Hope for the Weary

A Sermon Inspired by Matthew 11:28-30

Mental Health Awareness Month 2020

Part 4 of #DaysofHope Sermon Series 

(a worship series adapted with permission from 
HOPE: Living with Confident Expectation Creative Brief 

by The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection)

Today at Adamsville FUMC, we are celebrating our high school graduates. While we all are struggling with making sense of what is happening in the world right now, I know each of our hearts hurts for the students in our community, especially those who are graduating. This isn’t how any of us thought or wanted their senior year to end. Yet, I’ve been amazed by the resilience our seniors have shown, making the sweetest kind of lemonade out the worst kind of lemons.

In a conversation with one of our AFUMC graduates Candice, I asked her “What have you learned about yourself and about faith during this weird end to your senior year?”

Listen to her response: “I used to be a person who had to have everything perfect or the right way. I hated when things went wrong. So, obviously, when I found out my senior year was cut short I was pretty upset. But it helped me realize that not everything is going to go my way. Putting all my trust in God, I’ve made the best of it knowing He was in control. And, honestly, if I had the chance to redo my senior year, I wouldn’t.”

Wow! What an amazing witness to the kind of hope we have been talking about in our #DaysofHope worship series – the kind of hope that is choosing to believe that the future will be better than the present!

Today, we turn to the Gospels. When I was in high school like our graduates Candice and Mollie, I discovered one of my all-time favorite Bible study tools – a concordance. A Biblical concordance is a reference material that records all the verses in Scripture where certain words are used.

So, I decided to look up how many times the word “hope” appears in the different parts of the Bible we’ve been studying in our worship series.

Three weeks ago, we started in the Book of Psalms as we learned together how the Psalms incorporate the full gamut of human emotions from the highest highs to the lowest lows. The word hope is used 22 times throughout the Psalms, which amounts to it showing up in one out of every six Psalms or so. Add in other books of wisdom in the Old Testament, like Proverbs, and that number doubles.

Then, in week 2, we turned to the prophets, the voices God raises up in seasons of disorientation to offer hope even in despair. The prophets of the Old Testament, even for all of the gloom and doom they warn about, use the word hope nearly 20 times.

Last week, we heard Paul’s famous words about the enduring nature of faith, hope, and love. The apostle Paul is probably the most prolific evangelist we read about in the early church. So, it shouldn’t surprise us that throughout his library of letters to different churches that we read in the New Testament, Paul uses the word of hope over 40 times.

So, I got really excited this week when it was time to use my trusty Strong’s Concordance and look up how many times the word hope is used in the Gospel. If you had to take a guess, how many times do you think the word hope shows up?

In all four Gospels?

No….really. Take a shot. Imagine a number. Say it out loud.

If you guessed one time, then…CONGRATULATIONS! You got it right!

In all four Gospels, Jesus only uses the word hope one time! Well, at least in the King James version. In other translations, hope shows up two or three times max!

Wow! Can you believe that? Why only once? Why would Jesus only make passing reference to hope, this essential element of our faith, the thing that keeps us going when everything else falls to pieces? What’s up with that, Jesus?

As I was studying hope this week, I was reminded by the words of Adam Hamilton, the pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, that Jesus doesn’t have to talk about hope very often because he embodies hope. Jesus becomes living, breathing hope for the people he encounters. In Jesus, God put on skin to get closer to us. Jesus became God’s Word living in the flesh. Jesus doesn’t have to spend time talking about hope because he actually gives hope to others by what he says and does.

So far in this series, we’ve been using Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann’s description of the different seasons that we experience to better understand how hope functions in our lives. Remember, Brueggemann teaches that God’s people go through three major life seasons.

First, a season of orientation, when things are going well, and we are pretty content and happy.

Then, something happens, life falls apart, and we enter a season of disorientation, where it feels like everything we have ever been confident in get thrown out the window.

Finally, the broken pieces of our lives begin to come back together again through reorientation as we approach life with new thinking and new hearts.

Brueggemann uses these seasons to describe what the Israelite society experiences as a whole body together. And, while Jesus clearly cares deeply about society as a whole throughout his teaching, most often when Jesus embodies hope in the Gospels, he does so in interactions and relationships with individuals.

Jesus spends most of his time with people who are disoriented, and he seeks to bring them into reorientation. Another way to say that is…Jesus spends most of his time with people who are broken, and he seeks to bring them healing and wholeness.

The people to whom Jesus ministers in the Gospels are broken for all sorts of different reasons. Sometimes, people’s lives have gotten bent out of shape because of their own actions. All the time, we hear that Jesus liked to hang out with tax collectors and sinners, inviting them through love and relationship with him to change their hearts and lives, to repent and turn away from their sin, to live in fuller relationship with God. Because when you change the way you think, your heart begins to change. And when your heart changes, your life changes.

Jesus is clear about what it takes to have a healthy heart and mind. Loving God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and loving your neighbor as you love yourself…that is what a healed and whole life looks like to Jesus.

Yet, other times, the people who Jesus meets need healing not because of their sin but because they have experienced brokenness in their life or in their relationships. Whether broken by physical illness, by demon possession that we understand today as mental health conditions, or by hurt done to them by someone else, broken people are constantly seeking out Jesus. And in him, they find hope and healing.

