Hungry for Hope - Sermon for the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost (June 30, 2024)

Scripture Readings: Lamentations 3:22–33 | Psalm 30 | 2 Corinthians 8:7–15 | ​Mark 5:21–43 

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23).
 
Our world is hungry for hope.
 
For better or worse, long gone are the days of progressive optimism… the notion that we humans can figure out the solutions to just about any crisis we come across… given enough time, money, technology, and motivation.
 
True, these things can all be put to good use… alleviating all sorts of real problems… but then new ones keep popping up. And all the old ones seem to find new ways to unravel all our nicely laid plans.
  
We could talk about the generations of people being raised in poverty just down the road in Saint John… or those struggling quietly behind closed doors here in the valley. Or the growing numbers of our neighbours living without a home, or the opioid epidemic all across our country. Or the millions of people who are being crushed by famine, and war… made worse by our changing climate, and not to mention all those who are being invigorated and incited to act, not out of compassion, but out of fear and prejudice… seeing violence and oppression as the only path forward. So many today are hungry for some kind of hope to cling onto… but have no clue where to turn to find it.
 
Our Scripture readings today don’t paint a rosy picture of the world we live in… they don’t offer us simple or easy answers for how to bring and end to all of the suffering and pain… inside, and all around us. But they do point us to the One who we can turn to even in our darkest moments… so that we can receive from Him the hope we need, and start to share this hope with those around us.
 
Our first reading today is taken from the book of Lamentations; a collection of powerful and poetic prayers expressing the grief and anguish felt by God’s covenant people after the fall of Jerusalem. After centuries of living in the land God gave to them, while for the most part ignoring their commitments to walk in the ways of the Living God, the Babylonian Empire showed up and turned the world of those who lived in Judea upside down.

The holy Temple of the Living God built by Solomon… the centre of their people’s spirituality and society, lay ransacked and in ruins. God’s chosen people were defeated, crushed, and deported to foreign lands. The survivors felt abandoned… at a complete loss, and with no idea how things could turn around. A grim situation that has been repeated so many times around the world, including today.
 
And in that time of desolation, some of God’s people found the words to share their pain and despair… honestly expressing to God and to one another, the sense of hopelessness that had overtaken them.
 
The book begins with a metaphor of Jerusalem and its people as a woman whose future has been snuffed out. Lamentations 1:1-4,

How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become a vassal.
 
She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has no one to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
they have become her enemies.
 
Judah has gone into exile with suffering
and hard servitude;
she lives now among the nations,
and finds no resting place;
her pursuers have all overtaken her
in the midst of her distress.
 
The roads to Zion mourn,
for no one comes to the festivals;
all her gates are desolate,
her priests groan;
her young girls grieve,
and her lot is bitter.

And on and on it goes.
 
And yet, even in this deep desolation, the poet turns to Yahweh, the Living God. Not to offer easy answers, but to reach out towards the Lord in faith… in the midst of their grief, seeing Him as their only hope. Lamentations 3:19-24,
 
“The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
is wormwood [bitterness] and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
 
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
 
Against all expectations, at the centre of their Lamentations the poet places their hope in God: in Yahweh’s steadfast love… not in the absence, but in the midst of their afflictions.

When all other hopes appears utterly lost, the poet looks to the LORD. And this is a theme that runs all throughout the Bible: time and again this sacred story calls us to place our hope in the Living God, whose steadfast love endures forever.
 
In our Gospel reading today St. Mark tells the story of two other hopeless situations: a daughter who is dying, and a woman whose sickness will not end.
 
Arriving on the shore after His dramatic calming of the storm, Jesus is met by a desperate parent who begs Him to come and rescue their child. Then on the way, we’re told of the desperate act of a woman suffering from a chronic, stigmatized, and debilitating disease.
 
Just like Jerusalem in the opening lines of Lamentations, these two women were facing desolation, and they had no one else to turn to.
 
