One of the things I have been reflecting on this Lent is the difference between hope and optimism. 

When we look around our world, it may seem to us that there is not much to be optimistic about. Our media organisations bring us news of our failure to tackle climate change, the world’s ongoing wars and conflict, the uncertainty of a new global order with an unpredictable President in the White House, and the seemingly endless rise in the cost living.

Perhaps closer to home, you might struggle to feel optimistic if you are currently facing difficulties with your health either physically or mentally, or with concerns at work, or with challenging relationships with family and friends. You might also be finding it difficult to feel optimistic about life in the future if you are lonely or recently bereaved. 

A lack of optimism is not unusual. When he was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams was once asked by a journalist whether he was optimistic about the future of the Church of England. Rowan Williams said: “No, I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful”. As journalists sometimes do, this quote was cut in half, and the headline in the paper subsequently read that the Archbishop of Canterbury was not optimistic about the future of the Church of England. The “hope” half was left out. 

Both halves of Rowan William’s answer, though, might be worth exploring a little further. There is some distinguished thought on the difference between optimism and hope, that you’ll find in the work of a number of Christian theologians.  

For Mirslav Volf, optimism is something that we arrive at having considered what’s happened in the past and what’s currently happening, in order to assess what the future will hold. 

Hope, he says, is not quite the same. Hope “has to do with good things in the future that come to us from ‘outside’, from God; the future associated with hope … is a gift of something completely new.”

Let’s turn to think about this distinction between optimism and hope for one particular event – the death of Jesus on the cross, which we will remember on Good Friday. 

If we think about Jesus’ suffering and dying on the cross, it seems almost unnecessary to say that as he hung, nailed to a cross, there was nothing to be optimistic about.  

An assessment of the past and present circumstances of the situation that Jesus faced would not have offered up any grounds for optimism. 

There was, however, hope. The hope that there is a God for whom all things are possible. The living hope of the possibility of something occurring from “outside” of our human understanding. The living hope that we will cele brate on Easter Sunday, the possibility that Jesus could be raised from the dead and defeat death itself. 

My prayer for us this Easter-time is that, as we remind ourselves of the events of that first Holy Week, we’ll discover and rediscover the living hope that we have in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

My prayer is that we’ll find hope even in places and circumstances where we see no grounds for optimism, and that in so doing, we’ll experience the resurrection hope of Easter in our own lives. 

Every Blessing, Dan