Where Do You Put Your Persistence?

Last week we heard about faith and explored faith as being about more than what we can see-recognizing God’s presence and power to bring healing and wholeness. In faith we are made well-warm fuzzy thoughts of the leper healed and restored. But today it seems we see the opposite in the widow. Things are supposed to change, but when? By the time the Gospel of Luke was written, those hearing it expected Jesus to have returned and completed the fulfillment of the kingdom by now. We hear from Jesus that God’s kingdom is present in his life and in our lives this side of the cross. Yet at the same time we too wait for more to come at a time we do not know. How do we keep the faith when our sense of timing is not met and when so much of the news in our world makes us weary? What is God’s word while we wait and live in a world full of unjust judges and burdensome situations? It’s in this context Jesus speaks of prayer as a way to not lose heart, ultimately asking if when the Son of Man returns will he find faith on earth? Will we rely on turning to God in prayer? Easier said than done. What do we do when it’s not the way we expect?
One possible response comes from the show my daughters and I watch- “Glee” which recently tackled prayer and faith in crisis or injustice. One of the regular characters is Sue, a power hungry overbearing high school teacher and coach who regularly butts heads with everyone, particularly the students who sing in the Glee Club. When Kurt, one of the glee club students faces the sudden collapse of his father, now unresponsive in the ICU unit, teachers and students all respond in different ways. Some try to encourage Kurt to pray and have faith in God. But Sue is furious-public school students can’t do this at school. She’s clearly very passionate about opposing this. Then it’s revealed this has hit a nerve from her childhood. As a little girl, Sue idolized her older sister. But at some point Sue realized other people not only didn’t idolize her sister, they mocked her and picked on her. Sue’s older sister was “different”- she was a child with Downs’ Syndrome. Sue prayed to God to cure her sister, so she’d no longer suffer the injustices she faced. Nothing changed.
Sue decided she was just not persistent enough. Yet, years went by and her sister was still a person with Downs’ Syndrome whose life would never be like that of others. Sue concluded that no one was listening to her persistent prayers-God must be a cruel myth. Injustice was an unchanging cold hard reality and “survival of the fittest” was the key. This is the mindset of the judge in the gospel- who cares about this widow who hasn’t mastered the game of life? Yet she continues to turn to him, over and over. And we never hear that the widow prays. When wrestle with times of crisis or injustice, who or what do we turn to? It’s natural to turn to our systems of “survival of the fittest”-of law and medicine and research.
Have you ever noticed how we give incredible latitude to these systems? We need time for the medicine to work, time for research to find the answer, time for the case to come to court, time for the law to be passed. We might whine while we wait, but we’ll keep turning to these systems even when we, like people of every place and time can be tempted to lose heart-in times where we live with our question of WHEN?
When will this crisis I am facing end? When will what I long for happen? When will I know? When will a change of heart take place? WHEN? We continually turn to and pursue every earthly alternative even when we have no reason to know or believe those people or things deliver. When we know the systems are flawed and unjust.
Do we use that same level of persistence in prayer with God? Or do we expect immediate gratification? When we don’t receive what we seek or it doesn’t happen when we expected, do we lose heart and decide that it’s God who is unjust?
Another possible response came in the story of the rescued Chilean miners, trapped in a dark mine since August 5th. One of them, Mario Sepulveda, described the struggle of waiting. During the waiting and wondering he also pondered the injustice of a workplace that caused his plight. He battled losing heart- that sense that all of the injustices and shortcomings really will prevail. That sense of deciding that God really isn’t with us. Sepulveda said of his experience,” I was with God and with the devil (in the mine) and I reached out for God.” This is the heart of our gospel.
God knows that in all of the in-between times it is hard not to lose heart. The parable of the widow demonstrates a God of grace who understands who we are in these times and where we tend to put our trust. The point of the parable is not to simply identify our insufficiency, nor should we come to view God as the unjust judge who might, eventually, relent to some of our persistent petitions. Such a response leads us to believe that it’s just about wearing God down or proving a work of prayer righteousness.