And yet they weren’t without hope… and in their troubles they both turn to Jesus. One through the public, earnest pleas of their father… who repeatedly begs Jesus to heal her. The other turns to Jesus with a secret hope she dares not share aloud, even with Jesus Himself! But even so, she reaches out to Him in hope… trusting that even the slightest touch of Him will be enough to bring her relief.
 
At this point, St. Mark amps up the tension in the story… which is an important question for us to consider in our own contexts too. And that question is: how close will Christ Jesus actually get to those who are suffering and hopeless? How near is He willing to draw to those who are themselves considered untouchable?
 
As we may know, one of the most isolating parts of the affliction of the woman who bled those twelve long years, is that for that whole time, she would have been considered unclean by her community. Of course, it might make good medical sense, in the past and today, to be concerned about unknown diseases, and afflictions in order to guard against any dangerous contagions. Our own experience in the early days of COVID-19, when much was unknown about how it is passed along can remind us of how tricky these things can be.
 
But it was not for primarily medical reasons that the woman with the hemorrhage was seen as unclean. It was part of the Israelite understanding about the sanctity of life itself… and the strict rules governing how humans were to relate to the Living God.
 
God was, after all, holy, sacred… uniquely set apart, and needed to be treated as such… in part by maintaining clear boundaries between His holy presence and anything associated with the forces of death.
 
Now to be ritually unclean was not an indictment of someone’s moral character… it was a common, but usually temporary experience that everyone would go through from time to time for a whole host of reasons. If someone was in an unclean state, they simply needed to isolate themselves for a time, and then perform some specific purification rites before rejoining the life of the community.
 
But what if the isolation kept on going? Imagine if you had to stay completely socially distant for twelve years… while everyone else could just go back to their old lives.

On top of the physical toll this person had to endure, they were also facing their afflictions alone… cut off from the life of their people, and apparently kept at a distance from the Living God Himself.
 
This part of St. Mark’s Gospel invites us to contemplate not only if there is hope in hopeless situations… but if there is hope for the people who seem to be hopeless themselves.
 
And one of the truly amazing things that stands out about how Jesus relates to people, even unclean people, and hopeless people, is how He draws near to them. He does not wait for them to be completely ready and made right before connecting with them, but rather He reaches out to them in the midst of the painful messes they find themselves in. Jesus did not let the normal boundaries define who was able to experience the presence and power of the Living God… revealing something I think is incredibly important:
 
In Christ Jesus we see that God is not removed from those who are afflicted… even from those considered outsiders for all sorts of reasons. No, in Jesus, God has truly drawn near to us all… placing Himself within our reach… present and eager for us to turn to Him in faith… to place our hope in Him, and so to experience His life-giving, and cleansing power.
 
When the hemorrhaging woman touched Christ’s cloak expressing her secret hope, Jesus immediately acknowledges her bold faith in Him. And even though everyone else thought that her ritual uncleanness would spread through that desperate touch, it turns out that drawing near to Jesus actually serves to restore and cleanse her instead.
 
And this same willingness to reach out to those who seem hopelessly cut off from is at play when Jesus arrives at the house of the synagogue leader, and takes the hand of his dead daughter. Again, this was an act that itself would have made anyone else ritually unclean. But again, Jesus reaches out to this dead child, and His life-giving power completely restores her.
 
In Jesus, St. Mark wants us to see that God is not threatened or limited by our afflictions, as desperate as they may be. Nor is He repelled by our uncleanness… standing far off from us to avoid contamination. No, in Jesus, the Living God has drawn near, and reached out to bring His healing, cleansing, and life-giving touch to our world. In Him, we know God is very present to our sufferings, and is at work to rescue us up close and personal.
 
This means that no one is beyond the reach of God’s mercy. All are invited to draw near to Him in faith, and to receive from Him the forgiveness, freedom, and hope that He offers to us all, through Jesus Christ… even those we might be tempted to see as hopeless.
 
