Hope Returns When I Remember

Lamentations 3:19-39
Mark 5:21-43

“The thought of my pain, my homelessness, is bitter poison. 

I think of it constantly, and my spirit is depressed. 

Yet hope returns when I remember this one thing:

The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue,

Fresh as the morning,

As sure as the sunrise.”

“Great is thy faithfulness.”

The writer of the book of Lamentations expresses the deep grief and heartache of a people who have lost everything that was most dear to them.

It’s not an easy book to read, and might not do the best on the shelves of a Barnes and Noble.

But it is real, honest, and heartwrenching.

It expresses the heartache and the anger and dispiritedness of grief.

It expresses the experience of humiliation and shame.

And yet in the brief passage we read this morning,

In the middle of the author’s lament,

There is a moment of hope.

The hope in this passage is not of changed circumstances,

But of an enduring truth in the midst of the heartache.

“Hope returns when I remember this one thing: “The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue.”

Another translation: “Great is thy faithfulness.”

The book was written in a really hard time in the life of the author and of his community.

And yet he can see in the eye of the storm,

a moment where the clouds break

That God has not abandoned him,

God has not abandoned his loved ones,

God is with them.

And today as we see and hear the rain fall

and consider the ways that God cares for the earth in both sun and rain,

I want to invite you to dwell on this truth:

God is with us, ever with us.

There are new mercies every new morning.

Great is thy faithfulness is one of my favorite hymns.

We sang it at Rachelle’s and my wedding. 

The whole gathered community.

We were committing to one another, to be there for each other, no matter what.

As we sought to embody in our own relationship going forward

a faithfulness and companionship through thick and thin,

we put our trust in God’s faithfulness,

God’s unending covenant promise through thick and thin.

And as our marriage grows, we will need to continue to have that anchor outside of our own hearts.

Love is something we have entered into and become a part of,

It is not something we created.

We love because God first loved us,

And because before the foundation of the world, God is love.

I wonder if some kind of song like Great is thy Faithfulness was stuck in the head of the woman who touched Jesus’s cloak.

I wonder if she woke up with a line

“morning by morning new mercies I see….”

She was certainly feeling the angst of the writer of Lamentations.

We read, she “had suffered terribly from severe bleeding for twelve years,

even though she had been treated by many doctors.

She had spent all her money,

but instead of getting better she got worse all the time.”

She was in a condition that likely made her say with the author of Lamentations:

“The thought of my pain, my homelessness, is bitter poison. 

I think of it constantly, and my spirit is depressed.”

She was in a place of weariness from the pain and heartache,

The frustration and stress,

Weary from trying everything and spending all of her money to get better – all to no avail.

But she had faith in the midst of her suffering.

And she went to Jesus.

Even though she knew that she was transgressing all kinds of social codes to get to Jesus,

Faith drove her forward to healing.

And I think it’s important to realize that Jesus is on his way

to heal the daughter of “an official of the local synagogue.” 

He has joined this man, Jairus’s, entourage to show compassion

and to give healing to this wealthy man’s sick daughter.

And yet this woman, bold with faith touched Jesus’s cloak and was healed.

And Jesus stopped – even though he was on his way to minister to Jairus’s daughter –

He took time to recognize who had touched him from the crowd.

And he beheld this woman, “trembling with fear,” kneeling at his feet,

Pouring out her confession in a fit of humiliation and regret.

And Jesus turned to this woman who had been cut off from her community

And probably also cut off from family,

Jesus turned to the one who was homeless and alone,

Who was given the message by all around her that she was nobody’s child,

And Jesus said, “Daughter.”

Not “woman” but “daughter.”

Jesus recognized what no other society could,

That despite her illness, despite her social status,

regardless of what the community felt or saw in her,

Here was someone beloved of God

And he said, “my daughter,” – “my daughter, your faith has made you well. 

Go in peace, and be healed of your trouble.”

Jesus, we sang, is the rock in the weary land, a shelter in the time of storm.

Jesus is this because Jesus embodies the promise of God’s unending and boundary-less love.

A love that does not fail to show up for the outcast woman,

even though society would push him forward to the house of the well-respected leader of the synagogue.  Jesus has different priorities.

Jesus has the priorities of God’s unfailing compassion.

He knows love is not scarce resource,

That love multiplies in its being given away.

He knows the economy of grace,

And is not intimidated or deceived by the pressures of fear from the economy of human society.

