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Parish Prayer - 2
Lead me from despair to hope
Sermon preached by the Rector in Street Mission and Parish Church
January 2006
The readings were:
1Kings 17:17-end; Mark 5:21 -35
We began last time to see our need to be guided, and I mentioned that Mother Teresa sees life as a journey, a journey which leads from Death to Peace and on the way there are staging posts on our pilgrimage that we must move from to. Today we are looking at moving form despair to hope and from fear to trust.
The dictionary defines despair as being overcome by a sense of futility or defeat, and I guess that most of us at one time or another have experienced this in some way. The woman in our gospel reading knew all about it, I am sure. The text tells us that
She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.
For twelve year she had been seeking help, she had visited many doctors, she had spent all her money and she was still suffering, indeed getting worse. I perceive there is a real sense of despair in these two verses, and it is not surprising, life seems to have dealt her a pretty raw deal.
Despair is a heavy weight to carry, I see it all to often in my ministry to the bereaved these days as more and more people live life without some one to offer them real hope.
These words from the pen of Joseph Bayly, in his book The View From A Hearse, is a sad example of what I mean. Here he tells of what he said to offer hope to a woman whose small son was dying.
"It's good to know, isn't it," I spoke slowly, choosing my words with unusual care, "that even though the medical outlook is hopeless, we can have hope for our children in such a situation. We can be sure that after our child dies, he'll be completely removed from sickness and suffering and everything like that, and be completely well and happy."
"If I could only believe that," the woman replied. "But I don't. When he dies, I'll just have to cover him up with dirt and forget I ever had him."
It is sad, but more often than not, this woman's words express the hopeless plight of so many people all around us today.
If we return to our gospel text we find that the woman here is given a glimpse of hope as she hears about Jesus and fortunately at that moment her despair has lifted enough for her to act. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought,
"If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
It seems clear to me that she was led to be in that place at that time and to have heard about Jesus, then she grasped the opportunity and acted. Action that brought healing, forgiveness and hope. With out the hope that Jesus brings to life I guess that Wooddy Allen's view of the world today is where many are -
"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
I would rather we prayed that we as Christians have the courage to speak about our hope who is Jesus and to talk about how he leads us from despair to a living hope which enables us to enjoy this life to the full. Let me end this section of the sermon with an example of two men's lives.
Lord Byron abandoned himself to the pursuit of pleasure; yet at the age of 35 he wrote,
My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone.
Compare those lines with the words of Adam Clarke, a Christian saint and biblical expositor. At 84, he said,
"I have passed through the springtime of my life. I have withstood the heat of its summer. I have culled the fruits of fall. I am even now enduring the rigors of its winter, but at no great distance I see the approach of a new, eternal springtime. Hallelujah!"
This is the hope Mother Teresa discovered and prays for.
I am beginning to see that it is when we have discovered hope that we are able to face our fear and to move to a place of trust.
What are your fears? What or who are you afraid of?
I have spoken before about the fear people have, fear of heights, fear of enclosed places, fear of open space, fear of the dark, fear of flying, which reminds me of the true story I have told you before - Dr. Jerome Frank, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University said
"Whenever I am flying and I engage people in conversation a confession is almost always forthcoming when they find out I am a psychiatrist. A few years ago, before all of the modern security measures were installed at the nation's airports, a man I was sitting next to on a coast-to-coast flight told me,
"You know, I used to be deathly afraid of flying. It all started after that man brought a bomb on board a flight to Denver to kill his mother-in-law. I could never get it out of my mind that someone on board one of my flights might also be carrying a bomb."
I asked, "Well, what did you do about it?"
He replied, "Well, I went to one of those special schools for people who are afraid of flying and they told me there was only one chance in ten thousand that someone would be on board my flight with a bomb. That didn't make me feel much better. The odds were still too close. But then I reasoned that if there was only one chance in ten thousand that one bomb would be on the plane, there was only one chance in 100 million that two bombs would be on board. And I could live with those odds."
So I asked, "But what good would that do you?"
He quickly replied, "Ever since then, I carry one bomb on board myself--just to improve the odds."
To overcome our fear we have to place our trust in something or some one, the chap on the plane place his trust in the odds. We all need to find that someone or something to trust so that we can overcome fear.
Fear cripples, it holds us prisoner, it spoils God's gift of life.
One of my fears was getting it wrong or doing it wrong, this would hold me back at having a go at new things or going to new places. My Christian faith has helped me to overcome this to some extent, knowing that God loves me, that I am forgiven when I make mistakes gives me the confidence to face the new challenges. This is particularly so when I believe God is guiding me to move forward on life's journey.
Having someone to trust, knowing someone who loves us helps us face up to fear, knowing Jesus forgiveness, knowing His love personally enables us to move to a place of freedom, hope and trust.
Years ago a military officer and his wife were aboard a ship that was caught in a raging ocean storm. Seeing the frantic look in her eyes, the man tried unsuccessfully to allay her fears. Suddenly she grasped his sleeve and cried,
"How can you be so calm?"
He stepped back a few feet and drew his sword. Pointing it at her heart, he said,
"Are you afraid of this?"
Without hesitation she answered,
"Of course not!"
"Why not?" he inquired.
"Because it's in your hand, and you love me too much to hurt me." To this he replied,
"I know the One who holds the winds and the waters in the hollow of His hand, and He will surely care for us!"
The officer was not disturbed because he had put his trust in the Lord.
It is as our knowledge of the Love of God in Christ grows that we are able to trust Him with more and more of our life. The greater our confidence in His love for us the more strength we will have to overcome our fears, whatever they may be.
What I have found however is that many Christian people are able to trust God with their spiritual life but find it hard to trust Him with the material and physical aspects of life. God does not divide life up in segments, to Him His gift of life is one whole and he longs for us to enjoy the whole by putting our trust wholeheartedly in Him. This growth in trust may not come to us overnight, but it is something we should be working at so that through our pilgrimage we will discover a rich and secure life.
Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust.
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Thursday 20th of November 2008
