We spoke to Bishop John about hope after the June election, Grenfell and the Cross. If video isn’t for you and you’d prefer to read what he said, the transcript is below.
Hope is a word that’s really important to us at the moment. I say this because, when I look around the world, I find all sorts of people struggling to find hope. I look at the people desperately getting onto refugee boats in the Mediterranean and they’re people who are looking for some possibility for their own future and their family’s future.
And when I reflect on the result of the recent election campaign, in many ways the surprising upsurge of support for the Labour manifesto seems to have been based very much on hope. I say that not because I particularly support the policies of Labour or Conservative on this, but trying to reflect on what caused that unusual result – and it was something to do with hope.
And hope is a profoundly Christian word, as well. Hope is built into the Christian gospel and it comes from our sense that, for God, we matter, people matter and our future matters.
This isn’t a glib or comfortable thing. Hope as we see it expressed in the Christian gospel focuses on the cross. We believe that in the cross, God is making a statement – that humanity’s future is something He’s prepared to stake his life on.
And if Jesus was prepared to give his whole life to offer hope to the world, then the question for us, which is both a personal question as well as a political one, is what am I prepared to give to bring hope to others?
Share this video and tweet us to share what your local church is doing to bring hope.