Jesus takes the time to add to the woman’s healing,

The dignity of being addressed in love,

“my daughter, your faith has made you well. 

Go in peace, and be healed of your trouble.”

Jesus is the rock in a weary land, we sing,

A shelter in the time of storm.

And Jesus is this because he embodies that unending and unfailing compassion of God for all of creation.

We live in the weary land

Of the modern world,

Where many of us lead what Thoreau called, “lives of quiet desperation.”

We live in fear and isolation,

Being unable to truly be free and honest because we feel the need to maintain a certain image of ourselves

Or we think others need us to maintain a certain kind of look or way of relating.

We lead lives of quiet desperation when we put all of our energy into our work,

And we feel like there’s no way not to,

And all of the pressures around us are confirming our fears that we are only as good as our competence in the workplace, as our efforts in the home or community,

And some of us carry a very tender conscience that is afflicted often by a sense of “not good enough.”

And we are driven on by a sense of inadequacy and fear of rejection,

To try harder and to somehow work our way out of a sense of alienation from God and one another.

But it becomes just like the person in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,

sweeping the dust in the room,

Sweeping as best as they can,

But only managing to put the dust into the air

and cloud everything and make everyone cough.

The narrator says this is the one who seeks to heal themselves through works,

through efforts of their own.

And in contrast he shows grace.

Grace like water poured out onto the floor.

Like the rain that came after the long and dry early Spring.

The water poured on the floor cleared the air.

The dust settled and was swept.

We look for every possible way to heal ourselves and mend our circumstances,

And we miss the fundamental ache that can only be healed by grace,

That can only be seen and apprehended by grace.

We have not let our desperation lead us to Christ,

To grab hold of his cloak in transgressive hope.

 And experience the healing words: “My daughter,” my son, my beloved child.

In Jesus we see the covenant promise of God’s blessing,

And God’s presence with us and for us.

It is new every morning.

Not because it ever gets old, but because it is as constant as the sunrise and as untiring.

In the midst of our loneliness and our sufferings

God’s promise may seem distant, but it is no less real.

“Hope returns when I remember this one thing: The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue, fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise.”

Great is God’s faithfulness to humankind in Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love and the example to us of the response of love in the world.

It doesn’t matter how society sees you,

God’s steadfast love endures forever,

By faith you will find healing and grace.

Maybe you are experiencing a time of heartache and grief.

Maybe you are beat down by expectations put on you by others or your own ideals,

Maybe your mind is stuck playing on repeat the anxious recording,

if I could just do more, and put this last piece in place,

if only I had this one other thing or this person would just do their part,

things would be better, I would be happy.

Sisters and brothers, all of this is band-aids at best and toxic thinking at worst,

if we don’t find a way to let go

And reach out to touch the cloak of the one who loves us no matter what.

We don’t finally need a new commodity or lifestyle arrangement,

Though there is benefit in a new toaster if the old one is burning all your toast,

But what we do need at the bottom of all of this

and at the core of who we are as individuals and as a community

is the healing knowledge that the one who created us and who sustains us,

the God who is the source of our being and our true parent,

loves us with an everlasting love and longs for us to rest in that awareness

and hear God saying,

“my child, my grace is enough.  Go in peace.”

Arise from the place of endless striving and exhaustion, the weary land.

Arise from the place of self-criticism and isolation,

Arise from the place of defensiveness and judgmentalism

Arise from the place of self-sufficient, works-righteousness,

And lay hold of the unearned and abundant grace of the God who will never abandon us.

The God whose spirit longs to bring us together as members of a beloved community,

So that we will not struggle alone,

We will bear one another’s burdens,

And so witness to the love that multiplies as it is given away.

Like the loaves and fishes.

May we take comfort by faith in this picture of God’s steadfast love.

And may we take our cues from Jesus in this.

No matter the boundaries constructed by human hearts,

God’s love breaks through,

No matter the sorting systems human society creates to mark and divide human persons,

God has given us a different way,

Not the way of scarce capital, but of abundant love,

And God’s love is most acutely known by those who have been scorned by our society,
We see that the way that God’s steadfast love is manifest in Jesus Christ is in responding to the outcast,

Privileging her suffering over the socially privileged.

Not neglecting the synagogue leader,

But attending to the needs of the one whose faith brought her to cross boundaries that had kept her from healing.

This is the kingdom of God.

Where the last shall be first.

It is a kingdom of faith in God’s boundless and steadfast love.

No matter who; no matter where.