Human-Shaped Hope

Mark:13:24-37

“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light. The stars will be falling from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in the clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send the angels to gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson. When you see its branches become tender and begin to put forth leaves, you know that summer is near. In the same way, when you see these things begin to take place you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all of these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But about that day and hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware; keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man, going on a journey, who puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house will return, in the evening, at midnight, at cock-crow, or at dawn, or else he might find you sleeping when he comes, suddenly. Therefore, what I say to you, I say to all, ‘Keep awake.’”

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I don’t think Jesus is coming back any time soon. I’m not sure if it’s more or less faithful to say that, but it’s how I feel and how I live much more often than not.

I had a seminary professor who claimed to love a cloudy day because he liked to look up and watch for Jesus to show up from behind the next cloud, at any given moment, like this Gospel reading suggests. He was – and I imagine, still is – one of the smartest Bible scholars I’ve known. He was – and I imagine, still is a level-headed, rational, wise, and faithful believer, too. And I imagine he’s still waiting on a cloudy day and watching for Jesus. More power to him, but I’m not that guy. And more on that in moment…

I don’t know how much is too much news to consume about the hostages in Israel and Gaza, but I suspect I’ve seen more than my fair share. I can’t fathom the fear of being held captive, in the dark, in those underground tunnels. I can’t grasp the anxiety of the loved ones who wait and worry and wring their hands for the next list to be announced and for their loved ones to come home.

And, even more, I can’t stop thinking about the kids. The infant boy who was still nursing when he was taken. The four-year-old girl who finally made it home – but only to her aunts, uncles and siblings, because her parents were both killed; and not really “home” because the house she lived in was destroyed and no longer exists.

But the one who gets me most is the 9-year-old little girl, named Emily, whose father was told had died very early on in the attacks, news for which he claimed to be grateful and relieved – because he believed her fate and suffering would have been worse as a hostage all of this time. It turns out she wasn’t killed, after all, and she made it out alive. But when she was returned to her dad, she would or could only whisper. For fear … or because of the demands of her captors over the course of her captivity … or probably both … this little girl couldn’t or wouldn’t speak in her normal voice. Her dad had to put his lips to her ears to hear anything she wanted to say. And the sadness and fear in his own voice as he described that was heartbreaking and terrifying in its own way.

So, I wondered what this Gospel reading might sound like to one of those hostages and to their family members.

“In those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light. The stars will be falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”

I wondered that because, this has always sounded like bad news to me … the sun extinguished … the moon dead … the stars falling like shrapnel … the heavens trembling.

But what struck me this time around in a new way, is the hope I wonder if Jesus intended by promising all of it, “In those days, after that suffering…” I wonder if those hostages – or anyone in a similarly desperate, terrifying, sufferable set of circumstances – would see a kind of hope in this, instead of the fear with which these apocalyptic passages are so often received. “In those days, after that suffering…”

See, I realize … and I need to remind myself … that I’ve lived a pretty selfish, self-centered, seemingly self-sufficient life for the most part. Most of the suffering I’ve experienced has been by proxy … alongside others … prayerfully and with, but not IN the depths of the suffering and despair I know others have known, and know as we sit here today.

Of course the hostages in Gaza and the prisoners in Israel – and the war and desolation, the destruction and despair connected with all of that – is one thing.

And there are so many other peoples and places consumed by suffering I feel like I can only watch from a distance, imagine, and pray about.

And I think about the devastating losses in our own community in just the last couple of weeks, too. The tragic, senseless, unnecessary, accidental death of young, beautiful lives full of so much potential and promise – like Lindsay Locker and Evan Neumeister – and what their families and friends suffer, still.

And I think about others we know and have loved who’ve suffered long illnesses – surgeries, medical treatments, mental decline, physical difficulty, chronic pain and all the rest. And the husbands and wives and families who have loved and suffered – and continue to love and suffer – with them through it all.

And, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a contest. Our suffering is relative and we don’t need to minimize our own hardship and struggle because it’s not as bad as, or because it doesn’t measure up to, what others endure. The hope Jesus offers here is for all of us because the truth is we will all suffer in some way, at some point, and that Truth just becomes clearer the more time you spend on the planet and the more you pay attention.

Whatever the case, Jesus’ words today are meant to be a promise, not a threat, and I hope you hear them that way for a change, if you never have before – especially if you’re in the throes of some kind of suffering or grief or struggle at the moment.

Because listen carefully and remember... Jesus says, “in those days… after that suffering…” I think it means something better is on the way. It means that there’s an “after” to whatever suffering plagues you and surrounds us all.

And I think that’s also why Jesus says, “Beware … Keep alert … Stay awake … Go about your business … Live your life…” because you never know when God’s hope will show up in your midst – and you don’t want to miss it. Yeah, it may be this apocalyptic, second-coming sort of stuff, where the clouds part, the thunder rolls, and Jesus shows up like a Marvel super-hero with his band of angels to save the day.

But, in the meantime, it might also be as close and as simple and as quiet and as slow-moving as a fig tree, too, becoming tender, putting forth leaves, bearing fruit, and signaling that something better is on the way.

Beware… Keep alert… Stay awake… it may be as close and as simple and as quiet as a meal from a church member. Or a text from a friend. Or a prayer from your Pastor. A drink with a buddy, that look in your kid’s eyes, a hand from your partner.

And that’s why I’m not staring up at the sky, looking behind the next cloud, for a super-hero to save the day. I’m trying to find this hope, this presence, the nearness of God, in the eyes and hands and hearts of the people around me. And I’m trying to find it in the mirror more often, too … because these Advent days remind us that God comes in the shape of a person, after all… full of grace and truth ... never promising there will be no pain, no suffering, no struggle, no hardship in our lives … but showing up precisely because there has been, is, and will be all of those things too much of the time.

But there is beauty, too. And there is mercy, in this mess. And there is love. And hope. And plenty of reason to look for and to be those things, for ourselves, for each other, and for the sake of the world.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Midweek Lenten Lament for Illness

Mark 5:25 – 34

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

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Most of us know what I mean when I refer to “the world’s oldest profession.” I’m not sure what the sociology is behind that understanding, but I’ve often suspected that “healer” or “medicine man” or “sage” or “doctor” were a close second on the list of ancient occupations.

The desire for healing from sickness; and for comfort from pain; and for survival from dying is such a natural, instinctive, basic desire for living creatures that humanity, no doubt, has turned to ‘healers’ from the beginning of time for answers and rescue. And, as you know, we still regularly turn to medicine – whether it be a doctor, a nurse, a counselor, a pharmacist, or a drug – for healing, for comfort and even for our very survival.

(Raise your hand if you do or have worked in a hospital, in a doctor’s office, a pharmacy, lab, at Eli Lilly, or anywhere connected to the health care industry in some way? How many here have been to see a doctor of some kind, for any reason, recently?)

So, without a whole lot of work, we can see – or at least imagine – where the woman in this Gospel is coming from. If you need some help with that, consider the list of our prayer concerns we included in tonight’s bulletin. You won’t find “hemorrhaging for 12 years” anywhere on it, but you will find pretty much everything else, it seems – cancer, broken bones, lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, transplants, death, and more …

Like the woman in tonight’s Gospel, we’ve either been there ourselves or we’ve loved someone who is or has been … sick for years, I mean; sick and tired of wrong answers; sick and fed up with expensive treatments that may or may not work; sick and out of money, out of energy, out of patience, and out of time, even.

You name it and we need to be healed of it. You name it and it’s in our life or in our family or in our house or in our bodies. You name it and we want it gone – or fixed – or healed.

And the temptation is to read tonight’s Gospel and pray for a miracle – and we have likely done that. The temptation is to search for a quick fix or a magic pill – and maybe we have tried that, too. The temptation is to reach out and try to touch someone or find some thing that will make the sickness and disease just go away.

