Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Word of the Lord which engages us this morning comes from our Gospel lesson (Matthew 12: 18-21).
"I hope so!" What do we mean by that word – hope? A child may say, "I hope I have a teacher I like," or, "I hope I get a good grade." A teenager may declare, "I hope that my friends like me," or, "I hope that I make the team." Others of us are saying, "I hope I will do well at my job," or "I hope that people will approve," or "I hope that I get a raise."
There are a lot of people in the world whose hopes are minimal. Their cry is simply, "I hope I can find something to eat." "I hope my mother doesn't die and leave me alone." "I hope I can find some clean water to drink." "I hope I can survive this war." "I hope this pain goes away."
With hope there is always a vision. We get a picture in our mind of what it will look like if we get what we hope for. None of us hopes for what we can see. Our hope is molded by what we can't see, what we want it to be, what we believe that we can be.
In his book, The Future of God, Carl Braaten says "The message of hope is that man is in distress. Hope is an SOS signal. A person does not hope if there is nothing wrong or lacking, just as a ship does not dash off an SOS signal unless it needs help."
In the verses preceding our text, Jesus is in the temple where there is a man with a paralyzed arm. I am sure that his heart was full of hope that Jesus might heal his arm. In his mind he could see that arm whole. He could picture himself picking up his child, throwing a ball, using that arm the way God first designed.
In verse 15, Matthew tells us that many people followed Jesus. In this crowd there must have been people with many different ailments, all of them filled with hope that Jesus would touch them and make them whole again. Matthew simply says "Jesus cured them." With Jesus their hopes became reality, their visions fulfilled.
Hope is the fuel for life. Without hope man dies. Hope is a universal desire. It is not something experienced only in the U.S.; all nations, all people on this earth are looking for hope. The sad reality is that for the majority of us, our visions are often built on physical or material hopes. We search for a meaning to life, but don't know where to look or how to find it. Like ships wandering at sea with a broken rudder or no fuel, our sinfulness and helplessness overwhelm us. We know our human dilemma. Our sin has separated us from our only hope, our God and Creator. As long as our hopes are focused on what we can do for ourselves or what some other human can do for us, we continue to wander aimlessly in the ocean of life. As long as our SOS distress signals are directed to ourselves or to other human beings, there is no hope.
Dr. Curt Richter of Johns Hopkins University experiments with rats. He discovered that if you hold a rat firmly in your hand, so that no matter how valiantly he struggles he cannot escape, he will finally give up. At that point, if you throw that rat into a tank of warm water, he will sink and not even try to swim. He has learned to give up – there is not point to struggling. There is no hope. On the other hand, if you throw another rat into the water, one that does not feel that his situation is hopeless, that rat will struggle to swim to safety….. There are people all over the world who have given up. They have no hope. They are sinking and drowning. They have no vision. They have even given up looking for hope.
Our text this morning is full of hope… for them and for us. The man with the paralyzed arm found Jesus and when he did, he found hope. The crowds followed Jesus and they found hope. The concluding words of our text simply say, "In His [Jesus'] name the nations will put their hope."
This morning, once again our SOS signal went up as we confessed our sins and expressed our hopelessness. We knew that there was no way we, or any other human being, could repair our floundering ship or keep it from imminent shipwreck. Our cry was to our Creator. We knew that without him there is no hope. And then our visions were fulfilled, our rudders were repaired, new hope loomed in our heart as we heard the announcement "In the name of Jesus, I forgive you all your sins." At that point we could shout with Peter (1:3), "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." The message of Lent and Easter filled our vision once again, and we were assured that there is indeed hope. Not just for the now, but for eternity. It becomes clear again that to have hope is to have a future. To have Jesus is to have eternity.
When we look to the cross and the open tomb we begin to understand that hope does not rest on an idea or a philosophy; hope rests on a living person, Jesus Christ. Man does not create hope. It is a gift from God. Hope is not grabbed on to by our hands or our mind. Hope is given to us by our faith in Christ.
