“What To Do When Hope Runs Out”

“What To Do When Hope Runs Out”

Text: Mark 5:21-43

© July 2, 2006 by C. Edward Bowen

Back during the late 1950s and the early part of the 1960s, many black churches across the South were bombed and set on fire. The Ku Klux Klan and other white hate groups conspired together to bring about that destruction in the hope of intimidating black people and forcing them to give up on their dream of equal rights. But Martin Luther King and several other black church leaders responded to those attacks in a way that surprised many people. Because instead of being intimidated, instead of giving up on their dream of equal rights, King and others would rush to the scene of those burning churches and while the coals were still hot, while the smoke was still rising, they would hold a worship service in the midst of the ruins of those churches.

Why did they do that? They did that because by burning down those churches, those white hate groups were trying to communicate the message, “Give up! You’ve lost! You have no hope!” But by worshiping God in the midst of the charred rubble of those church buildings, King and his fellow black church leaders were answering back, “You might think that you’ve won. It might look like all hope is lost for us. But we know better. We know that even at a time such as this, God is still God, and God isn’t going to let us down.”[1]

Even when it looks like hope has run out, God is still God, and God isn’t going to let us down. That message of good news is a message that we find throughout the entire Bible. For instance, this year our Wednesday morning Bible study group is reading through the Old Testament, and this week we were making our way through the book known as 2 Chronicles – not exactly the most well-known or most-read book in the Bible. But in the 20^th chapter of 2 Chronicles we came across this great story where it looked like hope had run out, but the people ended up discovering that even in a situation like that, God is still God, and God wasn’t about to let them down.

In the 20^th chapter of 2 Chronicles what is going on is that three huge armies from the east are marching toward Jerusalem, with their minds firmly set on destroying and utterly obliterating the Israelites who live in that region. And as the king and his advisors look out at those on-coming troops, they come to the conclusion that there is absolutely nothing they can do to save themselves. As the king and his advisors look at what’s there before them, they realize that the facts appear to be that they’re doomed – that have no hope.

But even though the facts say that there isn’t any hope, the king looks to God and says, “God, we’re powerless. There are three huge armies coming up against us, and there’s no way we can fend them off by ourselves. We don’t know what to do. So, God, our eyes are on you” (20:12). In other words, the king was saying, “God, the facts tell us that our hope has run out. But even so, God, we trust that for you nothing is impossible.”

And sure enough, God ended up saving the people from those enemy armies. The story there in 2 Chronicles says that God sent those three armies into some kind of confusion so that instead of attacking Jerusalem, they ended up attacking and killing each other instead. And so by ignoring the facts, by ignoring the facts that seemed to be telling them that all hope was lost, the king and the people looked to God and saw for themselves that there is just no limit to what God is able to do.

That is the same sort of thing that we find in the reading we heard today from the Gospel of Mark. Here in this passage, we find two stories put side by side, two stories where people are at the end of their rope and all seems to be lost, but then when they put their troubles into God’s hands, they find that for God nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible.

In the one story here in Mark we hear about a woman who had some kind of disease or wound that had caused her to be seeping blood from her body for twelve years. And we need to understand that that bleeding would not only have been embarrassing – to have to walk around all the time with blood stains on her clothes. And that bleeding would not only have been deeply troubling to her, wondering day after day for twelve long years if she would ever enjoy another healthy day in her life. But that bleeding also caused her to labeled religiously unclean, meaning that she wasn’t allowed to go into the temple to worship, and really she wasn’t even permitted to come into contact with any other people for fear that her uncleanness would rub off. And to top things off, her search for a cure, traveling from one doctor to another over the course of twelve years, had bankrupted her, having been forced to spend every last penny she had on medicines and treatments that hadn’t made her one bit better.

And so as that woman looked at her life, she knew that the facts were telling her that her hope had run out. Her neighbors undoubtedly were telling her that there was no hope for her. And her doctors certainly echoed that same sentiment, telling her, “You have no hope. It’s no use. Just give up.”

But that woman refused to give up hope. Despite what all the facts were telling her, she still had faith – she had faith that God was still God, and that God wasn’t going to let her down. And having heard how God was alive and present in the person of Jesus in such a powerful way, one day that woman learned that Jesus was passing through her town and so she went out and touched him, not entirely certain what, if anything, Jesus would be able to do for her. But when she did that, she found that what had been impossible for twelve long years suddenly had become possible – after twelve long years she was healed and her bleeding came to an end.

In a somewhat similar sort of way, Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue had come up to Jesus to ask him to come and pray and lay his hands on his daughter, who was critically ill. But while Jesus was healing and bringing hope to that woman with the bleeding problem, additional word arrived from Jairus’ home that things had gotten worse and the little girl had passed away.

But Jesus essentially said to Jairus, “Forget about the facts that seem to tell you that there is no hope. Forget about the fact that seems to say that when people die, that’s the end. Forget about the fact that the mourners are all around saying that all hope is gone. Forget about the fact that people are laughing when I say that your daughter will live again. All I ask is that you have faith – have faith that even now, even with your daughter lying dead in her bed, that God is still God, and that God won’t let you down.” And sure enough, when Jesus walked inside Jairus’ house with Jairus and his wife and three of his disciples, Jesus showed yet again that nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible for God, as Jesus took that child by the hand and restored her life to her.

A certain woman once said, “Whenever I have a problem and I start to think that there isn’t any hope, I go and stand in front of a mirror. And I say to myself, ‘This problem I’m facing is just too big – it’s too big even for God to handle.’ And then,” she says, “I smile.”[2] She smiles, of course, because she realizes that no problem, no matter how big we might think it is, is too big for God.

What is it that you’re facing in your life? What is it that’s happening in your life that might be causing you to think that there just isn’t any hope? Take those troubles and place them into Jesus’ hands, and trust that even in the most difficult situations, nothing is impossible for God. So have hope, because there is simply no limit to what God is able to do.