Rather, because of the witness of how God is faithful, we can trust that what God has promised will come. And we should be as persistent as the widow in turning to God in prayer so that we can be sustained, and strengthened, and guided. And in the process maybe even shown new things. In the “Glee” episode, in the midst of uproar at school, Sue visits her sister who lives in an assisted living facility. Surely her sister will agree there’s no God!
But when Sue asks her sister whether she believes in God, she immediately smiles broadly, then asks Sue- Do YOU? Sue explains she doesn’t because she prayed God would stop what happened to her sister, but nothing changed. Her sister emphatically shakes her head and says basically- But I have faith in God and I am not a mistake. She’s able to live now and for the future on that. And she offers to pray for Sue.
Sue’s sister’s physical condition didn’t change, but her life did because of the depth of Sue’s love, care and advocacy for her. Now Sue could be sustained by the love, care and wisdom of her sister who allowed Sue to see things she might never have seen otherwise, including how she was bullying someone else.
When we face all our in-between times in prayer, we find strength when we’re overwhelmed and insight into our own actions. We are not always the poor widow. Sometimes we’re the ones acting unjustly. In continually turning to God first, by naming all of the people and places and situations on our hearts and minds we are shaped by God and not the world. We begin to grasp and trust in God’s different system of justice and timing. God deepens our faith in God’s greater purposes. And the “much more” we have not yet seen becomes God’s promise we work for, and pray for, and in which we can place our hope and trust here on earth.
While I preached this sermon I noticed two people in the campground congregation were visibly moved. Before our prayers of intercession I always ask for prayer concerns or thanksgivings. The man who’d been moved to tears offered that he was thankful because a year ago he was told he had less than six months to live. He went to the doctor with a bulging neck and neck pain. They told him, without testing, that he probably had muscle strain. Being poor he decided to ride it out. They told him to come back if it did not get better, but what does that mean? Until he had a lump and went back to find out that he had a stage 3 tumor on his neck. He could have been mad but instead it had encouraged him to faith because of the witness of people of the campground. He’d come back to celebrate and say thanks because it looks like he has actually beat the odds. And he brought his mom because the campers who told her about worship encouraged her to believe there was something worth experiencing.
Not a dry eye as I left the lectern and came to hug them and bless them before prayer. The best sermon was in his life. Don’t lose heart, have faith even when it seems too much. I am so blessed to have spent three months with them.

We Don't Race Alone

Another week leading worship at the campground and each week surprises- so far in addition to amazing people I had been surprised by a dog running in when I talked about the Holy Spirit and the bingo board lighting up during my sermon. Today as I was about to read the lessons twenty more people walked in, Mennonite and Amish families camping,adding about 14 extra children to the children's message time. And we gathered round our collective news of the week and ran the race together:


As I prepared for this week, I began thinking about Luke and the fire and by Wednesday found myself wondering about life after a fire. But then Wednesday we learned about the killing of 10 medical aid workers for Mennonite Central Committee in Afghanistan. And on Thursday morning the first parish I served while in seminary located in Dillsburg, was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. The cross on the belfry was struck and shattered and the pieces caught the building on fire some say. These events showed me about life after a fire but also about perseverance to continue to run the race we hear of in Hebrews this day.
Walter Elliot in his work, The Spiritual Life, claims “perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.” There’s truth in the notion that our lives are a series of beginnings when all seems bright and hopeful in our vision. I thought about that last week as we prayed for all those newlyweds. Somewhere after the beginning, amidst the blessings are those times when a painful reality bursts in, devastating times of our lives when it feels that all is stripped away. Some people believe that if you just have the right faith you will achieve prosperity and your life will be immeasurably blessed. I’m sure that some if not many of those early believers in Christianity imagined this to be true-a new and glorious day would come to fulfillment in their lifetimes. After all, throughout the Old Testament there are stories of faith that conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war and put foreign armies to flight.
But sometimes not. And sometimes not right away- those great stories of faith often are about “not right away.” Welcome to the reality check that feels like a bitter slap in Hebrews, a book that speaks of “faith” more than any other book of the New Testament- 24 times in the 11th chapter alone. I’m glad for its sting because who wants a faith that denies the gap between vision and reality here on the ground? Literally or figuratively we too know those feelings of being destitute, tormented- from emotional strain to those who this week gave their very lives to live faithfully. Times we find ourselves wondering and wandering in .places where we feel like those who live not fully seeing the promise, or worse, experiencing great pain and loss and suffering that take things away seem like they can’t be replaced. It can be overwhelming to conjure up the persistence needed amidst the shock, numbness and the dark shadows where once there was light, when we’re weighed down.
