Called to Deep Hope (Hope Against Hope)

We have been considering variations on the theme of “deeper with God”. As the old hymn puts it, “Deeper, deeper in the love of Jesus/ Daily let me go;/ Higher, higher in the school of wisdom,/ More of grace to know. Oh, deeper yet, I pray,/ And higher every day,/ And wiser, blessed Lord,/ In Thy precious, holy word.”  

 

We began with “deep relationships” and progressed to “deep commitments”. We have sought “deep wisdom” and “deep healing”, leading to “deep growth”. Today, we seek a deep hope, deeper than the problems and struggles of our lives, deep enough to bring joy when griefs surround us. 

 

Isaiah 50 

Our passage from Isaiah is titled, “The Servant’s Humiliation and Vindication”. This is the third of four servant songs contained between Isaiah 40 and 53. Isaiah 53 is perhaps best known to many Christians – a clear reference to the trial and execution of Jesus, which we remember this coming Friday. Isaiah 50 is also a song that refers to the life and death of Jesus. Read this way, Jesus is the servant of the Lord, who is first humiliated and then vindicated. [Note: Jewish interpretation of these passages sees the servant of the Lord as the People of Israel; Christian interpretation as Jesus, the Messiah. It would be worth exploring these two interpretations in dialogue in another setting.] 

• Verse 4 portrays the ministry of Jesus as the teacher who brings understanding of God’s Word to the people. 
• In verse 5, the servant obeys God in his ministry and experiences the consequences of faithful service. 
• Verse 6 is quoted in Handel’s Messiah, referring to the trial of Jesus, in which he is stripped and beaten and prepared for execution. 
• Verses 7 to 9 then speaks words of hope in the darkness of the moment. In the experience of Jesus, these verses proclaim hope when hope is least evident. He maintains confidence in God’s goodness as he enters the worst time of his life on earth.

In the Servant’s Song, we hear this note: God is good, and we can hope in God even as we enter the darkness of difficult times in our lives. 

 

John 12 

We read the account of the Triumphal Entry from John’s gospel. Matthew, Mark, and Luke give similar accounts of Palm Sunday. John tells his own story – clearly the same event, but he was looking at it from a different perspective. We follow his view through the verses we read. 

• “The next day” in verse 12 locates the event just after Mary (sister of Martha and Lazarus) anoints Jesus’ feet in their home in Bethany, just after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus uses this anointing to speak of his coming death, and the entry into Jerusalem leads to that death. 
• We read that a large crowd of people were in Jerusalem for the Passover, now less than a week away. Apparently, they had heard of the way that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11), so when they heard that Jesus was coming into the city, they went to meet him. 
• Verse 13 records them picking up palm branches as part of their celebration, which gives today its name of “Palm Sunday”. [Where the people get the branches is a matter of some scholarly discussion.] They also start cheering for Jesus, calling him “the King of Israel”. 
• In verse 14, Jesus sits on a donkey to enter the city, and John explains that this action fulfilled the prophecy quoted in verse 15. 
• Jesus’ disciples only recognized the significance of this action after he had been executed and then raised from the dead. This last point is important: They did not recognize what Jesus was doing until later, when they had time to put the whole picture together.

In the next few verses, the Pharisees (and of course the other leaders who were threatened by Jesus’ ministry) realize that they are in trouble of being overwhelmed by the popular response to Jesus, and they set in motion the actions that lead to Jesus’ arrest and execution. The night is getting dark, and the shadows are gathering. 

 

Called to Deep Hope 

These events are familiar. Usually, we would have started our service this morning with the children acting out the “triumphal entry” (as we call it). We do this every year, and we know this story well. We know it so well that we may not realize how completely backwards the whole story is. Look at it again. 

 

“The Triumphal Entry” bears a name that suggests triumph and success and joy. The event leaves the Pharisees themselves saying, “The whole world has gone after him!” (verse 19). In fact, this parade is the beginning of the darkest hour. It ushers in the full weight of the religious authorities acting against Jesus, leading to his execution. Jesus himself knows well that this apparent triumph is the beginning of trouble. This upside-down series of events mirrors what we read in Isaiah 50, where the faithful action of the servant leads to punishment and scourging, a whip laid across the servant’s back. 

 

In the same way, this beginning of trouble is God’s call to deep hope in our lives. Isaiah reminds us that God is good, and we can hope in God even as we enter the darkness of difficult times in our lives. The application of this truth to Jesus adds a special dimension to the experience of entering life’s shadows. Jesus did not need to be purified, but we do. Jesus did not need to enter into darkness, but we do. Jesus could have stayed with the trinity of persons within the Godhead, but we cannot. To enter the presence of God, we need radical purification. Without entering the shadows of this life, we cannot enter into the light of God’s presence. Jesus goes first to open the path for us and to light the path for us as we follow him into the shadows. 

 

This is a theme we have dug into often over the past weeks, so often that we might wonder why we need to say it again. We say it again because we have trouble really believing it. We return to this theme because it is a constant theme in our lives. I have reminded you before of the Friday prayer in the Anglican Prayer Book:

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

Why does the prayer book give this prayer for each Friday of the year? Because we can pray the words easily without internalizing them. Repeated use helps to bring us to the point that we discover the truth of these words in our own lives. 

 

Finding Hope in the Shadows 

In last week’s bulletin, we saw some questions to help us think about the passages for today: Are you a glass half-full or a glass half-empty person? Are you a realist who hopes against hope or an optimist who thinks everything is fine as the boat sinks beneath the waves? What do you think Jesus wants you to be? 

 

I don’t know if you thought about these questions or not, but we can think about them now. Are you a realist or an optimist? Do you see possibilities or trouble when something starts to go wrong? I used to be an optimist – at least, I think I was. Now, I can see the problems ahead more easily than the possibilities. The answer to this question is probably more a matter of personality than anything else. I don’t think Jesus wants us to be one or the other. I do think that Jesus wants to do something in us and through us as we enter into the shadows of life. 

