Confidence, hope.... faith

Sometimes I say things which seem to damage my street credibility with some people. A while ago I admitted to someone that I watched Neighbours on television. Their look of amazement turned to laughter as I confessed I actually recorded it each day so I didn’t miss it !

Street credibility was a little knocked ! Also a little while ago I confessed to rather enjoying economics – it is quite a fascinating subject, though not particularly good for street credibility again !

Hopefully the economy is now improving and the results of that improvement will work their way through to all people in the not too distant future...

But economies are likely to have good and bad times because they’re often very largely governed by confidence. Back through the disastrous recession and with banks in serious problems one of the major root causes was a loss of confidence, and for all of the complicated and detailed economic arguments one of the most important factors in a good economy is not method or practice but confidence.

Confidence is what really sustains and grows an economy, and that’s not really as surprising as it sounds, because it’s very often confidence or lack of it that governs how we all behave. In Christian terms we may well call this confidence ‘Hope’.

A man once asked a friend if he had ever achieved any of his childhood hopes, and the friend replied, ‘Yes, when my mother used to comb my hair, I often wished I didn’t have any !’... I can identify with that !

Hopes and expectations are incredibly important. In our gospel reading today (Mark 5:21-43), this is really highlighted, and we can perhaps replace the word confidence or hope with faith....

Jairus was a leader in the synagogue and yet he fell at the feet of Jesus and begged him to come to his house to pray for his sick daughter. And Jesus left to go with him.

But while he was on his way, someone touched his cloak – and even in the middle of a big crowd Jesus noticed. It was a woman who had been suffering for 12 years and wanted Jesus to heal her – she believed that just touching his clothes would be enough...

What incredibly powerful stories of confidence, of hope, of faith...

And Jesus spoke to the woman and said her faith had made her well, and he went on to the house of Jairus and saved his daughter...

Confidence, hope and faith change lives...

Many people today are living tragically without any hope at all. One night at dinner a man, fascinated his friends by telling of his experiences in a little town named Flagstaff. The town was to be flooded, as part of a large lake for which a dam was being built. In the months before it was to be flooded, all improvements and repairs in the whole town were stopped. What was the use of painting a house if it were to be covered with water in six months? Why repair anything when the whole village was to be wiped out?

So, week by week, the whole town became more and more dirty and derelict. And then the man added by way of explanation: "Where there is no faith in the future, there is no power in the present."

How true that is – to live well today we need to believe that there is a bright tomorrow – however far in the distance that tomorrow may seem. People talk of tough times in the church, but the church has survived and thrived through many more difficult times... if it’s our church, then we will struggle but when we recognise it’s God’s church, there will be no struggle... Just confidence, hope and faith... 

But sometimes people do hope in things that are not realistic, sometimes people hedge their bets so finely that disaster will almost certainly follow at some point. There’s a story of a man sentenced to death. He obtained a reprieve by assuring the king he would teach his majesty's horse to fly within a year - on the condition that if he didn't succeed, he would be put to death at the end of the year. "Within a year," the man explained later, "the king may die, or I may die, or the horse may die. Furthermore, in a year, who knows? Maybe the horse will learn to fly."

But that isn’t anything like the hope we have in God - that gospel reading offered a totally different picture – there was the faith and hope of Jairus who begged Jesus to come and help his daughter, and there was the faith of the woman who believed that even by touching the clothes of Jesus she could be made well. Their hope was not misplaced…

The woman was healed and Jairus’ daughter was raised to life when all hope seemed to have gone, and today, putting our imperfect human hopes in Jesus will be rewarded by the joy and peace of knowing that in even the darkest of times, we can still look forward to a better tomorrow.

Some would say our faith is a vain hope. Some would say it’s just a crutch to get us through, others would say it has no meaning in a world where we need to help ourselves, but we must point them in the direction of Jesus– in him we have a secure hope.

He didn’t come with empty promises – he didn’t come promising wealth or happiness. He came promising peace, he came offering hope…

He took people with him on his ministry, and they watched him deliver his promises – he healed, he preached justice and fairness, he taught people to love, he showed people the futility of earthly wealth and success and told them of the joys of seeking real success in life – the ability to help one another, and to be helped, the gift of compassion and understanding. This is the model we are called to follow – a model of love and compassion and honesty and prayer and encouragement and living together as a family... It’s sadly a model so many of us fail to follow so often...

And it isn’t easy... At times it looked to many of Jesus’ followers as if the ministry had failed, but Jesus never once broke his commitment to them – there were times when all seemed lost - he was followed like a criminal, arrested, tortured, even killed – but there was still hope because he conquered death and rose again, destroying the power of death once and for all !

Jesus never broke a promise – he lived the life he said he would... Today he’s still making promises to each one of us – the promise to love us, to accept us, to heal us, to challenge us, to move us and to fill us with his power and his wisdom…

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning, great is his faithfulness (Lamentations 3:22) now and always.