“Hope for the Ages”
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“Hope for the Ages”
January 16, 2011
by Rev. William “Buck” Day
Let’s turn to God’s word. What we are going to do today—in my Sunday school class we have been talking about trying to imagine ourselves in the scene of the story we are reading—so that is what I want to try with you today. I am going to read a story. It will be a very familiar story from Mark, Chapter 5. What I want you to do is I want you to imagine that you are in the midst of this story, you are one of the bystanders and you see all of this going on. O.K. So if it helps you to close your eyes to kind of imagine that scene, feel free to do that; but just put yourself in this familiar scene as Jesus interacts with a couple people. So I am going to read and just enjoy the scene. It comes from Mark, Chapter 5 and we will start in verse 21. (Mark 5:21-43)
When Jesus went back across to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. A leader of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, came and fell down before him, pleading with him to heal his little daughter. “She is about to die,” he said in desperation. “Please come and place your hands on her, heal her, so that she can live.” Jesus went with him and the crowd thronged behind. There was a woman in the crowd who had a hemorrhage for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors through the years and had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. She had heard about Jesus and so
she came up behind him through the crowd and touched the fringe of his robe, for she thought to herself “If I can just touch his clothing, I will be healed.” Immediately the bleeding stopped and she could feel that she had been healed.Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him. So he turned around in the crowd and asked “Who touched my clothes?”
His disciples said to him, “All the crowd is pressing around you and you asked ‘Who touched me?’”
But he kept looking around to see who had done it. Then a frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and told him what she had done. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, you have been healed.”While he was speaking to her, messengers arrived from Jairus’s house with a message. “Your daughter is dead. There is no use troubling the teacher now.”
So Jesus ignored his comments and said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid. Just trust me.”
Then Jesus stopped the crowd and wouldn’t let any of them go with him except Peter, James and John. And when they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw the commotion and the weeping and the waling and he went inside and spoke to the people. “Why all this weeping and commotion,” he asked. “The child isn’t dead, she is only asleep.” The crowd laughed at him but he told them all to go outside.
Then he took the girl’s father and mother and his three disciples into the room where the girl was lying. Holding her hand he said to her, “Get up little girl.” And the girl who was about twelve years old immediately stood up and walked around. Her parents were absolutely overwhelmed. Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone what had happened and he told them to give her something to eat.
Would you pray with me, please?
Lord God we thank you for your word. We thank you that you continually freshen it in our minds. So Lord by your Spirit may you freshen it in our words this day as we reflect on them. We ask that because of Jesus. Amen.
Well Kurt Cobain was the lead singer of a band called Nirvana until he committed suicide a few years ago. He was at the top of the music world and people at the time that he committed suicide asked, “Why would he ever do that? He had everything to live for. He was married. He had a nineteen month old baby. He had all the money he could probably want; had many, many adoring fans, a huge following.” Yet, if you look at Cobain’s life a little deeper, you can see the roots of this growing out of his life. Because, you see, he grew up in a broken home, divorced home; and, in the course of that, he had to move around quite a bit and many times, in fact, he was even homeless. So out of that grew a belief in him that life was basically rotten and meaningless. In fact, he began to realize that there was no meaning in life. There was no God to look towards. So in his music it simply reflected his attitude toward life. One of his songs was called “Nevermind” and there was this reoccurring line in it that said, “Oh well, whatever, nevermind.” Then he had another song that was never recorded because the record company thought it was too objectionable; but Cobain really liked it. It is called, “I Hate Myself and I Want to Die.” You see Kurt Cobain was fueled by a purposelessness in life. He had passion but he had passion for nothing. He had a void in his heart that he tried to fill as best he could but he knew that nothing he would try would fill it or ever could fulfill it. So he had no purpose; he had no meaning in life; and, simply, his suicide was the natural, logical extension in his mind of his world view.
To put it in a nutshell, he had no hope. He had no hope. And that usually happens for those who attempt suicide. They usually struggle with this idea of hope. In 2007, for every eleven attempted suicides, one resulted in death. There were over 35,000 who were successful in their suicide attempt that year. Now obviously we don’t know all the stories and all the pieces that went on to that, but I think it is safe to say that the majority of those folks felt like they were probably stuck in some way. There was nowhere to go; there was no one to turn to. They felt helpless. They felt hopeless.
