Don't Lose Heart!

Healing Service, October 20, 2013... (Pentecost 22c) Luke 18:1-8

I want to begin by asking you two questions: Do you pray? What does prayer mean to you?

 

I ask you to wrestle with these questions because today's gospel literally begs us to wrestle with such questions. These questions remind me of Helen. Some years ago, I met Helen. Helen was a woman of prayer. As I gradually began to get to know her I discovered that she prayed for many reasons. Helen grew up with an alcoholic father. She married a man, who though at the time was sober still functioned as if he were drinking. To top it all off her then 17 year old son was already suffering with chronic alcoholism. In all of this Helen worked at living from a strong Christian faith perspective. She was convinced that God often had and continued to help her. For Helen prayer was a primary, essential means of being open to God and receiving God's direction and assistance. In many ways prayer was her lifeline.

 

I, on the other hand, had just graduated from Seminary. Although I considered myself a person of faith, my prayer life was somewhat limited. I had a lot of head knowledge. I reasoned to myself, God knows everything. Why would God need me to tell God about my needs or others needs or even the needs of the world. Why would God want me to listen to God? Such was my self-rationalization regarding prayer until I met Helen.

 

One day Helen made a request. She said, "Pastor Tim, how about if you and I get together once a week to pray for people in this community who are ill or hurting?" How could I say, "No" to such a request? I wanted to be a good pastor to Helen and for the entire community.

 

So it began – my first intentional, communal, disciplined experience of prayer. Each Monday night Helen and I would pray by name for the people in that little community. We would hold up their needs as we knew them. If we didn't really know many of the details of a person's life, we would offer general intercessions for them.  Can you imagine my surprise then when on Tuesdays or Wednesdays some of the people we had been praying for would show up in my office or call me, "Just to chat!" WOW!

 

So, my practice and understanding of prayer began to change.  Maybe prayer wasn't so much about me or us attempting to change or influence God's mind. Maybe prayer has more to do with me, with others, with my attitude and actions in the world. Maybe prayer was more about changing me and us than changing God's mind. Maybe, just maybe it was very important and ultimately good for me and for others that I and we  keep on praying. 

 

So we are delivered to today's parable. There is a widow who desperately requires justice.  She will not rest until her need for justice is met even though her only immediate avenue for such justice is an unjust judge who "neither fears God nor respects any person". Eventually even this unjust judge caves as a result of the widow's persistence. This widow will not take no for an answer as a response to her need.

 

Jesus then asks two questions: Will not God vindicate God's elect, God's chosen ones, who cry to God night and day? And, subsequently, will God delay long over this?

 

The Gospel seems to treat these questions as being rhetorical. Will not God vindicate God's elect? OF COURSE! Will God delay long in such vindication? NO WAY!

 

But, "Is this our experience?"

 

Mary was in her late 30's. She and her husband were blessed with 3 children, ages 9, 6 and a wee babe. Mary was an amazing nurse, mother, and wife. She was a woman who not only cared for others but also herself. She regularly exercised. She didn't smoke. She drank very little. She generously gave of herself for others in the community and the church.

 

But then one Saturday afternoon my phone rang. Mary and her family had just returned home from a trip to Disneyland. The very evening of their return she had suddenly become critically ill. She had been rushed to the emergency room of the local hospital. There they learned that her cancer markings were through the roof. Mary was diagnosed with acute leukemia. She was air evacuated to Vancouver that night.

 

Our prayers went "up": mine and the entire congregation's. We asked God that Mary's treatment go well. We asked and pleaded with God that a bone marrow donor match for Mary would be found. I personally prayed that she might live to raise her children.

 

Mary was granted five more wonderful years of life. But then I received another call. Mary had suddenly take a turn for the worse. Her health spiraled downwards. Within 10 days she had died. I asked myself, "Is this God vindicating God's elect"? What about Mary's 3 kids and her husband?

 

On a more global scale, how is it that we have so much while over a billion live (many of them children) on less than a dollar fifty a day? So many cry out to God for vindication. Many others are working to help the hungry as they invest their lives in development and education, to change systems. Nevertheless – poverty, the unnecessary death and illness rampantly continue.  How long O Lord, will such "vindication" take? How long will our misunderstanding, greed and incapacity to care for each other continue to devastate so many?

 

Having the capacity to think and feel (such blessings) there have to be times when we will be tempted to throw our hands up in despair, to give up, to start thinking only of ourselves.

