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.

Persistence

As most of us know, the Gospel text for yesterday was about the unjust judge and the persistent widow. This post is about the living example of the persistent one in my teaching parish. There is a man who is not a member of the parish. Over the years he has been a contractor of sorts, and has done some odd jobs-type work at the parish because he knows one the members pretty well. On Thursday, I was meeting with my supervising pastor and we see this man enter the building. He is looking for the pastor, and she greets him, not recalling who he is at first- it has been a couple of years since she has seen him. He has labored breathing, and he is almost totally deaf, so their conversation is more than a little challenging.
He relates that he used to come to the parish for worship but his health makes it hard for him to attend our only service on Sunday which is at 9 am. Mornings are a struggle for him. He really wants to receive communion. He is a baptized Christian.
She tells him she does not administer communion outside of the service usually but if he can come to next Tuesday's morning prayer which is at 10 she will give him communion then. She tells him she is in the middle of a meeting now. I feel bad- there must be more to the story, but we do not hear it that day because the meeting has ended.
On Sunday, our parish has a 9 am service, followed by fellowship and Sunday school. It is now about 11:30 a.m. All of the lights are out, all of the communion ware put away. We are getting ready to leave- I have a lunch meeting with a Council member. And here is the man again.
Still laboring to breathe. He seems a little stressed out. He tried to make it to church but his lung "locked up" - is he too late for communion? I pause, wondering what will happen next- I say a prayer in my heart.
The pastor tells him to go have a seat in the sanctuary and sends her husband to turn on the lights. She decides we will commune him. We get out the elements. She consults on what aspects of the service we will say- the Creed, the Lord's Prayer and Great Thanksgiving and Words of Institution. We go into the sanctuary where he is sitting in the front pew in prayer.
I light all of the candles. We sit with him in the pew and look at him to recite the service so he can read lips and see where we are, following along in a service bulletin that I marked up so he would know.
We administer communion and we "send" him.
Then she asks him how he is doing. He is going in for surgery to remove his thyroid- it has nodules but they are not sure if they are cancerous or not. There are risks- he could suffer vocal chord damage. And he only has one lung.
Then we hear about the car accident 27 years ago where he lost a lung, his spleen and needed a new aorta. The vocal chords on one side were paralyzed. This is why he has a raspy voice. The thyroid is on the other side- he could be mute after surgery.
And he only has the other lung- after years of construction work, it is not fully functional from all of the dust people inhaled before we knew what we do today about occupational safety.
And there is the hearing issue. After the accident, and after the surgery, while he was still in the hospital, he got an infection. Because of his injuries he had three different doctors- they each prescribed antibiotics to battle the infection- he was triple dosed. The side effect of the toxicity was that he lost his hearing but he is glad the kidney failure was not permanent.
And he has the most wonderful vocabulary and manner about him, between gasps. He recounts growing up on the church and asks some questions, and it is clear that he was bright enough to have been many other things, but here in this rural community, he worked with his hands. And in spite of all of his adversity, he is still happily married and hopeful.
Earlier cochlear implants were not ideal and now he has been almost totally deaf for so long he has "accepted it." He is not angry anymore. He jokes that the secret to his marriage is that he cannot hear his wife.
But the surgery that should be 2 hours long for the thyroid is scheduled for 5 hours. But he must have the surgery. And being in church is a comfort and tears come when he is communed. And he had gotten up early that day and rejoiced that maybe, just maybe he would make it to church at 9 but his lung "locked up." He makes no permanent plans because he just never knows.
Persistence. "Hear me."
And how much more will God do than we?
And when he returns will he find faith?

Persistence