Remember 1 Corinthians 13 (13)? "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love." These 3 are inseparable. You need faith to have true hope. God uses our faith to give us the vision of a new life in Christ, the vision of an eternal life in heaven, the vision of a God who loves us and forgives us, the vision that can keep going because our hope is in Jesus Christ.
Our text puts it this way: "He will not break off a damaged cattail. He will not even put out a smoldering wick…" Jesus is the fuel in our lamp. Regardless of how weak our wick is, God will not put it out as long as it is burning on the fuel of Jesus Christ. If a wick burns without fuel, it consumes itself. With fuel, however, even the weakest wick can keep burning. With Jesus our lives have meaning and purpose. With Christ there is hope, not only for us, but our text says, "In his name the nations will put their hope."
Let's go back to 1 Corinthians 13 which says that what remains is faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. Now why would Paul say the greatest of these is love? The answer is clear: It is love that gives hope. We wouldn't have hope if it weren't for love. Now I'm not talking about human love. On its own it will pass away. I'm not talking about some generic spiritualized love. I'm talking about a specific, tangible, ever-present love. John 3: 16 "For God so LOVED the world, that He GAVE His only begotten Son, that whoever trusts in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." It was God's great love for us that moved Him to give us Jesus Christ, the source of all our hope. Next we remember the overwhelming love of Jesus that moved Him to sacrifice His life on the cross so that we can have hope. John reminds us (1 John 3: 16): "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us." Love produces hope, and once we have hope, hope produces love. Now here is where we get involved. In 1 John 4: 11 the apostle looks us in the eye and says "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."
God wants all the nations to have true hope, the hope that is found in his name and no other. He leaves the challenge in our hands, yours and mine. In Matthew 28 He commissions us to "go and make disciples of all nations." God has chosen to share His hope with all nations through those of us who already know that hope and love. As we experience that love, as we hear again today that Good News of forgiveness and salvation, it is not something we tuck down into the storehouses of our own minds and hearts to keep away from others. God gave us this hope to give it away. If we truly love our neighbor we will want her to have the same hope we have.
We stagger a little when we hear the challenge to reach "all nations". For years we have been sending missionaries across the borders and oceans and doing our best to support them. Millions of people have come to trust in Jesus Christ through these mission workers. But millions more still need to hear of Jesus' Word. In his love God has reversed much of our mission work; today He is sending the nations to us as much as we are sending missionaries to the nations. They live in our communities and our neighborhoods. Black and yellow, red and white they are precious in his sight. Our Old Testament lesson reminds us, "In those days ten men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one (believer) by the hem of his robe and say "Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you." That prophecy is coming true before our own eyes. People from all nations are seeking the hope which we have. They are taking hold of us, watching us and saying, "Let us go with you because we have heard and we have seen that God is with you." They desire the hope we have, the hope God has asked us to share.
Today we celebrate Lutheran Women's Missionary League Sunday. The LWML is an organization that in love has opened its eyes to the mission field and in love gives their time, talents, and gifts to share God's hope with all the nations. Together we will sing their hymn proclaiming: With care and compassion for all of God's people,/ We're servants in mission who heed the command/ To tell of Christ Jesus and make new disciples/ In earth's farthest corners, throughout every land. As God brings the nations to us it is time to look again to the cross and remember: God loved us so much that he sent His only Son to become an immigrant in our strange world. Seeing our dilemma, in love Jesus was moved to the cross, where he secured our hope for now and for eternity. Then, with great trust, before his ascension, He placed this challenge in your hands and mine: Now in love, go and share this hope with all nations. They are tugging on your robes."
We open our hearts. We open our church doors and we say, "Lord use me. Use all of us here, in this place, to bring Your hope to all nations. Amen
And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4: 7)
Note: This sermon is modified from but very similar to the suggested Sermon Study for LWML Sunday, Fall 2003.