 

BUT when we give into such temptation we forget both who we are called to be and whose we are.  In "giving up" or "giving in" we turn our backs on the One who is encouraging us to pray even now, especially now. Jesus encourages us to pray through his words, his actions, including his life, death and resurrection. Jesus frequently withdraws to pray. Though being swamped by injustice, evil and apathy Jesus keeps on praying. And so, out of this intimate relationship with God the Creator, of which prayer is a part, Jesus is enabled to move towards Jerusalem. He strives both to know and do His Father's will.

 

What would it have been like for him? Three years of his life, night and day with the 12 and some others. Yet when he is most vulnerable, they abandon him.  Yet Jesus does not give up on them. Nor does He give into the temptations to think only or primarily of Himself. Instead, in obedience to God, Jesus willingly gives his all for others. He suffers and dies so that all may live now and in the future. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon him because that Spirit has anointed him to preach good news to the poor, sent him to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and liberty to those who are oppressed."

 

There is so much to this gift of life. There is the wonder of birth and the angst of death. There are the heights of joy and the depths of despair. There is the communion of friendship, the mystery of love, the abject pain of betrayal. There is by God's grace the miracle of forgiveness.

 

Before, after and under all of life there is God. In Jesus, God enters into the fullness of humanity. In Jesus, God blesses life and delivers our lives by living, loving, suffering and dying. Through Jesus we see the hope that God brings to us in the midst of all that comes. It is the very Spirit of the risen Christ who calls us, commands us to pray for God's coming reign that in some fleeting moments seems to be nearly present, right here, but at many other times feels so very distant. Jesus calls us to pray always so that we may ourselves actually be part of God's coming reign and not opposed to it, so that we might know whose we are and be strengthened to attempt to live that way.

 

It is in our prayer that God often moves us beyond our lack of faith and hope, even through our despair to new life and living hope, in the midst of the myriad experiences of life.

 

So, may God help us to pray always and not lose heart. Prayer itself is miraculous, an integral part of the living faith and following of Jesus we are called to.  As my friend Helen demonstrated, prayer is to be our lifeline, so that we can live with hope, love and joy, come what may. Amen. 

 

 

 

Cherish the gift!

Thanksgiving c13, John 6:24-35 with Philippians 4:4-7 and Deuteronomy 26:4-10 in b.g.

Have you ever received a gift?

 

When I first met Kevin, I knew there was something different about him. The things that I first noticed were the outward things. His complexion could best be described as blue. That's right I said blue. You see, Kevin was born with congenital heart disease. That's a medical way of saying that his heart simply didn't function "normally". Because his heart couldn't pump blood throughout his body, his face and hands looked quite blue. Not only that – but his fingers were different than yours and mine. They literally had knobs at the end of them. Again, a result of congenital heart disease.

 

That day I first met Kevin he was in his late 20's having already outlived the prognosis of his life – which was 10. And get this – he was playing the organ in church, with cowboy boots on. Again these are the things I first noticed about Kevin – outward things.

 

But in the 17 years I worked with him and lived close by him I began to notice other things. Kevin was as honest as the days are long. He couldn't get going in the mornings – due to his CHD but let me tell you once he got going, he really went. Although he played the organ painfully slowly on Sunday mornings, during the mid-week Lenten services when we wanted a slower pace, we simply couldn't keep up. Kevin would give me that toothy smile of his as I glanced over at him. How could I be angry? Kevin's living literally defied death.

 

But not only that – Kevin was honest. It didn't matter if he was phoning me from his bathtub at 4:30 on a Sunday morning telling me he was going to sleep and hoping that I would have a good sermon that morning or if he was calling to tell me that his brother or father had just died – he was always so honest, no pretension. I'll never forget the day when he finally managed to get his driver's license. No 16 was he. No sirree. He was 40 but for the first time in his life he was deemed well enough by the province of BC  to drive a vehicle. We had to go for a spin. Again he flashed  that toothy grin.

 

Kevin's life made music literally and figuratively on violins and guitars, on pianos and organs – in the lives of old and young. Three years ago – he called me all excited. He had qualified to receive a heart and double lung transplant. I asked him how he felt? You know what he said, EXCITED! Now I ask you, if you required a new heart and 2 lungs to "survive" – would you feel  primarily excited? I'm not so sure.  

 

But that's the way Kevin lived. He lived life fully, on the edge, anticipating what COULD BE, WHAT MIGHT BE. He was a gift- to myself and to so many others. His life is not something I could ever deserve to have been part of. Yet I observed as he invested and shared his life with so many others. What else can I do with such a gift – but give thanks, learn and grow from him? Indeed I sometimes catch myself wondering how I can complain about my minor aches and pains when I look at Kevin. My minor set-backs and disappointments, my occasionally feeling blue pale in comparison to Kevin's journeys and battles with his CHD and then receiving a double lung/heart transplant. And you know what – within a year and one half of having received his transplant he was out in a walkathon campaigning for many to become organ donors. What a gift he has been!

