Feb. 23, 2003
I subscribe to Hope!
I subscribe to the magazine Hope and in it I found a story about
Jo Beth Walt, who awakens every morning in her San Francisco apartment
bedroom to a scene that is not for everyone. On her walls are
photographs of children severely scarred by burns. But they are an
inspiration to her. “People have
trouble looking at these,” says
JoBeth, “They see disfigurement, but I
look at them and smile. These photos remind me of the best things in my
life. I just see fabulous children, not their scars.” In one photo Jo Beth holds a child of about six in
her lap, the small burn pocked arms looped around her neck, her bright
face pitted with scars. But her eyes are alive with laughter and love. “This is Maudeane, and I am in awe of her strength
and courage. She has taught me so much about accepting my own
scars.” You see on a July Sunday
18 years ago, JoBeth and her husband Mark drove to the Sacramento River
Delta to go water-skiing. The weather was glorious and her spirits were
high, she and Mark had been married a year and a half, and she was due
to start a new job the next day. The boat was brought to the dock for
fueling, and she bent over to put on suntan lotion. As the motor
started up, she heard a whooshing sound and felt something on her left
shoulder. Gasoline had leaked undetected into the bilge and ignited.
Instantly, both Mark and JoBeth were engulfed in flames. “All I could think about was getting into the
water,” she recalls. “I closed my eyes and crawled off the dock. When I
resurfaced, I could see the skin peeling off my arms.” Someone helped her tread water until the
firefighters arrived. In shock she had no idea she was suffering from
second and third degree burns over 38 percent of her body. Mark was
even more severely burned. The two spent the next two months in the
hospital. Though four operations and a long year of physical therapy
have rendered many of her injuries inconspicuous, there were times when
she thought her wounds would never heal, especially the emotional ones.
“Sometimes I look back , I feel I was
robbed of my thirties,” she
says. “But then I would never have met
all these people. The accident opened me to a whole new life.” That was 6 years later, when Jo Beth started
volunteering at a summer camp for burn injured children and
rediscovered herself.
It started with Jo Beth seeing a news segment on a
summer camp run by California Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation, where
children with burn injuries could go to forget, at least for a week,
their relentless regiments of therapies, operations, and their
parent’s tendency to overprotect. It was a safe place to have fun
and be among others who understood how they felt. Jo Beth volunteered
and in June 1991, Mark drove an excited but apprehensive Jo Beth to
Champ Camp, where she would be a counselor for teenage girls for a
week. “I didn’t know how I would
react,” she says. “I wasn’t sure how people would see
me.” On the first night, Jo Beth
brought pretzels, chips and drinks to the cabin, plopped herself on the
floor and invited the girls to join her in a circle. “I knew she was nervous,” recalls former camper Jennifer Percy, then sixteen years old. “But when the kids saw her scars, they came right
out and asked her how she got burned. She automatically had a
connection.” (Hope Magazine, Fall 2000).
I subscribe to hope, the kind of hope that brings
new life even in the midst of such overwhelming odds. I subscribe to
hope that is found in the Isaiah text, when God promises, “I am about to do a new thing.” No matter how bad it has been, no matter how much
we have suffered, no matter how poor the outlook for our lives, God
promises not just once, but every day, that a new thing will be done.
For JoBeth, it took six years, but she found something new, something
that now nourishes her soul, and provides hope for others. Isaiah asks,
“Do you not perceive it?” In other words we need to be alert to this new
thing, to look for signs of hope in our daily lives.
Sometimes despair and depression get the best of
us. We feel like our subscription to hope has run out. We feel we have
run out of energy. We get tired of not getting well, of being alone, of
feeling tired. Instead of hope we feel fear, afraid that this is as
good as it gets. Isaiah preached to God’s special people,
who had to live in exile, and they started to lose hope that God would
ever bring them home. Yet, the prophet says, no matter how much you
have sinned in the past, no matter how much you have suffered, God will
do a new thing.
