Our reading today from the Old Testament’s Book of Lamentations beautifully speaks the promise of God to people in the midst of great difficulties. The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. It is called the Book of Lamentations because it a collection of songs of grief sung by the people after military defeat, conquest by enemies and exile from homeland. In these poems they lamented their situation.
Our God requires faithful people to be brave in the courage of faith, but he does not require them to be Stoics who suppress their feelings of hurt and disappointment. Rather they are to lift their sorrows up to the Lord who cares for them and promises final healing. "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. God’s faithful people are adults who realize that it is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD… Why is such patience truly the good of maturing believers? The Lord will not reject forever. Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone. Though we are afflicted in many ways, though it is through many trials and tribulations that we must enter the kingdom of God, we follow Jesus through it all, each taking up one’s own cross in the Spirit to follow him through the cross to the crown. We people of faith thus have good courage in the face of testing and trial, trusting in the steadfast love of the LORD which never ceases, whose mercies never come to an end but are new every morning.
How do we get such courageous faith for the living of real life, in good times and bad? How do we ever and again become God’s faithful people? Our reading from the gospel of Mark today shows us how. It is a remarkable passage that weaves together two stories of Jesus the healer. In the first Jarius the president of a synagogue comes to Jesus imploring his presence in his house where his little daughter lies dying. All of us parents who have helplessly watched our child sick and hurting know the fright of this Jarius. Perhaps Jarius is just desperate when he turns for help to Jesus the healer of whom he has heard. In any case, he asks and Jesus agrees to come with him. On the way, the crowds are mobbing Jesus. In their midst was a women sick, as they used to say, with female problems. Doctors had cost her everything and helped not at all. Her affliction is embarrassing to her. She doesn’t want to announce it to the world. She thinks to herself, Jesus can heal without shaming me! God hears her thought and when she touches Jesus the healing occurs. Jesus stops in the middle of the throng and asks, bizarrely, as it seems: Who touched me? All were pressing in on him!
Now notice the interplay of fear and faith as Mark tells us what happens: But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. She was evidently ashamed of her anonymous theft of power from Jesus. The woman who was not afraid secretly to touch Jesus was afraid to fess up until called out. Why was she afraid to tell? Was she yet afraid that Jesus would crush her, humiliate her, broadcast her very personal problem, even take back what she had secretly stolen? Perhaps all of this, perhaps none. In any event, the word of Jesus to her is as healing to her soul as the act of power had been to her body: "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease." Rather than embarrassing her or scolding her presumption, Jesus lifts up her faith to trump her fear. Yet while he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, "Do not fear, only believe." The theme repeats: faith casts out paralyzing fear so that God’s will is done on earth as in heaven.
It is faith that saves, faith that casts out fear, the same courageous faith of God’s faithful people of which we heard earlier in Israel’s Lamentations: "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. Saving faith is such patient expectation in time and for eternity. It is persevering courage face to face with sickness and death.
Yet, as if to challenge Jesus word of blessing on the woman’s faith, sad word came that Jarius’s daughter had died. The natural reaction is one with which we are all familiar. What’s done is done and cannot be undone. Leave Jesus be, he cannot help now. Let us grieve as people who have no further hope. Never mind, Jesus says: "Do not fear, only believe." Once again, the text shows us exactly what faith really is by contrasting it with fear. Faith does not deny bad facts, faith does not ignore the danger, but neither does faith give up and run away, slinking into a dark hole of despair: "Do not fear, Jesus summons, only believe." Here on the earth, in the chances of time and accidents of space, through trial and tribulation, as we faithful people walk patiently through the valley of the shadow of death our hope is in God, knowing the Lord will not reject forever. Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone. And just so, Jesus proceeds to the house of Jarius who has become faithful, not fearful, and there restores to him his precious daughter in a wonder that anticipates the final healing, the resurrection of the dead.
We know from long Christian experience that God sends his rain to fall upon the just and the unjust alike and causes his sun to shine on the good and theevil together. Our faith is vested in the ultimate healing in the eternal life of the living God. So it is not a faith that we should be magically preserved from all affliction in our journey but rather that we should survive it, purged and purified by it, to be made new on the last day. Indeed whatever healing we experience in this life is but temporary; it is meant to point us forward to that final healing of the resurrection of the dead.
Someday Jarius’ daughter will grow old and die. Someday the women with hemorrhage will also pass away. Their healings were not forever but for time and rather point us forward to the healing which is forever, to the Lord who is himself our hope, our joy, our salvation, our rock and fortress in life and in death, who shares himself in Jesus our healer, who shares his own eternal life, now by the down payment of the Spirit, forever in the resurrection of the dead. Knowing this promise of God is one thing; applying this in one’s own life in the midst of troubles in fearless faith is quite another. For faith grows weak when troubles arise and threaten to swallow us up. Fear returns. How shall we summon up courage to fear not, only believe?
St Paul points us to the One who commands such faith, but also gives to us this very courageous faith which he demands: For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. The woman was afraid to tell what had happened until Jesus acknowledged her faith and blessed it; Jarius became a faithful, not fearful father at Jesus’ imperative, Do not fear; only believe. By his command we become strong. By his poverty, we become rich, Paul says. That means: by focusing on him who knew no disease, nor suffering, nor fear, nor doubt but came to us who do, who not only came to us but dwelt among us, who not only dwelt among us but with boundless compassion called us and made us his own-- though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor – poor with us, taking on us, treasuring us, dirty hands and dirty hearts notwithstanding, thus acquiring the right, the standing, the authority powerfully to command us to be strong and fearless in union with him. When we meet Jesus in his saving word, Fear not, only believe! when anyone encounters Jesus in his self-giving poverty by which he makes rich, Take eat, given for you! Take drink, shed for you! --fear subsides and faith arises. Jesus, taking us on in our poverty is how we get such rich, strong faith. Jesus is how we become God’s faithful people.
Paul spoke this word to his troubled congregation at Corinth. He was urging them, not demanding or requiring, but exhorting them to give generously to a charitable donation he was gathering for the poor Christians in Jerusalem. In this way, the new Gentile Christians could demonstrate their solidarity with old Jewish Christians. So he reminds his readers of the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, as a motive and example. Brothers and sisters, the faith that Jesus gives us, the faith that saves, the faith that frees us to live bravely facing difficulty – this precious faith is not for me, myself and I alone. It restores us to fellowship broken by sickness and death, by sin and injustice. It puts us in solidarity of love with all the others likewise connected to Jesus by the same faith. As God’s faithful people, we come to church for all these reasons: to have faith renewed by meeting Jesus anew in Word and Sacrament, to express generously the solidarity of Christian love with one another, to sing then not only blues in songs of lamentation, but finally songs of praise of the steadfast love of the LORD which never ceases, whose mercies never come to an end but are new every morning, who commands but also gives his Spirit so to live: Fear not; only believe!