Sunday, September 2, 2012

Hope: God's Worst Kept Secret (Luke 8:36-50)


Hope: God’s Worst-Kept Secret
Luke 8:40-56

[This sermon was preached on September 2, 2012 at Folsom Community Church by Tim Lewis]

Introduction

Today we’re going to do something a little unusual: we’re going to start at the end of the story and work our way backwards. We’ve been studying the book of Luke, the third of four Jesus biographies in the Bible, going episode by episode through his life to look carefully of who Jesus was and what it means for us today. And at the end of today’s episode, Jesus gives a strange command. If you have your Bible, you can look at it with me, Luke, chapter 8, verse 56:
56“Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened.”
They were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone! Now, even if we didn’t know any more, we might be curious as to what they were astonished about and, then, why Jesus put the divine gag order on them. Let’s talk about this for a minute. Why do we (here in 2012) tell someone not to talk about something? (solicit answers).
Maybe we’re embarrassed about the topic? Could be. Verse 51 did say that Jesus “did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John, James and” the parents. My family has stuff like that, and we talk about it, and then we turn to the kids and say (in the deep sotto voce), “Now, kids, this is a family-only topic.” Off limits. Not-outside-the-house. Then Brahms pipes up and says, “Is it such a big deal that Daddy can burp the star-spangled-banner backwards” And Helen and I give him the glare.
Maybe it’s the publicity? You think Prince Harry got bad press for paparazzi pictures in Las Vegas, wait til you see the rep that Jesus had with the Pharisees for claiming to be the Son of God (John 10:36). Jesus says something controversial, Twitter goes wild and Herodian death threats pour in.
Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened, because he knew the problems of fan boys (and fan girls). Maybe the problem for Jesus wasn’t bad publicity; the problem was what people did with good publicity. [example of how our expectations twist good things to fit preconceived ideas]
The Bible sometimes uses the word “sign” to refer to miracles (Exodus 3:12, John 2:11). They were called signs because they were meant point the way to God.  But what would happen if we took them in the wrong way?
Hope is such a powerful force. There is a proverb, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” The flip side of hope is heart-sickness, disappointment. 
Someone said that 10 years ago, we had Bob Hope, Johnny Cash and Steve Jobs but today we have no Jobs, no Cash and no Hope. – cited John Ortberg in TBD.
We spend a lot of emotional energy trying to avoid being disappointed. My daughter Shannon told me that she wasn’t sure she wanted to see a certain movie that was based on a book, because she was afraid that the movie would be a disappointing adaptation. Sometimes, we don’t ask tough questions because we are afraid of what we might find out, so we live with the lie rather than experience disappointment. There is a big opportunity, and we know that it will help us out big time, but then someone messes it up, and we are disappointed. We buy a house, thinking how happy we will be, but then 20 minutes later we have buyer’s remorse, buyer’s disappointment, because we have signed up for 30 years of slavery. We fall in love with the perfect girl, and then she discovers that we snore. Big disappointment! We cannot live without hope, so we build up big defenses against disappointment.
Your hope is only as good as your hope’s target.
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. – Hebrews 10:23
We desperately need hope. But we place our hope in flimsy containers. What or who will not disappoint us? The answer is God. To some of you, God doesn’t always seem like the best bet.
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. – Hebrews 11:1
Jesus makes the crazy request of you: Hope in me. Even though you can’t see me. Even though things don’t look good. Even though there is no light on the horizon. Hope in me. Why?
This afternoon, I want to you to grab onto the hope that God offers you for four reasons that we can see in this episode from Jesus’ life.

