Langdon Christmas Service 1999

Hopes and Dreams-
Langdon Christmas Service 1999

www.hospitalchaplain.com- Service Hosted on this site
author- Dr. Simon Harrison
date- Christmas 1999 first used - Langdon Hospital (UK)

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Hopes and Dreams
Langdon is a Regional Forensic Hospital for patients with psychiatric and/or learning disabilities. I have extracted the main reading and homily from what was a fairly relaxed and loosely structured service.

Main Reading- The first coming…

Many people were poor in Israel under King Herod. They felt trapped by the social system; their culture was under attack by foreigners. They wanted a saviour, a local hero. They wanted a revolution.

They got the poor son of a working family, a wandering preacher who reminded people that love means seeking to be just rather than justice for oneself. He brought no army, no change in government. But there was a revolution.

There were many religious leaders in King Herod’s time. They looked for someone to restore the country to faith, to make people behave in a properly religious way, to attend the temple and respect their teaching. They wanted a Prophet.

They got someone who did not teach people to behave in a religious way but to learn what faith really means. Someone who spoke out against hypocrisy, and turned tables over in the temple. They got no-one to keep people in their place. But they got a Prophet.

There were many good people in Kind Herod’s time. They saw the state of the nation and wanted it to get better. They wanted someone to reassure them of their salvation, and to tell others how they must change.

They got someone who looked at the world up-side down- who chose to be friends with the prostitute and those society hated. Who told people that doing good was never enough, that we have to face up to the reality of our nature. They did not get someone to tell them how good they were. But they did get someone who told people to change.

So what do we want in our lives? Whatever it is, the chances are,
God is offering something different.

Homily- Hopes and Dreams

I don’t intend to say a great deal, except to share with you some thoughts which have been important to me over the last few months.
Christmas is quite a strange time, full of contradictions. For many, it is a time of happiness and excitement- for others, a time carrying many sad memories. But Christmas has always been like that, a time of confusion as well as a time of expectation, of hopes and dreams. We now look back on the virgin birth and see how God intervened in a miraculous way. Yet in the bible we read that Joseph was preparing to divorce Mary quietly. People they met would know that they weren’t married. So there was a lot of upset and confusion. The bible stories are also full of peoples dreams, of angels talking to Elizabeth and Mary. I have been reminded a lot about hopes and about dreams, both by other people and in my own life. What do we hope for? What do we dream of doing in our lives?

A chaplain working in another part of the country told me recently of how sad she was feeling, having joined one particular ward round and finding little sense of hope among the staff or patients. She was not looking for foolish dreaming or false expectations, but simple hope that life can find a way, no matter what the present tells us. All of our futures will never match up to the perfection we are sold through television, and may never begin to reach the dreams we hold dear, but this does not mean we should give up on dreaming. When dreams die, we can grieve their loss, but there is always room in life for dreams, whether these be grand or small, realistic or just fantasies.

One of my dreams is to be a bishop. Not that I want to do any of the things that I would have to do to become one. I just hold in my mind sometimes the dreams of I would do in that role.
We all need to treat our own dreams and the hopes of those around us with respect, because it is easier to crush someone’s hope than to be with them as they look towards a difficult future.
Some people go so far as to say that to loose dreams can be as bad as loosing people, the dreams of what we want to do in life, the dreams of time spent together. I feel quite sad when I hear of situations where experiences have shattered peoples imagination- don’t want to look at reality any more, for example the child soldiers in Mozambique. But I believe that we can find a way to grieve for the dreams we’ve lost, and that we can find healing so that positive dreams can find a place.
As the Christmas reading we heard earlier said, the dreams people had of what the messiah was going to do were not met, but he did find a way to plant in peoples hearts the dream of loving God and being loved or blessed by him, a dream open to us all.
I will finish just be reading some words from our first carol, ‘o little town of Bethlehem’- in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee to-night.’
May we all find a way to explore and re-build our hopes and dreams over this Christmas and New Year, and may God find some way to meet them, even if it is in a way we never expected.

God Bless.

Simon Harrison
12/99

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