The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost- The Rev Melanie Lemburg

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg 6th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8B June 30, 2024 This week, I came across a quote about hope that I want to share: “Hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense…Hope is not optimism….Hope is a discipline and… we have to practice it every single day.” i I started thinking about how I talk about hope. How many times a day do I say, “I hope…” “I hope you are well.” “I hope it goes easier than you expect.” “I hope…” We’re talking about well-wishes when we talk about hope that way, a sort of love made manifest in words. But that’s not what this quote implies about hope. Hope isn’t a feeling; it’s a discipline, a practice. What on earth does that mean and how might we practice hope as a daily discipline? Our gospel reading gives us two pictures of hope in the same story. Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, is seeking healing from Jesus for his young daughter. He throws himself at Jesus’ feet, tells him his daughter is near death and begs Jesus to come heal her. It’s definitely got the feel of a last-ditch effort from a desperate father. They set out, and on the way, a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years approaches Jesus and says to herself, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” And miraculously, she is healed in that moment. It seems at first that she’s going to get into trouble or get called out by Jesus when he seeks to know who touched him, but instead, Jesus commends her and her faith and sends her on her way. Then they get word that Jairus’s daughter has died, that Jesus has come too late, and the unnamed woman becomes a lesson in hope to the faithful synagogue leader Jairus. Because rather than giving up hope for his dead daughter, Jairus continues on with Jesus to his house where the parents and Jesus and his disciples go in to see the girl, and they all witness Jesus raising her from the dead. Both the unnamed woman and Jairus practice hope by pursuing a path that they believe will make lives better. So, what can these two different characters in the gospel story today teach us about practicing a daily discipline of hope? Each of them, in their own way, is willing to take a risk, acting in the belief that the world could be better and centering their faith in that better outcome in the person of Jesus. They also are at the end of their own limits; they have no delusions that they can affect the change they want through their own devices. So they seek out Jesus who they believe can bring about the healing they are looking for. In her book Atlas of the Heart, the sociologist Brene Brown writes about hope saying, “Hope is made up of…. ‘a trilogy of goals, pathways, and agency.” We need all three of these aspects in order for hope to be fulfilled. She also writes that “hope is a function of struggle-we develop hope not during the easy times but during adversity and discomfort.” (She continues by writing about how hope is a learned behavior. That children often have to learn the habit of hope from their parents and how they need boundaries characterized by love, consistency and support to cultivate hope along with the space to experience and grapple with adversity in their own lives. When they are given the opportunity to struggle, they learn how to believe in themselves and their abilities.) ii Hope is a choice that must be coupled with action in order to truly be hope and not just wishes. This week, after we discussed hope in our Wednesday healing service, one of the congregation sent me two different links talking about how she was seeing conversation around hope everywhere after our discussion. One of the links was to an Instagram story by a woman whose username is anniebjones05. Here’s what she writes: “In April, I planted a bunch of wildflower seeds in my front yard. My parents came over, and we raked and weeded, dug holes and fertilized. I fretted and tended and watered, until two days later, when a torrential rainstorm came and swept all the seeds away. I watched the dirt and fertilizer flow into my front yard turning everything into puddles of mud. I waited and waited to see if anything survived. Nothing did.” She continues, “In May, my parents came over and we tried again. We planted flowers in my front beds and tried seeds again in the back. I tried to not care if anything grew. I was afraid to hope. I am always a little afraid to hope. A few weeks ago, I started to see green sprouts peeking up along our back fence. Maybe the sunflowers we’d tried on a whim? A zinnia? Two? In April, I cared so much. By May, the rainstorm had taken my seeds and my care right along with it. Now it is June, and there are flowers. Plural! Zinnias. Sunflowers, I think, to come. They bloomed, disregarding my level of care and despair. They bloomed, ignoring my exhaustion, unconcerned with my cynicism. They did not need my hope. She concludes, “This is a true story. A literal one. Of course, it’s a metaphor, too.” It's interesting to me how in this story she uses the word “hope” to describe her wishes for her flower garden, but really what was hope in this story is her action to get out there with her parents and plant again after the first failure. I also appreciate the aspect of loving detachment that she introduces around hope, a sort of sense of working toward making things better with healthy detachment toward the outcome. Today, we had a baptism at the 8:00 service. Her name is Sophie. So that’s why, in just a few moments, we will renew our baptismal covenant as a part of this service. But I think it’s also an important reminder to us in this ongoing conversation about hope. It’s a reminder that in our baptism, we are invited to practice this hope by loving action on behalf of not just ourselves but also our neighbors. Notice how in the last five invitations of baptism, the first two are practices that help us nourish our own hope: continuing in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers, and resisting evil and whenever we fall into sin, repenting and returning to the Lord. But the last three are about how we turn outward and practice hope in the world around us: proclaiming by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being. Our baptism calls us to practice hope through loving action for ourselves and for others. A year ago, I shared a post from Bishop Steven Charleston that came up in my memories this week. I was grateful for the timing of this reminder from past Melanie. Here’s what he wrote, “I have a little broom called hope. I use it to sweep out the corners of my life where the dust of my past has settled and the shadows of my heart cling like cobwebs. It does a good job. I sweep fear and worry out the door, leaving only sunshine where the dark spaces once pretended to rule. I have a little broom called hope: please feel free to borrow it whenever you like." iii Your invitation this week is to seek to daily practice the discipline of hope in your life. Do one thing every day this week that could bring positive change to another person’s life or the world around you. i. Original quote by Mirame Kaba as listed in Everyday Connections: Year B. Ed Heidi Haverkamp. WJK, Louisville, 2023, p 638. ii. Brown, Brene. Atlas of the Heart. Random House, New York: 2021, p100. iii. Posted on Bishop Charleston’s Facebook page on June 27, 2023