And that’s why faith healers are a thing. I don’t see them on TV as much as I used to – they were really a thing back in the 80’s and 90’s – these men and women who feed that temptation. And they’re still around. On my way to Vegas a few weeks ago, I saw a church sign advertising a “Miraculous Night of Healing,” sometime in March – like there was a time and a place and a party planned for when your healing would come. (That church wasn’t in Vegas, by the way. It was off of I-74, in Indiana, between here and Cincinnati.)

Anyway, while Jesus played doctor and miracle-worker in some really wonderful ways, as far as the Gospels tell it, he never claimed to be an easy answer or a quick fix or a magic pill for anyone and everyone. Jesus was smart and sensitive enough to know that for every hemorrhage that stopped, for every demon that was quieted, for every crippled person who walked, and for every blind man that regained his vision there were plenty of others left bleeding, screaming, stumbling, and lost in the dark.

And it’s no different today. For every tumor that shrinks, for every surgery that’s successful, for every addiction that’s under control, there are millions of others left suffering and hurting and, literally, dying to be healed.

So, the answer for Jesus wasn’t easy because it wasn’t always, only about abracadabra or hocus pocus or magic of any kind – otherwise, I think he would have healed everyone, all of the time, and made a big show of it like some sort of televangelist. No, the answer for Jesus – and the answer for the bleeding woman tonight – was about faith, really, in a way that this story hit me differently during this season of “Lenten Laments,” than it has in the past.

See, I’ve been wondering if what healed the woman in this Gospel story – as much as whatever happened with her body when she touched Jesus’ cloak – was that her utter desperation, her total vulnerability, her powerful lament that she was at the end of her rope, out of options, entirely at the mercy of whatever grace she could receive from God, in Jesus … that that depth of humble faith … is what healed, not just her broken, bleeding body – but healed her soul and her spirit, too.

And there’s hope in that for me, because isn’t that what we need as much as anything when we’re falling down, sick and suffering, fear-and-trembling kind of scared?

When the pain and suffering and terror are so great… When we’re sick or scared and lonelier than we’ve ever been… When we’re in need of real healing – or when we care for someone who is – we’ll do anything to get it – just like the woman who touched Jesus’ cloak. She fought the crowd. She broke the rules. She forgot about her pride and her safety. She didn’t care about what all those people might have said about her. It was at her moment of greatest despair and lament when she found Jesus. And that’s when she found her healing, too.

And maybe that’s where we’ll find it – some measure of healing – not just in our bodies, but in our minds, our souls, and our spirits, too. Maybe the cancer won’t disappear, or go away forever. Maybe the surgery won’t fix everything. Maybe the addiction will be a constant, ever-present struggle. Maybe the cure won’t come in time, or as soon as we would like. And maybe our desperate lament can only be that that sucks; that the pain of it is unbearable; and that none of it seems fair. And God knows that’s true.

So let’s lament the illness and disease that plague us in so many ways in this life. And let’s let God receive the full measure of our anger, frustration, fear, trembling, and desperation for that – because God can handle the full measure of our anger, frustration, fear, trembling and desperation. And let’s make this lament because it really is an act of faith, after all – like it was for the hemorrhaging woman – that we aren’t in control of this; that we are humbled in the face of whatever afflicts us; but that we are more than our bodies and that God is more than all of it.

Because as unfair as all of our illness and disease can seem, it’s also not fair that we are loved so deeply and that we have the chance to experience and share that love with others. It’s also not fair that we are forgiven so graciously in ways we don’t deserve to be. It’s also not fair that we have been given the gift of faith in and hope for something greater than what our physical bodies can always endure on this side of heaven.

So let’s pray mightily about whatever healing we long for and need, here and now. And let’s expect God to do something good – miraculous, even – with those prayers and our deepest desires.

But let’s let our lament be honest and mighty, too. And let’s allow it to inspire or lead to faith that we will be well and healed … that we will be whole and redeemed … by God’s grace, on the other side of it all, come what may.

Amen