These past weeks in our prayer time and conversations many of you have shared these places in your lives and in the lives of those you love. Where we feel like we’re dying where we hear words like “inoperable,” “divorce” or “total loss.” We are flogged and torn amidst “final stages of cancer,” “hospice” “Parkinson’s. ” We can all add to this list. This was also the world of that first parish I served during seminary struck by lightning. Fire can suck the oxygen out of room. Hearing what happened took my breath away. A profound sadness settled in like the weight of all that water soaked ash. So many thoughts flooded my mind- the faces I know well; their new pastor who was just installed this past Sunday. Built in 1894, it’s a country parish still affectionately known as "Filey's Parish" though its formal name is Christ Lutheran Church, where I heard tales of when the church did not have indoor plumbing, and of the spring that runs through the basement of the house the next field over. Of generations of seminarians who have been trained there, perhaps some now part of the cloud of witnesses of the church. Where I learned important things about being a pastor, including no Easter Sunrise breakfast is complete without pickled tongue. I can reminisce how they patiently worked with me to teach me the right way to ring the bell, including how not to lose the rope up the belfry. What amusement I provided as I struggled to pull hard enough to ring without double ringing. Now that belfry is gone. But it was also the first pulpit I ever preached in with the nervous altar guild lady who plied me with water when I had bronchitis so I could get through the sermon. A place where you could tell the passage of time by the various styles of architecture in the sanctuary. The light up stained glass Jesus, and the giant cross that looked like a matchstick cross with the ends singed and the windows from the 1900’s all together, all lovingly given out of someone's vision of the promise.
I think of all of the baptisms, weddings, confirmations that filled the space where God laughed and rejoiced with them. And of the funerals where God cried with them. As lightning leveled their world, how the lectionary for this day and it's baptism of fire must sound. Could they even have the strength to be exhorted to faith much less to run?
But at their prayer vigil Thursday night, they are still teaching as they spoke of the gift and promise in the ashes-there is something about these experiences. The same thing I learned from a friend battling cancer who wrote me one day and told me her cancer was a gift. It brought clarity and brought her closer to God. When all else is stripped away, we can see what matters. That fire and cancer and all of the other trials and tribulations cannot destroy what endures- the faith and hope of the cross, the promise made sure in Christ. So it is for each of us. Still there is the promise, the reality of the cross of Christ that allows us to step out in courageous new ways. To live in the way song writer Andrew Peterson calls “dancing in the minefields.”
In a moment we’ll hear his song. I thought I would share some of the lyrics first.
We went dancin’ in the mine fields. We went sailin’ in the storms.
It’s harder than we dreamed but I believe that’s what the promise is for
Don’t give up. Don’t give up on me. Don’t give up.
So when I lose my way, find me. When I loose love’s chains, bind me.
At the end of all my faith, to the end of all my days, when I forget my name, remind me.
Cause we bear the light of the Son of Man, so there’s nothin’ left to fear.
So, I’ll walk with you in the shadow lands, ‘til the shadows disappear.
He promised not leave us and his promises are true,
So in the face of all this chaos, maybe I can dance with you.
So let’s go dancing in the minefields and kickin’ down the doors. This is harder than we dreamed but I believe that’s what the promise is for.
Someone once said, “The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground.” To the world around us we are a little nuts. People tell us to give up, that it’s not worth it, that our faith is a sham. The pastor of Filey’s was asked by the media if she thought the fire was an act of God against her church. We know that’s not our God talking, and that there is more to our lives than meets the eye. We’re following Christ who goes before us, who has secured the future. Our faith and perseverance come from knowing that God’s promises are sure and that God’s purposes won’t fail to be achieved even when everything or everyone around us speaks to the contrary. And we know we don’t race alone. We’re in the company of each other and that cloud of witnesses by our side, sometimes walking, sometimes running and sometimes even dancing, cheering us on in the joy and pain together, ever reminding us of God’s promise. AMEN.