BBC Radio 4 2016-07-16

Good Morning.

Like many of you, I’m sure, a cloud of overwhelming hopelessness enveloped me yesterday as the shocking consequences of what President Hollande referred to as “violence that is absolute” gradually unfolded in Nice.

The President rightly spoke about “solidarity with the victims”, young and old, of all faiths and backgrounds. Of course, many people will hold them especially in their thoughts and prayers this morning - but, what are we to do? what are we to think? how are we to hope?

That’s a key question the moral philosopher Annette Baier posed in her book Reflections on How We Live - what is the proper place of hope in human life? Baier is ruthlessly honest in asserting that whilst hope is a natural, human trait, a lack of hope leads to fear.

Even in dark moments, my faith helps me to hold on to a sense of hope, even when wrestling with fear. But the questions both of what’s next in our own lives and how to respond to terrible events such as what unfolded in Nice yesterday, means that fear is never far from the surface.

It is true to say that hope certainly underpins much New Testament theology. Jesus’ mantra is Do not be afraid; Do not fear; Pray for deliverance from evil. Why worry about tomorrow? Today’s troubles are plenty.

It is on this basis that the thrust of the Christian Gospel is that faith brings hope which the world has not yet seen [until the resurrection] and - though it’s not going to be easy to hang on in there to such hope - when dealing with the consequences of human sin and evil - the challenge, certainly is to try, nevertheless.

To give him credit, St Paul doesn’t shrink from recognising that keeping the flame of hope flickering was not easy in a world, which for him, involved shocking acts of human savagery in and around the Roman Empire.

But, and this is important on a morning like this one, Paul did not believe that hope, on its own, was sufficient. In one of the most popular passages he ever wrote, in a letter to the Corinthians, he explains how hope is linked intrinsically to both faith and love. Faith, hope and love abide, he writes; but the greatest of these is love.

It’s hard, It’s difficult. How can it be that, amongst the dead, so many children could be killed on what was supposed to be a great happy family day? Yet, somehow we must not fear? What the flames of hope represent in the many candles lit for those who died in Nice - must never be extinguished. Our freedom to choose to hope/ and to love/ can never die.