Second Presbyterian Church

"Jesus: For Those Who Have No Hope"
June 29, 2003

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Sermons Homepage » Sermons for 2003 » Sermons for June 2003

13^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
by The Rev. Daniel E. Hale, D. Min.

• Psalm 130
• Mark 5: 21-43

Have you ever felt hopeless? Do you know what it is like to have nothing to live for? Or, have you ever been with someone, listened to someone who has lost all hope pour out all his despair?

In our Bible readings today we have two interesting passages. Psalm 130 is a cry to the Lord by someone who has lost ALMOST all hope. It is a psalm of desperation in that the psalmist has nothing upon which to cling, except the LORD. There is nothing else. Hope in all the other things had vanished, ostensibly because of his sins (v3). So he cried out to the only one who can help, the LORD. And he expressed his faith in the LORD and that the LORD will be his redeemer.

Then we have our Gospel passage. We are in the section where Jesus is ministering in Galilee and performing great signs and miracles. He had calmed the sea. He had exorcised a legion of demons that had possessed the Geresene Demoniac. And today we have just read about a miracle within a miracle. In our story today Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead. And then within that story, while Jesus was going to Jairus' house, Jesus healed the woman who had a flow of blood for 12 years.

Let's take a closer look at the situation involving the woman who had a flow of blood for 12 years. Because we don't really appreciate her situation if we don't get a sense what it was like to be a woman in that time, especially one suffering from a discharge.

First of all there were all kinds of laws about ritual cleanliness and uncleanliness. If you were ritually unclean, then you could not do certain things, such as worship in the temple, beyond the court of the Gentiles (who were all considered unclean, because they were Gentiles). The Priests had to go through involved rituals of maintain their ritual cleanliness. You were unclean if you touched a dead animal that you had not hunted or slaughtered. You were unclean if you touched a corpse, or dead body. Remember the story of the Good Samaritan? The reason the priest and the Levite went on the other side of the road had more to do with avoiding becoming ritually unclean than it did with whether or net they had compassion. I am not excusing them, I'm just saying that they were heading to the temple and if the man on the side of the road were dead, or living and they touched his blood, then they were not able to perform their duties at least for a week.

The woman in our story had some kind of OBGYN problem. And because it involved a flow of blood she was considered unclean. This meant that for 12 years she could not be touched by someone without making that other person also ritually unclean. This meant that she could not be hugged by her husband, or her parents, or brothers and sisters, or even her children! This woman was an untouchable.

It was a horrible state in which to live! So, for twelve years the woman tried to seek relief through the medical practice of that day. Even with today's modern technologies, OBGYN problems can be very difficult. Much less what it must have been like to be treated for some form of OBGYN problem back during the time of Jesus. Mark recorded that the woman went to physicians for 12 years, but the problem only grew worse. The only difference between when she started and 12 years later was that she no longer had any money to spend for treatment. She was at wits end.

So she doubtlessly heard of Jesus. She heard about the miracles Jesus was accomplishing in the name of the Kingdom of God. So this woman devised a plan. She decided to go up to Jesus and, if she was lucky, maybe she could quickly touch his garment and she could be healed. She was taking a tremendous chance. She was at great risk. The question must have raced through her mind, "WHAT IF JESUS FINDS OUT AND HE IS DECLARED UNCLEAN BECAUSE I TOUCHED HIM!!? What would happen to me?"

But she was so desperate that when the crowd was thronging around Jesus (imaging coming out of a crowded theater) the woman reached out and TOUCHED HIM. Immediately (one of Marks favorite adverbs) she felt the flow of blood stop and that she had been healed inside.

Then it happened. Jesus said, "Someone has touched me because I felt power go out from me." And he looked around for the person who had touched him. The disciples remarked, "Look at the crowd thronging around you and you are wondering who touched you?" The disciples did not understand. Jesus wasn't just touched by someone, he felt power go out from him, the power that heals.

The woman could bear it no longer. She fell down before Jesus and confessed the whole truth. She told him she had touched him. She told him why she had touched him. She told him what happened when she had touched him. The woman left nothing out, even if it meant something horrible would happen to her.

Instead, something wonderful happened to her. Not only were her symptoms removed (that happened when she touched Jesus' robe), but Jesus pronounced her healed and told her to go in peace.

Wow! Not only was she not in trouble, she was given a blessing from Jesus because she believed that He could heal her. She believed that Jesus was from God (or else she wouldn't have believed he could heal her).

Let's face it. We don't seem to have miracles happen to us quite so dramatically as they did when Jesus walked the earth. But they do happen. We have all experienced some miracle or another, whether we know it or not! We have all experienced the miracle of being redeemed by Christ. We have all experienced the miracle of the love of God that does not regard our sinful nature. Rather, He forgives us and moves us beyond our sin. We have the miracle of how Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, does not abandon us even when everything else seems to go wrong.

Part of the miracle of being one who believes in Jesus Christ is that we receive the miracle of HOPE, a hope that will not let us go or abandon us, regardless of our circumstances. Jesus is, indeed, the one for those without hope. After all Jesus IS our hope, our hope in God. If you hope in ANYTHING ELSE, then your hope is not in the right place and you are vulnerable of losing your hope.

If by some chance you experience the loss of hope, a loss that sets you adrift without direction, then remember this. If you lose hope, then you weren't hoping in the right thing in the first place. If you lose hope, then that becomes an opportunity for you to shift your hope back to where it belongs, Jesus Christ.

You know the hymn, "My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less Than Jesus' Name and Righteousness." That is, indeed, where our hope belongs - Jesus, the Messiah, our Lord and Redeemer. Amen.

The Rev. Daniel E. Hale, D. Min.