Gospel Talk: The Scream

Room65 - The Scream

David J. Nixon (August 2010)

HOPE in a broken and painful world, but how FAITH is the full consummation of hope (as we need to trust God, who is the only one who can make things better, all other sources of hope will fail since only Jesus has conquered the ultimate enemy of death)

Creation:
Edinburgh is a great City of Art and Culture. If you take a stroll through the National Gallery of Scotland on Princes Street then you’ll see many pictures. Pictures evoke different responses and emotions in us. One that has always intrigued me is one by the Norwegian impressionist Edvard Munch, entitled “The Scream”. What makes it stand out is how it evokes despair and horror. He described in his diary in 1892 how the inspiration came as he saw a red sunset one evening and as the sun went down he saw blood and tongues of fire rising above the city of Nice and felt an “infinite scream passing through nature”.

When we look around our world today there appears much to despair and be horrified about in our cities as a scream passes through nature: e.g. financial collapse, unemployment, terrorism, natural disasters.

Against this background of despair and sadness, people look for hope…
… in people e.g. Barack Obama was touted as hope (PICTURE) - sadly he has failed to live up to the expectations
… sometimes people go looking for hope in social popularity, work promotion, or financial prosperity – only to find that when they get there, they are still just as unsatisfied
… sadly others turn to drink and drugs to numb the pain and escape the despair that comes from lacking hope amidst the turmoil of life.

We live in a broken world, we are all victims of that brokenness and we desperately need hope. But the things we turn to for hope only seem to work for a short time, but ultimately disappoint.

Christ:
I want to tell you tonight about a true and living hope: Jesus Christ (PICTURE)

We can only begin to have hope, if we understand the cause of the brokenness! The “infinite scream passing through nature” is the cry emanating from a broken relationship between God and His creation. This broken relationship was caused by sin, that is our rebellion against and abandonment of God. Sin can be described as placing your hopes and dreams in anything but God – to think that something, someone or yourself can give you all that you want so you don’t need to worry about God. The Bible says of our sin that each of us has turned to our own way, a way that is separated from God, living without reference to Him, and a way that will only lead to death and destruction. This extends to eternal death and separation from God after death. Thus, this broken world is actually the best thing going if you do not have God…that is what it means to have no hope!

How can this news possibly be the beginning of hope? Well simply because even though we all have gone our own way without God, God still loves us. He wants to restore us into relationship with Him. We can have hope as we suffer in a broken world if we know we have a good God who can fix the brokenness and bring good.

But you know hope is actually something LESS than what we really need, which is faith. I could live in London and hope to meet the Queen one day, but unless I have a relationship with her or someone close to her I will never get to enjoy the fulfillment of that hope. Likewise, we can hope that a good God will help us and heal us, but we need a relationship with Him in order to experience the fulfillment of that hope. A living relationship with God is something we can call FAITH. Christian hope is not about our wants or desires for the future…it’s about assurance and confidence about the future which comes from knowing the good and living God.

Let me illustrate this all important truth from one of the historical accounts of Jesus’ ministry in Mark’s gospel. Jesus heals a crippled man who had no hope in the world, just begged to try to get by and would have lived an awful life in the gutters and edges of society. This man has hope in Jesus to heal him of his physical brokenness, but He gets so much more. Jesus deals first with this man’s broken relationship with God as Jesus says: “your sins are forgiven”. This shows that the real hope this man needs is only found in having a relationship with God through having faith in Jesus; but this relationship is not possible unless our sins are forgiven. Jesus came to bring hope in the only way possible by dealing with our sin.

Choice:
Do you want to be set free from despair? Do you want to receive the free gift of hope – not only for this life but for all eternity? I want to leave you with this wonderful truth that faith in Jesus is the culmination of our desire for hope in this broken world. And because it is hope in a good God, we can have assurance that our faith will not disappoint.