How are we then to find healing for our lives in
those times we have lost hope? As we turn to the Gospel we find the
story of how one group of friends subscribed to hope by bringing their
paralytic friend to Jesus. First, in what may seem obvious to us, is
they saw the man’s needs. They saw his suffering and found
themselves wanting him to be healed. Now we don’t know too
much about the man, but as the story unfolds, we find that Jesus heals
the man in two ways. First Jesus heals his sins. It is clear that this
is important, and takes precedence over a physical healing. But after a
brief interruption by the cynical scribes Jesus tells the man to take
up his mat and walk, therefore healing him of physical affliction. The
Bible is full of stories that point to the fact that physical illness
and sin are not necessary connected. Some people, not any one here I am
sure, but in some circles, people attribute the physical affliction
with sin. Job for example had three friends, one who said all you have
to do is confess to God your sins and you will be healed. Sometimes,
those with heart attacks are blamed, well if they ate better and
followed the advice of the American Heart Association, then they never
would have been sick. But illness is not always that discriminatory.
Remember the Champs Camp, remember the picture of Jo Beth with camper,
Maudeane? Maudeane was a six year old and her accident had been so
sudden and catastrophic. The family kitten jumped at a lighted candle,
knocking it over onto her chest and igniting her clothes. She was
burned over 90 per cent of her face and body and lost all her hair. Is
there anyone to blame for this accident? No, the horrifying truth is
that sometimes life if beyond our control and those we love are harmed
for no good reason. It is what keeps us parents up at nights. Yet even
then, God creates a new thing. We may not see it right away, we might
not be ready , but God is persistent, God is ready to receive us , to
transform our lives. and give us renewed hope.
Once we have identified what we need , what the
problem is, then we are ready for the second step, find those who can
help us out. It is a temptation sometimes to become the victim, stuck
in feeling sorry for ourselves, because of the sins we have committed
against others, or from anger over what has been suffered from others.
If we have a physical disease, it is often easy to allow the
limitations of that disease dictate our whole approach to life, if only
I didn’t have this arthritis, if only I did not have cancer, if
only I did not have a bum knee. If we allow these limitations to rob us
from hope that we can be transformed by God and be a beacon of light to
others, than we will be stalled in our spiritual growth and health. We
need to let go of the hurt and shame, we need to let go of the
disappointment and reach out to others, risking that they might not
understand, at least not right away. The four who carried the man to
Jesus, carried the burden with him. They cared about him and saw an
opportunity to bring him before the one who could heal him. This is the
power of intercessory prayer. When we pray for another we are bringing
that person before Jesus, remember it is because of the faith that
Jesus saw in the souls of the four friends, that brought forgiveness.
And when we allow others to see our needs, when we allow them to bring
us to Jesus, then the power of healing can result. Next the four
friends find a way to bring the man to Jesus. They are not discouraged
at the first sign of trouble, they are not turned back by the large
crowd, they do not falter in their mission. Why is that? Because, they
have so much faith, they see what is possible once the man is brought
before Jesus that they persevere.
Lastly, the four bring the man before Jesus and
their expectations are exceeded beyond imagination. The man is forgiven
of his sins and he is healed of his physical ailment. A miracle to be
sure. They were amazed and glorified God. This is a great day!
So, I subscribe to hope and I invite you to become
a subscriber as well for someone somewhere in the world experiencing a
miracle right now. Whether it be someone who is injured, and crippled
by that injury find new life, whether it be chemotherapy dousing the
flame of cancer, whether someone discovers new life after seeking the
advice of a close friend after a divorce, signs of hope are every
where.
Today you have an opportunity to bring your needs
before God. I do not know if it is forgiveness from sin or a healing
that you will bring before God, but I do know that when we bring our
burdens, when we bring our burns before God, we can find new hope for
our lives. You have the opportunity to bring your needs or someone
else’s. You can choose to come and pray at the altar with either
Beth or myself, or choose to pray silently. Then after you have prayed
you have the opportunity to be anointed with oil. Anointing is an
ancient practice, one that has brought hope to the exiles through
Isaiah, one used by Jesus and the disciples to bring hope to the first
Christians, and has been used through the centuries to bring hope to
all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. By being anointed with
oil, you are connecting yourselves with the awesome power of our God,
you are subscribing to hope! Amen
