Let’s Get Our Hopes Up

This is a repost from a year ago, but seems almost VERY relevant to the state of our world currently. I’m sure we’ve all experienced the very common misreading the tone of a text message. I think I’ve done that with one of Jesus’ lines in today’s gospel. First of all it says that he had just come through Samaria from his hometown where his friends and neighbors rejected him big time. In Samaria he was able to minister to a woman that desperately needed living water and just to be loved by a good man, and because of his kindness, she introduced an entire town to Jesus, Messiah. From there, Jesus wanted to go back to the place where it all began for him, Cana. Perhaps Jesus was being sentimental after being rejected at home. I know for me sometimes I just need to spend time in a place that has special meaning just to get back to center, don’t you? Cana was where he performed his first miracle and maybe Jesus needed to do some reflecting on how his ministry began and where it has come since. Rejection tends to tenderize my heart a lot and I find myself a bit nostalgic for the “good ole days”. (This is, of course, my own interpretation of the scene) 

A royal official got word that Jesus was in the area and because of his reputation throughout that region, the water to wine guy, he wanted to get a miracle of his own. Isn’t that how it works? When we hear about other people’s miraculous healings, when we study the lives of the saints, when we see Jesus’ working in others, we want what they have. The royal official wanted his son to be changed from dying to alive. People’s testimony of the miraculous activates the faith in others. It’s a thing, so share your miraculous stories with one another! When the official asked Jesus to come down to Capernaum to heal his son, Jesus responded, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” And there is the text message that I think I have read incorrectly all my life. I always put a bit of a snarky tone behind this because of the “you people” bit, however, this morning from that place of tender heartedness and sentimentality, it feels like Jesus is reminiscing, “Oh yeah, this is where my first miracle took place so of course they expect the miraculous, and they should!” What would really help us understand that line of text would be a light bulb emoji, just sayin’. We can and should EXPECT the miraculous. We have all the stories of healing in the gospels, we have real life examples of signs and wonders, we know people that have been healed, saved, rehabilitated, and we have seen the miraculous with our own eyes, therefore, we should expect the miracles, just like the royal official did in today’s gospel. Expectation requires a faith that stands on the shoulders of witness. Once you’ve witnessed signs and wonders, you expect them, and the more signs and wonders you expect, the more you will witness!!! I know I’ve heard things like, “let’s not get our hopes up,” or “don’t give that sick person a false sense of hope”, and it hurts my heart because the very definition hope is expecting something unlikely and if we can’t have hope then faith and love also go out the window because they are a package deal! Hope or expectation in the miraculous is the anchor of our virtue. 

After Jesus’ light bulb emoji moment, the official tried to persuade him to come down, knowing that his presence alone was needed, and Jesus said healed his son in that moment because of his expectation and faith. When we put ourselves in the presence of Christ and expect miracles, we stir his heart in the same way. He knows that we need signs and wonders to believe and he is constantly sprinkling our lives with these things. I know that I need to step up my expectation, my confidence in his will to heal all things, and my belief that he will do so. Today’s gospel reminds me the importance of hope and how it remains at the center of faith and love. Here is a piece I wrote about hope that might capture it: 

 Faith leads to hope, and love flows from hope, but hope resides in the middle of both. Hope binds the mystery of faith to the testimony of love, and together a trinity of grace circles the soul singing you into wellness, cheering you to thrive, and catching you when you fall. 

It is well with my soul. 

Reading 1 IS 65:17-21

Thus says the LORD:
Lo, I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
The things of the past shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness
in what I create;
For I create Jerusalem to be a joy
and its people to be a delight;
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and exult in my people.
No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there,
or the sound of crying;
No longer shall there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not round out his full lifetime;
He dies a mere youth who reaches but a hundred years,
and he who fails of a hundred shall be thought accursed.
They shall live in the houses they build,
and eat the fruit of the vineyards they plant.

Responsorial Psalm 30:2 AND 4, 5-6, 11-12A AND 13B

R.    (2a)  I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
I will extol you, O LORD, for you drew me clear
and did not let my enemies rejoice over me.
O LORD, you brought me up from the nether world;
you preserved me from among those going down into the pit.
R.    I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
Sing praise to the LORD, you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger lasts but a moment;
a lifetime, his good will.
At nightfall, weeping enters in,
but with the dawn, rejoicing.
R.    I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
“Hear, O LORD, and have pity on me;
O LORD, be my helper.”
You changed my mourning into dancing;
O LORD, my God, forever will I give you thanks.
R.    I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.

Verse Before The GospelAM 5:14

Seek good and not evil so that you may live,
and the LORD will be with you.

Gospel JN 4:43-54

At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee.
For Jesus himself testified
that a prophet has no honor in his native place.
When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him,
since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast;
for they themselves had gone to the feast.

Then he returned to Cana in Galilee,
where he had made the water wine.
Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum.
When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea,
he went to him and asked him to come down
and heal his son, who was near death.
Jesus said to him,
“Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
The royal official said to him,
“Sir, come down before my child dies.”
Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.”
The man believed what Jesus said to him and left.
While the man was on his way back,
his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live.
He asked them when he began to recover.
They told him,
“The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.”
The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him,
“Your son will live,”
and he and his whole household came to believe.
Now this was the second sign Jesus did
when he came to Galilee from Judea.