Once, I accompanied the family of dying patient who prayed fervently that God would heal the patient. They would pray with certainty that God would reach out and heal this person's illness and pray that the person would walk right out the door. Their preacher led them in laying hands on the dying man, commanding the disease to leave him, invoking God to make the man get up and walk… all while the numbers on the monitors showed a slide towards death.
My training taught me to be quiet, but my brain and my gut would be in turmoil. I said to myself—and sometimes doctors and nurses said to me-- “This preacher is setting them up for a fall! Raising their expectations like this is certain to cause upset when the patient eventually dies!” We worried that they were in fact teaching people, especially the children, to hate God because God was apparently not doing what they wanted.
But when the patient died, something remarkable happened. The group went from fervently praying that God would heal the person to joyfully praising God!
It was like flipping a light switch. No anger at God, no earth-shattering disappointment (that I could see) but praise and singing that Jesus had taken the person home.
I was perplexed, so I asked a fellow chaplain on our staff, who was himself Pentecostal, what was going on.
First, he gently chided me for ignoring the teaching of my own tradition’s Book of Common Prayer, which have prayers for both healing and those for preparing for death printed side by side. These are prayers filled with hope!
He also suggested that perhaps I was both rationalizing and being a bit judgmental, hearing their prayers as a kind of magical thinking, and their praises after the death as a kind of denial of death.
Okay, I'll admit to that.
“So, what is really going on then?” I asked him. He said that their theology is grounded in hope. A faith that believes “Everything will be all right.”
In their view, God is in charge of everything. And God, through the cross and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, will make everything all right. They embodied what we call “The Christian Hope.”
The doctrine of the Christian Hope is essentially this: God will make everything all right.
Don’t believe me? Just look at our Prayer Book tradition, our Catechism, today’s Scripture lessons and, if that’s not enough, look at our own experience.
When a child falls down and skins her knee and comes to us in tears, what do we say? “Everything will be all right.”
I have heard it said in hospital settings: we say it to the anxious and the sick and even the dying. But most remarkably, it’s often said to us by the patients we care for and worry about.
Time and again I’ve seen it. Just we can’t find the words to comfort them, time and again they comfort us! “Don't worry about me,” they will sometimes tell us. “Everything will be all right.”
And that what the scripture lessons we hear today, and over the next five weeks, remind us: God will make everything all right.
Today’s lesson from the Book of Daniel, which was written to persecuted Jews experiencing a war against yet another invader. The last book of the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel assures us that God is going to save God’s people and vindicate their suffering. The message is: “hang in there. God will make everything all right.”
The 13th chapter of Mark that we just heard, is often called ‘The Little Apocalypse’ because like Daniel and Revelation, it uses strange images and dire predictions to encourage us to remain faithful during rough and dangerous times. Mark remembers and brings forward Jesus' words to Christians, who thirty to forty years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, were living through the Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire in 66 to 70 AD. That revolt would end badly with the sacking of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, the scattering of the Jews as a dispersed people. It would also move Christianity from a sect of Judaism into something bigger as more and more Gentile Christians would join up.
Mark reminds us of Jesus' words to not to put our trust in big buildings made with big stones by human beings—not in places, institutions, or even cherished traditions—but in God.
Jesus reminds us in Mark that God will make everything all right— but perhaps not in the way we expect.
This is how the Bible speaks to people who are uncertain, who are suffering right now, and who are looking for hope right now.
We don’t have to listen too hard to hear that people today asking the same questions as they did in the time of Daniel, Jesus, and the early church. People still ask “what is God doing?” and “will I/we be okay?”
Here is how the Gospel we hear today answers that question: God will make everything all right.
It is important because it is true.
But remember, the truth that God will make everything all right should not make us complacent. We are not called to be helpless victims, but through our faith and in our baptisms and our sacramental living we are called—given power!—to work and pray to care for God's people especially in their suffering!
Saying “everything will be all right” does not mean that we do nothing! When children have fallen down and skinned their knees or hands and blood is all over the place, parents don't just say, "Everything will be all right." There may be bandages and antibiotics applied from the medicine cabinet. There may even be a fast trip to the emergency room. Why? Because parents do all in their power to make sure will be all right for their suffering children.
"How can I make ends meet, when more bills are coming in than income?" We do everything we can… change how we shop, economize, sign on for an extra shift. And God's promise is still the same: “Everything will be all right."
"I'm having surgery tomorrow and I'm scared." Our presence and prayers—and the skill of those caring for us—say "Everything will be all right."
"The tests for cancer came back positive."
"Everything will be all right."
“My home was damaged or flooded during the hurricane.”
“Everything will be all right.”
"My brother was just deployed to a war zone."
"Everything will be all right."
"My parent just died."
"Everything will be all right.
It’s not magic. It’s not pie in the sky nor is it wishful thinking. This is the day in and day out life of faith, and it requires time and effort and cultivation within our hearts and minds.
And trust. Trust in God that everything will be all right.
Hey! God knows truth is that we might experience turmoil and pain and confusion along the way. The life of faith means that we steer into the wave of our hurt and fear and not steer around it. Jesus shows us in everything from his temptation to his healing to his walking with his disciples daily, God’s faithfulness and God’s power and love is healing with us in all we do. Jesus knows all this and remember he carried all of it to the cross. It’s on the cross, where everything that separates us from God, each other, and creation is taken up by Jesus, and dies with him and is left behind in that empty tomb.
We are in a season of hope. As we come to the end of the church’s year and move into the new year in Advent, we are reminded of the power of Christian hope. All of the Scripture lessons for the next six to eight weeks are about hope.
What is hope? Hope is faith that looks forward!
As Jesus’ disciples, his followers, we learn and do the work of Jesus everyday.
Which is why hope is not passive. It is active! The Christian Hope is the confidence that God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit will fill all things, heal all things, complete God’s purpose for us and all creation.
The Christian Hope is that God never, ever, leaves us alone.
The Christian Hope is the knowledge that God gives us everything we need to live abundantly right now as the people God made us to be.
We are a hope-filled people who participate with God in the church’s mission which is to restore humanity and creation to unity with God and each other in Christ Jesus.
You show off that Mission in many ways: just open your bulletin. Laundry Love. Build a Bed. Backpacks and your ministry to Sandy Lane Elementary. Your Eucharistic Visitors and the ways you care for one another. Your music, Bible Study and even your Sunday Breakfasts all show off the many ways that you as a community learn and do the work of Jesus.
So you see…we participate every day in God’s hope-filled future! Hope is faith that looks forward.
We are not sitting on our hands and waiting for God to vindicate us someday. We are already vindicated! Jesus’ life and ministry show us that God is with us. Jesus’ death and resurrection show us that death is conquered. Our baptism and Eucharist show us that we are God's own people. Our community shows us that we are not alone. And our care for each other and for those people God sends to us reveal to us and the community that God is here and is at work.
We are a people of hope… hope is faith that looks forward, and everything will be all right!
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Scripture for Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 28), Year B, November 17, 2024.
Website for The Church of the Holy Trinity, Clearwater, Florida
Here (8 a.m.) and Here (10 a.m.) are the livestreams of the November 17, 2024 Liturgies at Holy Trinity, Clearwater.