…Because God Always Has Time For You

40 Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him. 41 Then a man named Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, came and fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come to his house 42 because his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying.
As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him.
Jesus was a busy guy. If you go back just a little bit in chapter 8, you can see he was just getting back from a really crazy trip across the Sea of Galilee which includes a typhoon, a freaked out group of disciples, a man, a few thousand freaky demons, a foreign village and a thousand dead pigs. Does Jesus get a break? No.
He gets off the boat and there is a crowd waiting for him. They have heard about Jesus. They want to catch a glimpse of Jesus. They want to say that they were there when Jesus did such-and-such. Frankly, they didn’t have a lot of entertainment in northern Palestine--no DISH network, no PSPs, no iPods, not even Catan--so practically anyone could draw a small crowd. But Jesus wasn’t just anyone, he was the real deal. So there were crowds.
It is not long before Jairus hears. He is kind of an important person in that area, a leader in the local Jewish community. But tragedy follows important people just like the rest of us. He has a problem. His only child, a little girl of twelve, is sick—very sick. He has probably heard about Jesus, so he abandons all his dignity, runs and pushes his way through the crowd and throws himself at Jesus’ feet and begs and pleads and blubbers for Jesus to come and heal his daughter.
My daughter Miriam just turned twelve. When I imagine myself in this man’s place if she was sick, or any of my three were sick, there is this feeling in the pit of my stomach. If there was anything I could do, I would do it. And if there was the remotest chance that this Jesus could heal my daughter, you’d better not get in my way, because I would kick, and scratch and bite and punch.  Jail later, Jesus now! Why? Because that’s my child!
And when Jesus agrees, there is the smallest flutter of hope. Because Jesus doesn’t hesitate. He seems confident. He goes with Jairus. The crowds hear it and they go wild. What was a ruckus has become nearly a riot. Jesus’ buff disciples are doubling as body guards, clearing the way like the way you seen in those celebrity video shoots.  Everyone wants to see what Jesus is going to do. <pause>
43 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. 44 She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.  45 “Who touched me?” Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.” 46 But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”
But then a strange thing happens. Someone else has been watching Jesus, an older woman, very sick. She has hemorrhaging for twelve years, watching her health slip away, as day after day she must change the cloth which is steeped in her blood. She can’t get close, not through that crowd. But she watches the whole scene unfold, as Jairus approaches and throws himself at Jesus feet, she knows the situation about the little girl, and she sees Jesus’ confidence as he sets off after her. <pause> Then something clicks in her mind: she has to touch Jesus. With a strength born of desperation, she forces herself through the crowd until she can just glimpse Jesus. And, in my mind’s eye, she cries out and reaches out, but her voice is drowned in the noise and she stumbles, her fingers just brushing a departing Jesus, and then he is gone, and the people just walk on and around her fallen form.
And as she is lying there, the sound of the crowd changes to questions and confusion. People aren’t pushing past her any more. Above the voices, she hears one voice ask: “Who touched me? Someone touched me.” Another voice, sort of tired and put out says, “Are you kidding? Look at this crowd. Who is not touching you, Lord?” Then the first voice again, this time closer “I felt the power go out from me.”  And people step out of the way, revealing this poor woman.
Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, where he was going to face off with the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate and die on the cross. Jesus is on his way to Jairus’ house, to heal his daughter. But he stopped all of this to make time for the one woman of faith that he found among all of those people.  She was healed and he stopped.
We have hope because God always has time for us. His schedule is never too full for you. He is always interested to hear what you have to say.
Just like me. We’re in a crowded, noisy shopping mall, full of people. But parents’ ears are tuned in to the sound of children’s voices. Their cries pierce through any commotion to reach your ears. Just like with God. And you.  

…Because God Ignores Who We Are

At this point in the story, Jesus had not seen her. In fact, at this point he had not seen it was a “her” at all. He knew that he had healed someone, but he did not know who it was. Hope depends on Jesus, not on us.
47 Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. 48 Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”
Suddenly, the woman who was on the fringes is suddenly the center of attention. The crowd was staring at her. Jesus was staring at her. So she did what any sensible woman would do, she trembled and fell down at his feet just like Jairus and started trying to explain.  
Jesus did not comment on who she was. Jesus did not mention her background, her age or her social status. These weren’t important to him.[1]
What was important to Jesus was his care for her (he called her “daughter”) and her faith—her confident hope-in him.
Let me tell you, that is scary. It is something that will drive you to your knees before Jesus.<pause>
Now some of you are wondering: “Why, exactly, is this scary that God loves me?” Because there comes a point in every life where we need God—where we need  his miracle, his comfort, his renewal, his intervention—because the situation is out of control. Then, when we take inventory of our lives, we realize that we no bargaining chips with God. We don’t have anything God needs. We can only hope that he doesn’t demand something we cannot give.
This is the good news. God does not look at your resume (your CV); he looks at your faith. He doesn’t look at your church attendance. He looks at your faith.  He doesn’t look at how much money you gave to charity, how many times you helped little old ladies cross the road, how many homeless you fed or whether you used certain 4 letter words. God’s work in your life starts when you trust that He loves you in spite of (not because of) everything you bring to the table.
We have hope because God ignores who we are.