I think that is where our characters in our story were, as well. Jairus and the woman found themselves in a hopeless situation, or at least it seemed like that. They looked and they wondered if any help could be found and they weren’t sure. Jairus’s daughter was on death’s door and he was at wits end not knowing what to do. The woman had spent everything that she had to try to heal her bleeding and yet nothing helped. And because of her bleeding, she was considered unclean and, as such, she was austercized. She was austercized from the religious community from the synagogue and she was austercized from her larger community. This woman was simply, in their minds, a piece of trash that needed to be thrown away.
Two people in seemingly hopeless situations and yet they received what they desired from Jesus—a life saved; a woman healed—because they chose to put their hope in Jesus. They chose to put their hope in Jesus and Jesus always responds to a faithful heart. Jesus will always respond to a faithful heart. For Jesus is our hope and a hope that will last into our ages is both a gift and it is a choice. Jesus is that gift. He is our hope. He is our hope for eternal life. Because of his death and because of his resurrection, we have life eternal waiting for us when we die. Jesus is also our hope in this life. He is our hope in this life that we can live life abundantly; or, if you will, we can live to the max as we yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit. That is the hope that we have in Jesus. And our hope in Jesus is also that someday Jesus is going to return. Jesus is going to return; and, when he returns, he is going to make all the wrongs that have ever happened in this world, he is going to make them right.
Jesus is a gift from God that God offers to the world. Jesus is our gift and he is our hope. As the old song says, “Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Jesus is our gift of hope from our God in heaven for all of us. And hope is also a choice. It is a choice— that we must choose hope. We must choose to put our hope in Jesus because Jesus is our hope. That is first and foremost, but beyond that we must also choose hope each and every day of our lives. How do you do that? How do you choose hope as you walk through your life? Let me give you a couple examples.
Choosing hope is a man with incurable, inoperable cancer who says to his pastor, “I just bought two tickets to Rome one year from now and, by the way, they are not refundable.” That is choosing hope. Choosing hope is a person who has been unemployed for two years and as they are getting ready to send out that resume, they are choosing to believe that that is the one that is going to open the door for them. Choosing hope is a religious leader whose daughter is dying and he chooses to find this traveling rabbi because he believes that the rabbi can save her. Choosing hope is a woman who has exhausted all her resources and knows that she is going to fight her way through the crowd because she is choosing to believe just touching that robe will heal her. Choosing hope is a pastor who leaves his church before he has another call because he believes that is best for him and he believes that this is best for this church. Choosing hope is a church that believes that God is going to do something miraculous with them as they go into the future.
Hope is a choice, a choice to believe that God is going to act on our behalf because God is the giver of hope in the person of Jesus Christ. So the question for you today: Where do you need hope? Where do you need hope today? Do you need hope in your personal life? Maybe you have somebody who is fighting an illness, fighting cancer, and you need to choose hope there. Maybe you have a prodigal son or daughter that you want to come home. Perhaps you need to choose hope at work that things will get better. Maybe you need to choose hope for your church.
Today we are saying goodbye to Pastor Chris and Cyndi and we can choose the hope for the very best for them; that God is going to use them in powerful ways as he moves on to his next ministry; that he is going to bear incredible fruit through them as they move on. Will you join me in choosing that today for Chris and for Cyndi? I hope so. I hope so. For when we choose hope in Christ, we are choosing the greatest gift that has ever been given to humanity. And when we choose Jesus, it helps us then to continue to choose hope as we walk through all of our days. And that is my prayer for us as we celebrate Chris’s ministry among us. Bless him with hope. And as we move forward pray that God is going to do something significant here. Amen. Amen.
Let’s pray.
Lord God, thank you that you are the author of hope. You are the initiator of hope. You are the one who gives us hope beyond hope, and you are the one who calls us to choose hope, to choose Jesus, for that is the source of our hope. He is the source of our hope. So mighty God, thank you. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for a hope that knows no end and will walk with us no matter what the circumstance. And, in that Lord, may we be able to choose hope as we walk to those circumstances knowing you are by our side. We thank you for that. We thank you for our Lord, Jesus. Amen.