 

Some of us face hardships cheerfully; some of us face hardships fearfully. Some of us see clearly the possible problems that may come; some of us see clearly the possibilities for joy. All of us can rest in Jesus and follow him into the shadows. When we walk with Jesus, we begin to find something of what God wants to do in our lives. 

 

I think of my grandfather. He was a singer and teacher, a missionary and a minister. He and my grandmother went to Zimbabwe with BIC Missions in 1921. They came home in 1929 for a furlough. Their oldest son was then 13, and they made the decision to leave him with my grandfather’s brother, a teacher at Messiah College. But that brother and his wife refused to take responsibility for their nephew, and my grandparents found that their missionary career was over. Their belongings in Zimbabwe stayed there. Their relationship with the church and people in Zimbabwe ended without a chance to say goodbye. I don’t know how they processed the events, but I am sure it was a time of walking in the shadows. 

 

Why did these things happen to them? I don’t know, and I don’t need to know. I do know that Jesus had gone before them, entering into Jerusalem and facing his own death. I do know that Jesus provided for them as they processed a difficult change of plans. Grandfather was then 45 years old. Within a few years he had moved to Oklahoma, where he was superintendent of our church bible school in Jabbok, Oklahoma and then to California, where he taught Bible at our church college in Upland. 

 

Upland College was the scene of another time of darkness. When he was about 55, the college went through a financial crisis. In order to meet their budget, they cut the benefit that instructors had, allowing their children to attend the classes for no tuition. When they gave my grandfather a contract, he handed it back to the board chair and asked them to reconsider the child tuition benefit. The board chair simply kept the contract, and grandfather was out of a job. My Dad has told me how grandfather drove into the hills around Upland and sat under a bridge by the road, dwelling on what had happened to him. 

 

He was, I suppose, experiencing depression, brought on by the combination of financial hardship in the college and a personality clash with the board chair. Unemployed, in his mid-50s, wondering how he would provide for his family or do the work God had called him to do. For the moment, he and grandmother took a mission church in Pennsylvania. Eventually, she began teaching art at Messiah College, where they had started their lives together some 40 years before. Grandfather gradually lost his sight, and when I knew him, he could only distinguish light and darkness; he could not see me when we visited him. 

 

Again, I don’t know how they processed these events, and I don’t need to know. I do know that Jesus had gone before them, entering into Jerusalem and facing his own death. I do know that Jesus provided for them as they dealt with the loss of job and status and moved into their retirement years. The truth is that they had a hope that was deeper than the shadows in which they sometimes lived. Their hope was in Jesus, and they lived and died knowing that God cared for them. 

 

Grandfather lived his last years at a place called Messiah Home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a retirement home run by our church. The board chair, whose actions led to his loss of a job 20 or so years before, had fallen ill and lay near death. Those with him asked if they could do anything for him. He asked them to bring John Climenhaga to pray with him. I don’t know what exactly was behind that request or what grandfather thought of it, but he went and prayed with the board chair. Two old ministers in the Brethren in Christ Church, both near the end of their days, knowing that they had hurt each other, approaching the end of their lives in the hope of their common Lord. 

 

Conclusion 

You notice that I am being careful not to say that Jesus’ example sets us free from pain or hardships. I have told a piece of my grandparent’s story. I could have told other parts as well. I cannot say what exactly God was doing in their story, but I am confident that they discovered a deep hope that went deeper in their lives than the loss of job or dreams, deeper than anything that can happen in this life. 

 

Palm Sunday. A reminder that great triumph often precedes great hardship. Next Sunday, Easter Sunday reminds us that great hardship also leads to great triumph. We will not anticipate that triumph yet. Instead, we live in the space where Isaiah acknowledges the pain that the servant of the Lord feels. We live in the moment where clouds gather on the horizon, telling of the storm about to break around us. 

 

I have used a simple story of my grandparents’ lives. I could have used a story of systemic distress and injustice, something perhaps that those who work with the SCO could tell us. I could have used stories from the political world or from our own history of fleeing from Russia. In all these stories, the same truth holds: Jesus has gone before us, entering into Jerusalem and facing his own death. Jesus provides for us as we face the darkness of our own lives and times. Our hope is deeper than our fears, and God is stronger than death. “Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why so disquieted within me? Put your trust in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.”

 

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Palm Sunday, 28 March 2021

 

Isaiah 50:4-9a

The Servant’s Humiliation and Vindication

⁴ The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens—wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. 

⁵ The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. ⁶ I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. 

⁷ The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; ⁸ he who vindicates me is near. 

Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. ⁹ It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

John 12:12-16

Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem

¹² The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. ¹³ So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!” 

¹⁴ Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: ¹⁵ “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” ¹⁶ His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.

Focus 

As we follow Jesus into Holy Week, we sense the rush of the crowds and seek the deep, steady current of God’s steadfast love, calling us to deep hope in the One who comes in the name of the Lord. 

 

Thinking Ahead Questions 

Are you a glass half-full or a glass half-empty person? Are you a realist who hopes against hope or an optimist who things everything is fine as the boat sinks beneath the waves? What do you think Jesus wants you to be? 

 

Going Deeper Questions 

1. In the sermon, I said that God is good, and we can hope in God even as we enter the darkness of difficult times in our lives. How does God’s goodness “fix” the problems that we face in life? 

2. We have heard many times now the theme of trusting God in times of trouble. What benefit is there in hearing this theme more than once? 

3. Do you think optimists or pessimists are closer to the way God wants us to be? 

4. What is “deep hope” anyway? How does deep hope work in our lives when we’re experiencing the problems of this world?