When There's Hopelessness...

There are moments in our lives where time seems to go by oh so slowly. When our spouse says, “we need to talk when you get home,” that whole day goes by slowly. When your boss says, “I need to see you at the end of the day,” time goes slow. Time seems to slow down some weeks when it hits Friday and we are almost done for the week, and time is really slow when we are waiting for our vacation to start. And, don’t even get me started on how slow a microwave minute actually is...

But, there are moments where time goes by really quickly! The weekend often moves too quickly, our vacation seems to be over before it even begins, for those of you who have raised children you’ve reminded Larissa and I multiple times that this time goes quickly. It’s good when our recovery time from sickness or an injury is quick, or when the work day/week goes by quickly.

Through it all though, a second is still a second, a minute a minute, an hour an hour, a day a day and so on. Time doesn’t actually slow down or speed up, it stays the same. But, to us, in our perception of it, it often changes in speed.

A few years back, in one of my previous churches, there was a man named Bill. Bill was a man in his late 80’s who constantly joked around. He attended the second of my two churches, so after I finished the service at my first church I would usually get to the second church with about 5 minutes to spare. Without skipping a beat, every Sunday, Bill would say as I walked in, “Well, it’s about time you showed up.” Then he’d laugh, shake my hand, and we’d talk about our week.

Bill was easy to talk to, encouraging to everyone, and had a deep and passionate love for Jesus and the ministry of the church. Usually, because I was still in college, the days in between our church services seemed to drag on, and one week it did. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on went by slow. By the time it hit Sunday I was ready for worship.

I walked into my second church, started walking back to the kitchen to grab a drink, and there was silence… I looked and Bill wasn’t in his seat. Bill never missed church. Well, I quickly found out that Bill was in the hospital, he had been admitted the night before. And, at the end of the service I recieved a call that Bill had passed.

Now, it felt like my week went by fast. In that time frame, rather quickly, my week went from good and happy, to mournful and sad. I didn’t think the week before would be the last time I would get to talk to Bill. But, that’s how quickly things can change.

This week, beginning this morning and ending next week on Sunday is one that stirs up a lot of emotion in us, doesn’t it.

Today, we celebrate the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. And, following along with the week that we see in Scripture, we come together again on Thursday, again on Friday, we mourn the death of Jesus, and we look forward to hope that Easter is to bring.

We move from happiness, excitement, and zeal…to mourning, and agony, and pain. It may seem to us like a rather quick development over the course of a week, but it’s exactly what happened to Jesus. In the course of just a few days he was received as a king, betrayed by a friend, beaten and abused, and ultimately murdered.

As many of us know, things can change rather quickly.

But, we aren’t here this morning to focus on the quickness of change but to talk about what changes.

In between Luke 19 and Luke 24, 5 chapter in the Bible, much changes. Jesus is received into Jerusalem as a mighty king, with people laying down their cloaks and coat, shouting “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Once he’s in the city Jesus begins driving people out of the temple, sharing parables with the people around him. He caused the scribes and chief priests to be angry by his parables against them, and they started sending spies to try and trap Jesus in his words.

Pharisees and Sadducees endlessly questioned Jesus, he foretold the destruction of the temple, openly bashed the scribes. He continues to teach openly and publicly, despite the push back from authority and leaders. He shares knowledge of what is about to happen, and eventually he finds himself in the garden.

It’s there, in the garden, where Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. It’s there where Jesus looks at the crowd armed with swords and clubs and says, “When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness!”

Peter denies Jesus

Jesus is beaten

Jesus is sentenced

Jesus is crucified

Jesus dies

All of this in such a short amount of time.

But, at this point I want to focus on what Jesus’ followers did. Luke 23:49 says,

Luke 23:49 NRSV

49 But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

Can you imagine standing at a distance and watching these things happen to your teacher? To your brother? To your friend? To your son? That’s what happens here.

In this very moment, as Christ breathed his last breath, hope seemed to fleet. As his head hung for that final time I imagine that the disciples, those who followed Jesus, felt hope leave their bodies much like Jesus’ final breath.

Hope left, and despair entered in. They moved, in breath taking fashion, from confidence in Christ to bewilderment, disbelief, and pain. Even with the promise of His return, the reality of his death settled in and hope was all but present.

While we may not be in the same place or time as the disciples, watching our friend, brother, Lord, killed in front of us, there are certainly many situations, conditions, and awful things that make us feel something very similar. Hopelessness.

Hopelessness is that thing that deflates us. It robs us of joy, happiness, and of course hope.

In looking at this topic of hopelessness I found myself on the Focus on the Family website and wanted to share some stories that I found on the article about hopelessness.

Early one March morning, Heidi, 15, and her boyfriend, Christopher, 16, decided life wasn’t worth living. After a short hike down a rugged path on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles, the teenage couple ducked through a hole in a chain-link fence to get to a narrow concrete spillway known locally as “the diving board.” There, before dawn, the couple jumped, falling 150 feet into the crashing surf below. Their bodies were found by a jogger at sunrise.

Two months later and just a few miles down the coast, 14-year-old Amber and her 15-year-old friend, Alicia, also decided they’d had enough. After tying their wrists together, the two teens walked to the edge of a cliff and jumped. Friends and family knew that Amber and Alicia had been using drugs. But they also said the girls were making progress and seemed happy. After their suicidal leap, many of the girls’ classmates gathered on the cliff to light candles, play music and mourn their loss. One classmate offered this philosophy about life: “You know, life sucks so much as it is now. A lot of teenagers don’t know if it’s going to get better or not. I guess [suicide] is their only way out. They feel they can’t talk to people. We don’t feel like we can talk to our parents or anybody. They say they understand. They don’t!”

The true stories of Heidi, Christopher, Amber and Alicia represent a hopelessness that’s flooding today’s culture in unprecedented ways. To some, life seems so worthless that they’re willing not only to kill themselves, but to senselessly murder others as well. Families and communities are left devastated. For others, depression isn’t strong enough to make them consider suicide, but it is enough to make them feel lonely, unloved and miserable.

This topic of hopelessness and depression is never a comfortable topic to approach, but the truth is that many of us in here, and many people out in our world struggle with it. Children in our schools, adults in the world, both struggle with hopelessness.

For many people they look for meaning, for some direction to fill that hopeless void in them. We can place our hopes in and live for a lot of different things. Money. Sex. Power. Drugs. Work. Stuff. Relationships. Music. A certain look. These things may be very satisfying for a while. But sooner or later a troubling question rumbles through our souls: Is this all there is?

The feeling that accompanies this question is in fact the feeling of hopelessness. A feeling that says “no matter what you do, no matter where you go, no matter what you think…nothing will make your situation better.”

We’ve touched on this quite a bit through various sermons, conversations, Sunday School lessons, and Bible studies, but the point bears repeating...

Nothing in this world, no person, place, situation, will ever fill the void that you are feeling. Nothing will ever fully satisfy your soul in the way that you want it to.

There is nothing in this world that will bring you out of a true sense of hopelessness…except for Christ.

And, as of right now, we stand at a distance, seeing Jesus be crucified on the cross, wondering like the disciples and those who followed Jesus, if it’s truly over. If, hopelessness and that feeling of emptiness is all that there is.

But, we have good and wonderful news. News that will fill you all with hope, will satisfy your souls. There is only one thing, one person, who can do this for your life, and next Sunday on Easter we are going to celebrate the hope that he brings.

This week, remember each day the triumphant entry of Jesus, the reason why we waved our palm branches today. But, remember the betrayal Jesus faced, the pain he endured, and sacrifice he ultimately made.

Amen