 

So I ask again, have you ever received a gift?...

 

I don`t only ask because today is Thanksgiving Sunday. Instead I ask because receiving gifts are at the very heart of life!

 

On day Jesus fed over 5000 people. Those people were thankful. The growlies stopped. But I am not convinced that they really saw THE GIFT. They saw the blueness of Kevin`s complexion – the blue face and fingers, the weird shapes of his finger tips. That day they saw bread – but not THE BREAD. They saw Kevin but not THE KEVIN. They received a gift but MISSED THE GIFT.

 

How about you? How about me?  Are we living or merely surviving. Are we being opened to gifts or just exchanging stuff?

 

Today, each day we are offered the very gift of life by God. This entails breathing and thinking, moving and feeling, laughing and crying, eating and drinking. All of these are miraculous. All of these are wondrous gifts. But before and underneath these is God, the Creator of the universe; God the One who fashions each of us in our mother`s wombs; God the One who loves us as we are and hopes for us an ongoing transformation where we might be enabled to both love ourselves, others and this world – regardless of the pain, the struggle involved.

 

Do we behold this gift – this love of God, this communion that God wills to have with us each and every day, each and every single moment?

 

Now that`s a gift – the gift that my friend Kevin reflected in his far less than perfect but yet so wonderfully unique way.

 

Today, dear people may we be opened to receive this gift of God, this One who takes on our frail flesh and comes to us as the living Bread from heaven, the bread of life. For as we are blessed to receive Him – we are moved beyond survival, beyond fear, beyond grumbling and keeping track, to actually living now and life forever.

 

Our eyes are opened to see the Kevin`s of this world – to behold ourselves as we are, to be honest with ourselves, others and God. Our hearts are being transformed to love and give thanks with all we are and have. We begin to wonder in the reality that all is gift to be shared, to be lived, to dance and sing, to laugh and cry, to hold and trust, to give away!

 

Such is the work of God – a gift to us- that we hold God's promises dearly,  that we trust God. For in this is life, living now and living forever, hope for the whole world.

 

This is a gift – to be opened, given away, cherished with all that we are!  Amen.

           

 

Change A Bumper Sticker

October 6, 2013, Pentecost 20c, Luke 17:1-10

 

 

 

I am wondering if you have ever seen this bumper sticker, "Lord, save me from your followers"?  It makes you wonder what Jesus' followers have ever done to that person. But if we stop to think about it, what that person has experienced could be many things. In fact it might have everything to do with the history of we Christian people. There have been the crusades where Christians sought to eliminate many and sometimes almost anyone who wasn't Christian. For millennia there has been the anti Semitism of Christians – blaming the Jewish people as somehow being Jesus killers. There has also been our own infighting. Read the history of Lutherans battling against Roman Catholics and Mennonites.

 

In my own career as a Pastor I have served and loved a congregation where the Pastor who preceded me worked to divide and leave the ELCIC. After 7 years as their Pastor he took 187 people with him out of our National Church while at the same time dividing and separating families, some of whom would no longer even talk to each other about any reality to do with their faith. I will never forget moving into that community. For the first years we lived in a parsonage just across the parking lot from the church building. Shortly after our necessary boxes had been unpacked my neighbor from across the street ambled over. His words from that first conversation etched themselves into my being, "So you are going to be the pastor of that church where the people who are members can't even get along". It is a sad commentary for we who hear our Lord praying that we, his followers may all be one!" It became even sadder for him when within 10 years his own congregation had split apart.

 

Of course there is also our history as Christians in this country with residential schools, with clergy abuse of parishioners, and occasionally parishioner's abuse of clergy.

 

Truth be told, there is something to that bumper sticker, "Lord save me from your followers!"

 

But is there then nothing good, wonderful or amazing about following Jesus? If Jesus is Lord, that One of God who takes on our flesh to lead us and all people beyond and through ourselves, our self absorption, our envy, our greed, our insecurities to a new life, where we realize that we and all are God's children, where by the grace of God we seek to love and care for each other and this world, trusting that death and evil, that murder and violence do not, should and will not be our way or even ultimately the way of this world, isn't that good? For any of us, who have intentionally attempted to be on this way, there are amazing realities to be shared and experienced. 

