Hope and Trust

What do you hear in today’s Scripture readings? Do any of today’s readings speak to your own experience? Perhaps you empathize with David’s grief over the death of his beloved friend Jonathan, even as you might wonder how David can also grieve the death of his old enemy Saul. Perhaps you too have known the depths of sorrow – over the death of a loved one, over the deaths of nine innocent people sharing study of the Bible or of innocent tourists on a beach, over the betrayal of someone close to you, over the loss of a job, over continued war and poverty. Perhaps you too cry out with the psalmist, “Out of the depths have a I called to you, O Lord; Lord hear my voice!” Perhaps, like Paul, you have begged others to respond to a need or cause about which you feel passionate. Or perhaps, like the people in today’s Gospel stories, you have begged for healing, either for another person, or for yourself. Perhaps you’ve been in all these places, and you know, from your own deep experience, how Scripture continues to speak to our condition, continues to offer us words of hope and lead us to a deeper trust in God’s saving power.

Our reading from 2 Samuel, catches up with David after he has defeated the Philistines. Despite the fact that the way is now open for David to become king over Israel, and despite his bitter conflict with Saul, David pours out his grief over both Saul’s and Jonathan’s death. More important perhaps for us, the account of David’s grief allows us to see David expressing deep emotion. No “stiff upper lip” or “men don’t cry” here. Perhaps we might, like David, understand our emotions as gifts from God. Perhaps we might even trust that God’s shares our emotions and seeks to console and comfort us in our grief.

Certainly, the psalmist trusts that God shares our griefs and sorrows. The psalmist also reminds us that, eager as we are for God’s comfort, we must wait patiently. And we must never let go of our hope that, in God’s good time, God will restore all things.

St. Paul also counsels the Corinthian Christians to wait patiently – and to also act in faith. As he wrote to the Christians in Corinth, the faithful in Jerusalem were suffering from famine. Now Paul was certain that Jesus would quickly return, probably within Paul’s own lifetime. Yet Paul does not hesitate to look after the living. He does not say, “Ignore the poor, and hungry, because all of us will soon be taken up.” Instead, he asks for help from those he himself had brought to faith in Christ. He knows that life is a gift of God, that it is good, and that the bodies of children and adults must be fed. He knows what matters – and he trusts that the Corinthians will respond to his request – because he compares everything to God’s great gift: “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

Our reading from the Gospel according to Mark offers another of Mark’s gospel “sandwiches:” one story nested within another, each speaking to us in different ways. Here, we catch up with Jesus, just as he has arrived from the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Despite Jesus’ best efforts, his fame as a miraculous healer has spread. As the crowds of the hopeful – and the curious – press in on him, a wealthy and important man, a leader in the synagogue, falls on his knees in front of Jesus, and begs Jesus to save his daughter. Jesus attends to the father in need and turns to accompany him.

Just then, the bleeding woman, outcast from all polite society because of her illness, approaches Jesus. She is convinced that she will be healed by just touching Jesus’ outer garment, and that, because of the crowds, no one will notice her. But Jesus notices her, or rather notices that something has happened. Perhaps the energy of the woman’s immense faith was more powerful than all the shoving and pushing of the crowd. Perhaps that energy was enough to call forth God’s healing power.

As we follow Jairus home, we hear that by the time he and Jesus finally arrive, the child has already been declared dead, and the professional mourners have begun to gather. Why is Jairus still bringing Jesus into the house? What can the rabbi do now? Even so, Jesus turns to the sad father and says the words that we all need to hear over and over again, “Do not fear. Only believe.” As Jairus leads Jesus into the child’s room, Jesus shocks him by saying, “The child is not dead but sleeping.” And then another miracle of healing occurs. Perhaps hinting at the end of Mark’s story, Jesus gently says, “Young woman, get up.” The onlookers collectively let out their breaths, and life returns.

Two instances of healing, for two different kinds of people, that came about in two different ways. In the frame story, Jesus offered healing to the daughter of a wealthy, powerful family. In the nested story, an outcast woman, a woman shunned because of her illness, claimed Jesus’ healing power for herself. What is more important, the healing of Jairus’s daughter was a public event: the crowds knew where he was going, and Jairus himself witnessed it. By contrast, the healing of the bleeding woman was a private event. Even Jesus wasn’t sure what had happened, until the woman, trembling and afraid, fell down before him and told him everything.

Does any of this resonate with our own experience? One thing these stories should tell us is that God offers healing to everyone. You do not need to be rich and powerful, you do not need to have a Cadillac health insurance plan, to claim God’s healing power. Indeed, as Mark and Luke suggest over and over, God has a preference for the poor, the outcast, and the marginalized, and God will attend to their needs, just as God attends to our needs.

Moreover, perhaps we too have experienced healing – or offered it – in these two different ways. An aside here: We hear the gospel stories of miraculous healings so that we can learn something about what God is like, not so that we can think that Jesus came to be a 24/7 medical savior. It is not impossible, though it is extremely rare, for miraculous healings, to actually occur. And if they do not, it is never because our faith was insufficient.

However, we all do experience open, public healing: through our medical facilities, through support groups, and even through our ministries as a church. What’s even more important, we can experience – and offer – healing more indirectly and privately, in the “random acts of kindness” through which God operates in the world. Such healing can happen anywhere. A twelve-step meeting was just ending when a young woman suddenly blurted out her name, shouted that she was an alcoholic, and rushed out of the room. An older woman followed her and saw her sitting in a dark corner weeping uncontrollably. The older woman came over to the younger woman and embraced her. She said gently, “My dear, just let us love you until you can come to love yourself.”

We may not even be aware when such healing occurs. Theologians who have studied the science of cosmology speak of “quantum entanglement,” the idea that ultimately all life, indeed all creation, has a common origin in God, and that we are all ultimately connected. Or perhaps you’ve heard of the “butterfly effect.” This is a term used in chaos theory to describe how small changes to a seemingly unrelated thing or condition can affect large, complex systems. The term comes from the suggestion that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in South America could affect the weather in Texas, meaning that the tiniest influence on one part of a system can have a huge effect on another part. If you think about it, perhaps this is the way prayer works. Our lives are connected. Like Jesus, we may receive healing from someone or some circumstance unknown to us, or we may be the agent of healing for someone, simply by virtue of how we live out our lives. Needless to say, as followers of the one who offered himself in love to all comers, we are called to be grateful to God for any healing in our lives that does occur, and we are called to treat lovingly all who approach us for help and healing.

My brothers and sisters, here is the good news. Much of our lives are out of our control. But as followers of Jesus we believe that we are connected to God and to one another, and that God will respond to our needs, directly or indirectly, in God’s good time. We may not be able to predict when or how God will act, but we can continue to live out our lives with hope and trust in God’s deep care.