Prisoners of Hope (May 2023)

Dear Friends

Recently, I was exploring a bit of the Bible that turned out to be both incredibly familiar and quite unknown to me. Not so unusual of course; the Bible constantly catches and surprises me as I suspect it may many of us.

I was involved in a discussion about some of the texts we use in worship. We were looking at very nearly the end of our Old Testaments, exploring the Hebrew scriptures. We were in the prophecies of Zechariah and turning to chapter 9. Part of that chapter is pretty familiar:

‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’

We are in the familiar territory of Palm Sunday once more. This is a text quoted in the gospels to help explain the procession Jesus creates to enter Jerusalem. Here is prophecy becoming reality. Here is the Son of God, the one whom John’s gospel worships as being before all things and in all things, humbly riding a beast of burden into God’s holy city.

But then we came to the bit that I had never noticed before. The snag with biblical quotations, such as those peppering our New Testaments, is that we often don’t see the wider text. Read on in Zechariah and you find a rather stunning line. The prophet is speaking about the restoration God will bring about for God’s suffering and broken people. In the midst of this, we hear: “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.” (9: 12).

It is the notion of being ‘prisoners of hope’ that has captivated me ever since. I love the way in scripture, as in so much magnificent literature, music and art, seemingly contradictory ideas get welded together and become something evocative and enticing. To be a prisoner is, almost inevitably, to have a sense of negatives.

Prisoners have their freedom taken away. Dungeons are not meant to be nice. Chains and bars, high walls, locked doors, barbed wire, guard towers and more all slip into my imagination as the notion of prison and prisoners settles.

But hope? What might it mean to be a prisoner of hope? How might hope hold us captive? In what ways is hope a prison for us and in what ways is it a good one? Certainly, in this little bit of Zechariah, the picture is offered as a positive one. Faith is being affirmed, not challenged and torn apart. This is not a hope that is in vain. This is not hope as something trodden down and overwhelmed.

Prisoners of hope. I read the Jewish text as a Christian. And I find myself reflecting upon it in the light of Easter. How might we be prisoners of hope in the light of the empty tomb? What might God be revealing here?

I wonder if there might be a double sense in which we could carry this statement in our hearts? Might we be prisoners of hope as we let the joy of Easter continue to touch us? Is the hope a deeply personal one; my own sense of the love of God reaching to me through grief, loss and even death? Is my hope able to hold me captive because it is an assurance that the Easter story offers me truths to build my life upon?

And yet, are we prisoners of hope in another way? The hope we speak of in the great statements of our faith, and sing in so many of our hymns, is of something far bigger than any personal salvation. We pray for and hope for God’s kingdom to come. We say that the work of salvation is ongoing rather than complete, under way rather than safely concluded. God continues to work God’s purposes out. Christ continues to pray for us. The Spirit continues to guide and teach and weave creation’s song closer and closer to the tune of the Creator. One day, in a future it is not for us to control or predict, Christ will return, and all will be completed. We live between times; salvation has begun but the work is not yet done. So, might I be a prisoner to this hope; knowing that my little life is part of the far greater story of God’s drawing creation back into harmony?

‘Prisoners of hope.’ Play with it in your own time. Turn it over. Does it speak something to you? I hope it might.

Yours in Christ,

Neil