Our world is indeed hungry for hope, and Jesus Christ is eager and able to fill us up with a hope that endures… not based on what we are capable of on our own, or what we see happening all around us… but based on the Good News of the steadfast love of the Living God made know to us in Jesus Christ the Risen Lord.
 
What does this mean for us His people today, as we seek to not only draw near to Jesus in faith, but also to faithfully follow His ways and share this Good News with our world?

Well, many things. But for starters, it means that we too are meant to reach out even to those who seem hopeless, and to extend God’s steadfast love to them… embodying His mercy and care as we serve as Christ’s hands and feet, and hope-full presence in our world in all sorts of ways.
 
One tangible example of Christians doing this comes from our second reading in 2 Corinthians, as St. Paul encourages his listeners to put God’s merciful presence and power into practice by providing for the needs of others… for strangers living in far off Jerusalem.
 
Though it’s not necessarily clear just from our reading today, one of St. Paul’s projects was to gather a collection on behalf of the Christians in Jerusalem, to provide support and relief as they were suffering from the effects of a severe famine.
 
And so, in our reading, St. Paul was offering the Corinthians encouragement to embody God’s generosity towards their brothers and sisters in their need. Even though Jerusalem was hundreds of miles away… and they may not have met each other personally, St. Paul knew they were all still a part of God’s family, and they were being invited to share God’s love with them in this hands-on way… to be shaped by God’s own merciful heart, and to bring help to those without hope. And St. Paul could see this as an opportunity to help the Corinthians to become a bit more like Jesus… learning to truly care for one another in their afflictions… practicing love for their fellow Christians, and in the process, growing in love towards all their neighbours. 
 
And to this end, St. Paul reminds them of the way that Jesus shared God’s great love with them. 2 Corinthians 8:9, “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”
 
He is of course speaking of the cross, where Jesus gave up everything… His divine glory, earthly security, community, bodily autonomy, all sense of dignity… all in order to reach out to our world of hopeless sinners… stretching out His hands in suffering to bring us the cleansing forgiveness and life-giving power of God’s steadfast and holy love.

And in His resurrection, Jesus gives us good reason to hold onto hope: in Him we know that not even our worst desolations… our suffering, isolation, and even our death can stand in the way of God’s rescuing love.
 
In our day, there are plenty of people who are facing what seems like truly hopeless situations. People facing famine in places like Gaza, and Sudan… and there are also those struggling to make ends meet right here in New Brunswick. There are people that we might be tempted to consider outside of our area of concern… untouchable… hopeless. How might God call us to share His love and His hope with them? To be His merciful hands and feet, as we seek to be faithful to God’s ways today?
 
And how can we support our fellow believers? Our neighbouring Christians in their struggles? Like the Corinthians, how can our hearts be opened to the whole family of God, not just our own community? And as we learn to love one another beyond our walls, also learning how to love all of our neighbours better as well?
 
And finally, when we feel overwhelmed and hopeless ourselves… facing afflictions we can’t overcome… and when we can’t seem to see a clear way forward… let us draw near in faith to Jesus Christ, our merciful Saviour, and receive from Him the forgiveness, freedom, and hope that He offers us all… the hope found in the steadfast, and saving love of God alone.
 
I’d like to close now with the prayer of General Intercession as found in the BAS.
 
Remember, Lord, your people bowed before you, and those who are absent through age, sickness, or any other cause. Care for the infants, guide the young, support the aged, inspire the faint-hearted, and bring the wandering to your fold. Journey with the travellers, encourage the oppressed, defend the widows, deliver the captives, heal the sick. Strengthen all who are in tribulation, necessity, or distress. Remember for good those who love us, and those who hate us, and those who have asked us, unworthy as we are, to pray for them. Remember especially, Lord, those whom we have forgotten. For you are the helper of the helpless, the saviour of the lost, the refuge of the wanderer, the healer of the sick. You know the need of all and have heard each prayer: save us in your merciful lovingkindness and eternal love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.