The truth is ALL of us are broken in some way. We ALL need Jesus’ healing touch.

And, when we find ourselves broken by sin, by illness, by broken relationships, Jesus reaches out to us. Jesus invites us to come closer to him. Jesus takes us in his arms. When we are weary, in him we find rest. When we are broken, in him we find healing. Rest and healing, not because all of a sudden everything is better or fixed…but rest and healing because God is with us.

Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, comes to us in the midst of our brokenness, and he offers us hope and healing. But, how do we choose hope? How do we experience healing? If Jesus doesn’t make everything miraculously better.

First, we pray. Yes, when we or someone we love is sick, is hurt, is broken…we pray for healing. We pray for miracles. We wait for God to do something that no one expects, to make a way out of no way.

But, I firmly believe God intends for our prayers to not stop with words or thoughts in our minds and hearts but to be born as action in our lives.

Most often, I have seen God work his healing miracles through people—through doctors, nurses, researchers, therapists, social workers, counselors, pastors, friends, and the other people who support us and help our hearts, minds, and bodies heal.

I know one of the miracles of God that I have experienced in my life has been the gift of my husband Adam, and the knowledge, training, and skills God has given him as a social worker. This has been a gift and miracle not only for me in my personal life, but my relationship with Adam and the wisdom he shares with me also makes me a better pastor because I know and take seriously how important mental and emotional health is to our spiritual lives.

May is Mental Health Awareness month. Mental Health America, a non-profit advocacy organization, estimate that 1 in 5 people will have a mental health condition in their lifetime.

That means we have members in our congregation, friends in our neighborhood, people in our community who are daily caring for their mental health—whether that looks like anxiety, depression, autism, or another mental health diagnosis.

These mental health conditions are not a choice. They are not a sign of weakness. They are not a moral defect. These conditions are a normal part of life as human beings, and nothing to be ashamed of.

Some of us need medication to correct the chemical imbalances in our brains and bodies that cause these conditions. Sometimes that medication is for a season, sometimes for a lifetime.

Some of us need therapy sessions with a counselor to have a safe place to talk through our emotions, thoughts, and feelings and to learn practices to use to help us cope with the stress we experience in life.

Yes, when we find ourselves or loved ones suffering from depression or anxiety or more, we should pray! Pray fervently for healing from God. But prayer is just one of the tools God has put at our disposal. A necessary and vital one! But God is so full of love and grace that he has given us more!

It's okay to have Jesus and a therapist, too!

God has equipped people with the skills and training to be able to help us and give us the tools to be able to choose hope, to choose to believe that healing can happen and that a better future is possible.

Right now, in this seasons of collective crisis and global pandemic, we should all be checking in on our thoughts, feelings, and emotions to be aware of how everything we are experiencing is affecting our mental health.

Consider this.

Have you had stomach problems or digestion issues lately?

Have you been more irritable than usual? More likely to be impatient or lose your temper with others?

Have you had recently had trouble concentrating? Found it hard to remember things? Not been able to think clearly?

Does it feel like your heart is racing sometimes?

Have you experienced changes in your energy level?

Is it difficult for your to fall asleep or stay asleep?

Do you have a sense or uncontrollable worry or dread?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are most likely experiencing some level of anxiety right now. Which is perfectly normal!

This year’s Mental Health Awareness Month theme is “Tools 2 Thrive.”

Because I’ve experienced these signs of anxiety in my own life, I asked my favorite social worker Adam for some tools to help manage anxiety. Tools that can help us all thrive right now. Tools through which Jesus can heal our hearts and lives.

While there are countless techniques, tools, and practice to help manage anxiety, one helpful tool Adam suggested is mindfulness. When you’re feeling anxious, it is usually about something that you think might happen in the future. Mindfulness is a way of changing your thoughts away from future worry and instead focusing on the things that are happening in the moment right now! The next time you feel yourself becoming anxious about a situation or notice the signs of anxiety rising in your body, try this mindfulness exercise. Breathe!

I know it sounds silly, but I’m serious! Breathe.

When you’re anxious, it can feel like it’s getting harder to breathe. A helpful way to calm your body down is to focus on your breathing. Take deep and slow breaths. Imagine the air going in and out of your body. Pay attention to your belly and chest getting bigger as your breath in. When you breathe out, imagine that you’re breathing out all your negative thoughts and feelings.

There is even a spiritual prayer practice that incorporates this mindfulness tool called breathe prayer. As you inhale, call out in your mind a name you use for God or a truth about God. As you exhale, release your worries and remember the hope we have through our faith.

In this current season, I invite you to join me in this breath prayer. Use it when you wake up. Use it when you are preparing for bed. Use it when you are worried. Use it when you start to get angry or frustrated.

Breathe in deeply and pray in your mind, “O God, you are with me.”

Then breathe out deeply, releasing your anxiety to God and remember, “O God, you will never leave me.”

Try that with me right now.

O God, you are with me.

O God, you will never leave me.

O God, you are with me.

O God, you will never leave me.

O God, you are with me.

O God, you will never leave me.

Friends, the good news is that God will never leave nor forsake us. When we are weary, when our burdens feel heavier than we can hold, Jesus says to us, “Come to me. Find rest. Find hope. I will always be with you.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.