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.
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.
