• II Samuel 1:1,17-27

David’s moving and eloquent lament over the death of the King, Saul, and his eldest son, Jonathan, expresses national and personal loss.  He is filled with shame and outrage over the defeat of Israel and the image of the corpses of the King and his son left on the battlefield.  And for his beloved Jonathan he declares, “your love to me was more wonderful, passing the love of women.”

• Psalm 130

The psalmist asks: if the Lord showed no mercy for our failures, “how would we survive?”  Even in the bleakest night, on the verge of being overwhelmed by remorse and guilt, we wait, even more eagerly than those whose job it is to look for the first hint of dawn, i.e. for the Lord’s “steadfast kindness” and “great redemption.”

OR

• Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15;2:23-24

Presented as a dialogue between Greek nihilism and traditional Judaism, the “Wisdom of Solomon” engages in the big questions.  In this excerpt, the writer understands our world as a conflict between “God”/”generative forces”/”righteousness” against “poison”/”the devil’s envy”/”death.”

• “A Song of God’s Mercy” Lamentations 3:21-33

Written in response to the fall and capture of Jerusalem by Babylon, the collection of poems and songs in Lamentations express “hope” because of “God’s kindness” as if it had already occurred.  Such confidence is merited because “God’s mercies are never-ending,” and “new every morning.”  The psalmist is willing to wait for the Lord to act and encourages others “to wait even in silence/for the salvation of the Lord.”  It is “good” to cling “to hope even when tasting the dust.”  It is “good” to endure “insults.” Why?  Because “the Lord does not reject us forever….”

• OR Psalm 30

The psalmist recalls an occasion when he confronted his own death, but was “raised up” by God.  God’s wrath lasts a moment, but God’s pleasure last a lifetime; one goes to bed weeping, but wakes up in the morning ready to sing!   Death is mute, but You, O Lord, turned my sad song into a dance tune!

• II Corinthians 8:7-15

Paul describes Jesus humiliation and execution as a “generous act,” indeed the “generous act” par excellence.  Therefore, be generous, he writes to the Corinthians, so that there is a “fair balance” between “your present abundance” and the needs of others.

• Mark 5:21-43

Mark starts one miracle narrative, recalls another, and then returns to the first.  Each contains important declarations made by Jesus.

As word spreads about Jesus the crowds around him grow larger and more expectant.  On this occasion, a leader of the local synagogue, Jarius, seeks out Jesus and when he finds him falls at his feet and begs Jesus to come home with him because his young daughter is near death.  Jesus obliges.  Making  his way through the crowds, Jesus is aware that another person has sought him out that day and asks, “Who touched my clothes?”  Considering the crush of the crowd, the disciples consider that a pointless question.  Nevertheless, a woman who was in her own way at the end of her rope reveals her identity.  She has suffered from hemorrhaging for twelve years and endured useless medical care, which has bankrupted her.  Immediately Jesus declares, “Your faith has made you well; go in peace and he healed….”  The earlier emergency intrudes again when some people who had been at the home of Jarius relay the news, “Your daughter is dead.”  Immediately Jesus declares, “do  not fear, only believe.”  They arrive at the home of Jarius, Jesus takes him, his wife and three of his disciples into the girl’s room where he tells the child to “get up.”  She gets up immediately and begins to walk.  Jesus instructs that she be given something to eat and not to tell anyone what they have just witnessed.

When biblical narratives consider life before death, especially when awareness has been heightened due to an immediate, life-threatening crisis, they speculate that if God is currently known first-hand by the traits of reliability, mercy and the unique gift of life itself, then we can reasonably have hope about life after death.  Looking deeply at life before death, which is, of course, the only life they can know first-hand for now, biblical testimonies see in the cycle of night always followed by morning a rhythm that inspires hope; we go to bed full of anxieties, but wake up the next morning ready to sing because we are renewed by the promise of the new day before us, the psalmist intones.  Paul introduces an ethical imperative.  We should use this life–whatever time, ability, and assets we are given– to make sure that there is a “fair balance” with those who are currently in more need than we are.

Both of Mark’s intertwining narratives begin with anxiety and despair.  A father, desperate because his young daughter is dying, prostrates himself before Jesus in front of a crowd of neighbors of whom he is a leader in their synagogue and begs for help.  Before Jesus can get to the man’s home, a woman who is emotionally, physically and financially near ruin reaches out to Jesus in the hope that if she can just brush against his clothing she will find help.  In both cases, their faith “saved”  them just when ruin or death seemed certain.  Specifically and significantly, Mark writes that Jesus says, Your faith has saved you; Do not fear, only trust.

Both the parents of the young girl and the distraught woman had been “wounded” by life, but discovered hope, enough hope to change the rest of their lives.

At the intellectual and emotional climax of his meditation, The Unforgettable and the Unhoped For, Jean-Louis Chretien writes:

“It is in the very event of the wound by which our existence is altered and opened, and becomes itself the site of the manifestation of what it responds to.  There is true force only in weakness, a weakness that is opened up by what comes toward us. The wound can bless.  It all comes down to thinking finitude positively, as the place where there can truly be– though not transparently–a testimony to the infinite.” (p.122)  “The acute point of the present and our presence takes its acuity only from its encounter with the inordinate extremities of time that is not ours, but also the way the whole of humanity encounters the One who calls it to itself, and the way each of us encounters a past more ancient than all memory and a future beyond all expectation.” (p.124)  “…The human body does not respond solely by itself…  to be the place where the world transforms its light into song.” (p.128)

Or, as the psalmist used a similar image; to turn our sad songs into dance tunes!

To the woman at the end of her rope, what did Jesus say?  “Your trust has saved you.”  To the panicked parents, what was his message?  “Do not fear, only believe.”  It was a choice made by the desperate father and the ravaged woman that changed their fate.  Ponder what Mark’s narrative leaves to our imaginations–  the rest of the life of the woman healed by “trust” and  how Jarius and his family lived the rest of their days liberated from fear!  They are new witnesses to the power of hope, to the opportunities of each new day.  And, a blessing to others.