Hope in the Darkness

A sermon to mark the 750th anniversary of Merton College Oxford, preached in the college chapel on Sunday 26 October 2014, and broadcast live on BBC Radio 4. Professor Alister McGrath Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion Oxford University (Senior Scholar, Merton College, 1976 – 1978) In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. It’s always good to mark special occasions, and think more deeply about the importance of these events. Merton College was founded 750 years ago. That’s certainly something to celebrate! But it also invites us to reflect on deeper issues. In its long and distinguished history, this college has been through times of light and darkness. This year also marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, an event which called into question the all-too-easy assumption that human beings were essentially rational and good. Those four years of brutal conflict were a dark time for this college, as they were for our nation. How, many asked, can we keep going in such dark times? What hope is there, that we can hold on to? That need for hope remains important to all of us. We see it in our reading from the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 40:1–8). The people of Jerusalem were in exile in Babylon, far from their homeland. Would they ever return home? Those were dark times. And in the midst of that darkness, Isaiah spoke words of comfort and hope. God had not forgotten his people. They would return home! That hope sustained them as they waited for their liberation. Yes, they were still in exile. But they had hope for the future. We need hope – not a naive and shallow optimism, but a robust and secure confidence that there is something good – there is someone good – who will triumph over despair and hopelessness. Many felt the need for that during the First World War – including a Second Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers, who took part in the Battle of the Somme, and went on to become a fellow of this college in 1945. His name was J. R. R. Tolkien. His epic work The Lord of the Rings was written and published during his time as Merton Professor of English, here at this college. The Lord of the Rings is now widely regarded as one of the great works of English literature. One of its most distinctive themes is the reality of evil. Tolkien names evil, thus giving us permission to challenge the bland and inadequate moral outlook of our age, which insists we respect everything. Like his close friend C. S. Lewis, Tolkien was convinced that we had lost the moral vocabulary that enabled us to speak of evil, and thus to fight it. But that is not the only theme we find so powerfully explored in Tolkien’s epic work. It speaks of the role of the weak and powerless in changing the world for the better. That’s why Hobbits – such as Frodo Baggins, and his sidekick Sam – are so important. They are the little people, and in the end they are the ones who make the difference. But Tolkien also 1 affirmed the reality of hope in the midst of despair and seeming helplessness. Listen to this passage, towards the end of the Lord of the Rings, when the victory of the forces of darkness seems assured:1 “There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” That’s the kind of hope that kept the people of Jerusalem going during their time of exile. Their God was beyond the reach of human tyranny and oppression, and one day things would change. That’s the hope that keeps many of us going as well – the thought that there is something beyond this world of suffering and pain, which we will one day enter and embrace. It’s a theme we find so powerfully expressed in the New Testament’s vision of the New Jerusalem, a world in which God has made everything anew, and there is no more sorrow, pain, or death. But there is another theme in The Lord of the Rings that speaks powerfully to us. As the work nears its end, the victory of evil seems inevitable. A dark mood settles over the narrative. And then everything changes. An unexpected event enables the ring to be destroyed, breaking the power of evil. Tolkien called this a eucatastrophe – a dramatic, unexpected event, which disrupts a narrative of despair, and redirects it towards the good. For Tolkien, the best and greatest example of this radical upheaval of a story of hopelessness is the resurrection of Christ – a dramatic event that brought first astonishment, and then hope – a real hope, grounded in something and someone trustworthy. That is the hope that is to be seized and acted upon, which keeps us going and keeps us growing even in the darkest of times. The Christian hope of heaven raises our horizons and elevates our expectations – inviting us to behave on earth in the light of this greater reality. The true believer is not someone who disengages with this world in order to focus on heaven, but someone who tries to make this world more like heaven. Our readings today affirm the role of hope in a faithful God in sustaining us and inspiring us. “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever”. That hope in God, like Sam’s vision of “light and high beauty”, can never be taken away from us. It is right to celebrate that Merton College is 750 years old, its vision of the transforming and enriching role of education as important today as it ever was. But the world around us has changed. Many of us feel that the optimism of an earlier generation has now receded. We are facing hard questions, difficult times, and uncertainties about the future. But we must not despair. “The word of our God will stand forever” – and we will stand with it. In the name of that God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. 1 J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966, 199. 2