…Because God Overcomes My Fear

Jesus’ last command to this woman is to “Go in peace.” For a Jewish listener, peace was not just a lack of war, it is the restoration of wholeness—of the way things should be. While this whole episode has been unfolding, you can feel Jairus’ tension rising. Though he is sympathetic with this woman’s victory over her illness, his little girl is still sick. Then his worst fear arrives:
49 While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. “Your daughter is dead,” he said. “Don’t bother the teacher any more.”  50 Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” 51 When he arrived at the house of Jairus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John and James, and the child’s father and mother.
Friends, there is always a valley. There is always a test of our faith. For the woman, it was the crowd. She was healed after 12 years of disappointment and the test of her faith was the scrutiny of a crowd of friends and stranger. For Jairus, the test was that he enjoyed 12 years of blessing with his daughter and now he must place her body and his joy completely in the hands of Jesus.
There is always a test: to live with what we have or to give up what we have. Hope says: God has something better. But fear doesn’t believe that, calls it a fairy tale or wishful thinking.
Through this test, Jesus was there. He asks the impossible of Jairus: Don’t be afraid. But he did not ask him to walk the road of sadness alone. He did not ask him to enter the house of death alone. We have hope, because whatever test of our faith, Jesus goes with us. We may not always see him, but he is there. We can have hope because God overcomes my fear.
The Bible says:
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” – Psalm 34:8

…Because God’s Answer Is Better Than Our Answer

By the time that Jairus arrives at the house the mourners have already arrived. Without embalming, death was soon followed by burial.
52 Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her. “Stop wailing,” Jesus said. “She is not dead but asleep.” 5 They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead.
During Jesus’ day, there were “professional” mourners. And they were noisy. It always seemed sort of strange—sort of hypocritical—to have people paid to wail. That’s what rock stars are for, right? But these were brought in so that that friends and family could cry, sob, wail and mourn without the embarrassment of being the only one.
Because they were professionals, they knew the drill. The girl was dead. You cried for a while, you buried the girl, collected your small fee and you went home. During the process of grieving, perhaps someone might go into denial, and argue she was still alive. But why would Jesus be in denial? He’s a stranger. They can’t believe what they hear, so they laugh at him, Jairus’ crazy friend.
54 But he took her by the hand and said, “My child, get up!” 55 Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat.
Their best answer to the situation was to bury the girl. But Jesus’ best answer was to resurrect the girl.
There are times in your life and my life when we cannot see an answer to the problems that we face. We play out all of the scenarios in our mind, endlessly trying to figure out the answer. But there is hope because God’s answer is better than our answer. The Bible says:
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, - Ephesians 3:20
The same Jesus who walked with Jairus lives in us. We don’t even know the things to ask. We don’t even know the right dreams to dream or the right ideas to think. God is a completely out-of-the-box thinker, but he’s an out-of-the-box thinker who loves you and who loves me.

Conclusion

And this is why I think Jesus ordered the parents not to tell anyone. They wanted a miracle-working Messiah who would kick the Romans’ butts. But God had something more amazing in mind. Rather than destroy the Romans, he would change their hearts until, within 4 centuries, the official faith of the Romans was the same one they tried to suppress and a thousand years after that we would be talking about the “Holy Roman Empire”. They wanted a renewed temple building to freely worship God. But Jesus did something better, he established the temple inside of me.
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?  You are not your own; - 1 Corinthians 6:19a
They wanted God to establish their kingdom, a tiny strip of land along the eastern Mediterranean, but he is establishing His kingdom in the hearts and minds of millions and billions of people across the world.
And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations – Matthew 24:14
How about you? Are you willing to let God’s answer be better than your answer? I will tell you it is not easy. It is not easy to hear God tell you that you need to be 12 years sick so that you are ready to hear the voice of God. It is not easy to hear God tell you that your dearest and closest must be taken away so that you are ready to be astonished. But God’s answer is Jesus. And his answer is better than our answer. Will we trust him?
That’s when hope becomes God’s worst kept secret. He hides it from the proud and the self-assured and the certain, and gives it to the broken-hearted and unsure and desperate. “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” – 1 Peter 3:15
I am tired of disappointment. Let’s pray this prayer together. I’m going to pray it out loud, and if you want, you can pray it silently. “Dear God…I am tired of disappointment. I know that you are listening to me right now…no matter what I have done to try and please you…and no matter what I have done that offended you…I have worked so hard to avoid disappointment…and I have tried to control the outcomes but failed…I want hope…and better dreams…and I think Jesus is the right place to look. Will you help me look? Will you help me see…please? Amen”
Maybe you are short on hope. I know where to go.


[1] Also see the demon-possessed man earlier in chapter 8.

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