 

Such observations, such realities throw us into today's Gospel.

 

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. No he's not going to pro d day on how to become a better Rabbi or a better Son of God. He is going to Jerusalem to die. While on the way he is imparting to his closest followers what really matters. He accomplishes this through his relationships with others, which includes his entire being. This includes his words to them. The verses that the lectionary skips over today, but which I read to you, have to do with what trusting Jesus and seeking to follow him includes in our relationships with others, particularly those who are also attempting to follow him.

 

Jesus acknowledges – he does not deny – that his followers will hurt each other. Sometimes this involves conscious actions. Often this happens unintentionally. But Christians hurting each other does happen. People may be devastated, filled with anger. Angry, hurting people sometimes strike back in word and deed. Or, they simply decide to absent themselves from the community.

 

Jesus tells his followers that when someone so hurts another, misses the mark of loving even their enemies or caring for the poor and oppressed, that others in the community are to rebuke that person, to lovingly and carefully bring the consequences of their actions to attention. This isn't to "lord" it over them. But rather such actions are to be undertaken out of genuine care for the other and for the entire community.

 

Is living in such a way easy? Heck, no!

 

The one whose actions are confronted may become angry with us. They may shun us or point out to us in less than kind ways our own shortcomings, our own hurtful actions. That is as, as one couple I was doing premarital work with said, AWKWARD. However,  if we care, if we are serious about Jesus' words to his followers, we will be willing to be made uncomfortable, to actively care even/especially when it "costs" us.
     
      Jesus doesn't end here. He moves on to something even more difficult. If a person hurts you, sins against you and asks for forgiveness, (my goodness), even 7 times!, you are to not hold onto your grudge, to any self righteousness over against him/her. As Jesus' followers, he exhorts us to let that go- to forgive them.

 

Do we have any inkling how hard that is? If someone murdered your child, your grandchild – and afterwards genuinely asked for your forgiveness, could you, would we be able to do that? I am not sure about you – but I suspect that forgiveness is not anywhere near to what my personal inclination might be!

 

Regardless, Jesus in speaking to his followers about the importance, the necessity of forgiveness, underlines this. It's at this point that the apostles (all those who are being sent out by Jesus, because they are followers of Jesus) ask him to "increase their faith".

 

I wonder, do we want Jesus to increase our faith? If God would answer such a prayer, what might happen (to us and through us) then?

 

I have to say that I am not sure that any "faith" is quantifiable. It's not like faith is the equivalent of doctrine, or the answers to skill testing questions, that I then somehow know more than you, and so have more "faith" than you. See  the early disciples. Didn't they have "a lot of" faith? In many ways those apostles are the fathers and mothers of the Church. Yet, when Jesus is up against "it", as his life is being wrenched away by forces and powers of evil, the disciples mostly abandon him. They hide as they are overcome by fear. 

 

But thanks be to God - that isn't the end of the story, nor the end of our story. Christ dares to approach them again. The very Spirit of God is stirred up within them and among them. They are enabled to confront their fear. Then they  go out to show and to tell others that Jesus is alive. Everyone matters because God loves the world! Death, violence, hatred, prejudice are ever so real, but ultimately they can and will be defeated. Jesus lives.

 

This is a profound statement of faith. For many this statement borders on the ludicrous. Just see the power of death and violence around us. How can everyone matter?  Nevertheless this is also a statement that Jesus' followers seek to live by not because we are so strong, or self-assured. Rather this is our creed, the one try to live by because of the One we seek to follow, Jesus, the Son of God. 
There are many other forces that seek to influence us, even to control us. From putting inordinate trust in things, to worrying about what others think, to being captivated by fear - of others who may dislike us. But we need to behold this amazing reality. In Jesus we glimpse and are confronted by God's decision for the world, for you and me, for our children and grandchildren, our neighbors and our enemies. God loves this world.

 

And God wills this world to be able to trust God. How God longs for us to let go of our hatred and violence, our fear and enmity, our greed that flows from our insecurities. All these qualities damages and destroys so many and so much.

 

May our prayer then not be exactly the same as the disciples – to GIVE US MORE FAITH. Jesus points out that even the smallest amount of faith is more than enough to follow him, to be incredible vehicles through which the most amazing things can and do occur.

 

Instead let our prayer be, "Lord we believe, forgive our unbelief". For the Spirit of God wills to work among and through us to transform us, to continually change the ways we think and behave – so that new life may be born in the face of death, despair and violence, so that hope may overcome despair.

 

Yes, who knows, even people's bumper stickers might be changed then! Amen.