Proper 8 B + Outrageous hope + 6.27.21

 

M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; Psalm 130; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43)

Do you have an outrageous hope in Christ? Do you truly trust that if you move forward in faith, God will guide you to a place of abundance?
Alene and I have been in part spending quality time catching up on TV streaming during this pandemic time, and one series we just finished was called “Keeping Faith”. Set in Wales, it is the intense story of a woman who is a mother and a lawyer and it begins with her husband disappearing and leaving her family in a precarious financial situation. Not to mention he is mixed up with organized crime, so she has to engage with various figures all while trying to sort out whom she can trust. Family and friends speak to her like Job’s friends, implying that her marriage was suffering and that is why her husband left. More challenges come and she is always at the end of her rope, but every time she grasps on tight and finds some way to keep going.

This inspiring (if very gritty) story made me think of the outrageous hope that the hemorrhaging woman had in approaching Jesus. She had been sick for years. Many women today experience similar excess of bleeding in their perimenopausal and menopausal time. The solutions many women have today, of surgery or other treatments, were not available to the women of Jesus’ time. And so this woman suffered. Can you imagine how literally draining it would be to bleed for twelve years straight? And to have physicians try all sorts of solutions but only end up draining her financial reserves also? If you can, for a moment, imagine yourself completely wrung out, at the end of your rope. And here comes Jesus. And into what seemed at one moment like a life not worth living somehow enters a flash of hope. She doesn’t know why-only the Spirit knows-but she is compelled to approach him. And in touching his cloak, she is healed. A miracle! Twelve years of being drained is stopped. More than that, but I imagine Jesus’ healing power filling her up and making her feel like a girl again! A young, vigorous girl like the one Jesus will restore to life.
What gave her that outrageous hope that she could be healed, after all those years of “nos”? After all those years of being drained and feeling chained to circumstance. Of never being able to get ahead because she just didn’t have the energy or more funds to seek more assistance? I would posit that that is faith. That is faith that causes us to reach out one more time when we are at the end of our rope, and trust that God is there, waiting to give us life, life in all its fullness.

In my line of work I see a number of people who are almost at the end of their rope. They come to us for assistance. And Paul’s message to the Corinthians today speaks to me powerfully as to how I must respond on behalf of the church when people come to me for help. I am not Jesus and cannot fully restore everything broken, but in this passage Paul is clear. We as Christians must do our part so that those who can give can share with those who lack. This is not some regulated historically oppressive Communist system of forced equality that still somehow ends up with people on top. But this is the type of people-focused economy that simply says- I have enough to share. Who needs some help? Not so much that it is a burden. That is actually clear in Paul’s message, when he says “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you”, the word “pressure” can also be translated “burden.” So many of us who try to help feel burdened. That is not right either. The burden is Christ’s. We all place our yoke on him. But the reference is to the manna in the wilderness- no one had too much or too little. To have too much was to have food that rotted on you. And to have too little was not good. So just like those who depended on God in the wilderness, we strive just to have enough.

And for those who ask- know that it is right for you to have outrageous hope. To come asking. But you also must listen to what God is telling you through the people you meet. A “no” does not necessarily mean someone does not want to help, it is just that in doing so it goes beyond what they can do at the moment. A “yes” does not mean you give up the responsibility for doing your part also so that you can get to a place not only of providing for your own needs but also of being generous to others.

Of course, outrageous hope doesn’t only have to do with money. In today’s gospel, we are reminded that the greatest wealth is health. And we still pray several times a week (if not individually daily) for the health of our family and friends and of this community.
In the book The Underground Railroad, the character named Cora has lived through slavery and now is living on a free farm in Indiana. And she expresses what freedom looks like to her. After hearing a song that used to precede a whipping be used in a context of revelry, she thinks: “How could such a bitter thing become a means of pleasure? Everything on Valentine was the opposite. Work needn’t be suffering, it could unite folks. A bright child like Chester might thrive and prosper, as Molly and her friends did. A mother raise her daughter with love and kindness. A beautiful soul like Cesar could be anything he wanted here. All of them could be. Own a spread, be a schoolteacher, fight for colored rights. Even be a poet. In her Georgia misery she had pictured freedom, and it had not looked like this. Freedom was a community laboring for something lovely and rare.”¹

Outrageous hope is what allows us to hope for freedom. Freedom from the constraints and evils of our past. Freedom from present hardships and illnesses. And to trust that, if we work together and are generous, and more importantly if we take the leap of grabbing onto Jesus’ cloak, bold in our hope, we will experience life renewed, and a life that renews.

Amen.

1^ Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Chapter 10 (audiobook version).