p, October 17th, 2010 using the Biblical texts of II Peter 3:14-4:5 and Luke 18: 1-8. Join us at 10:30 am if you are in town, please!Once again the words of Jesus we have been asked to consider for today are not only perplexing and odd, they are worrisome and upsetting: Why is Jesus comparing the Lord of love to an unfair and capricious judge who strings along the hopes and needs of a powerless widow? Doesn’t that seem cruel and capricious?
• And what in the world is Jesus getting at when he asks his disciples, “But how much persistent faith will the Son of Man find on the earth when he returns?” What’s up with that?
• To me, this is a distressing story at first: puzzling, annoying and impenetrable. But there is another layer here, too, a story of grace and hope and blessing, that takes a little time and insight to discern if we’re willing to go beyond the obvious.
In fact, the spiritual wisdom of this parable is like a Zen koan or riddle: if you take the time to tease out its beauty, the very process itself reveals to you its truth – and teaches you something about authent
ic and persistent faith. And I want to explore this with you because as North Americans of the 21st century, most of us aren’t comfortable – let alone well-trained – in the way of persistent faith.Earlier this week, on Columbus Day, Dianne and I were lounging about in the morning reading the New York Times and drinking tea as we like to do. It was a stunning autumn day and we were soaking up the sun and the beauty, but the news was so sad and cruel it was heart-breaking.
• In the gubernatorial race in New York, one of the candidates saw fit to spew his hatred, ignorance and stupidity about homo-sexuality in such a way as to make the word Neanderthal seem too kind – especially after the recent suicides of young gay men and the recent rash of beatings and torture.
• Another story spoke of the on-going – and growing – suicide rate among our active duty soldiers only to be followed by a description of the toxic sludge disaster in Hungary.
It was a gloomy and heartrending report on the state of the world. And that’s when the words of II Timothy hit me hard. I’d been thinking about them in preparation for writing –
along with the vexing parable in Luke – but nothing had really taken shape or form yet.Don’t let it faze you. Stick with what you learned and believed, sure of the integrity of your teachers…I can't impress this on you too strongly. God is looking over your shoulder… so proclaim the Message with intensity; keep on your watch. Challenge, warn, and urge your people. Don't ever quit. You're going to find that there will be times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching, but will fill up on spiritual junk food—catchy opinions that tickle their fancy. They'll turn their backs on truth and chase mirages. But you—keep your eye on what you're doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God's servant.
Did you hear that? “Keep your eye on the prize – accept the hard times along with the good – and keep the Message alive.” What Paul is telling Timothy – and what Jesus is telling his disciples – is that people of faith have a different way of looking at the world than the ordinary citizen. Call it a Christian worldview, if you like, because it asks us to go beyond the obvious in our lives and the events of the world that we might learn to see everything through the eyes of faith: beauty as well as suffering, pain as well as joy.
• Today’s psalm, for example, begins: I lift up my eyes unto the hills, from where is my help to come? Many people – without the eyes of faith – will tell you that this psalm suggests that our help comes from the hills. I’ve heard people say that when they look at the hills and mountains they feel a calming reassurance of God’s love.
• W
ell that is all well and good but it isn’t what the Psalmist is saying. Not at all. You see, it is the second line of Psalm 121 that gives the faithful answer to the question: where does my help come from? It comes from the Lord my God, the maker of heaven and earth. Not the mountains or the hills – or the lakes or the valleys either; they are part of the beautiful bounty of God’s love. But let us be clear: our help comes from the Lord.And cultivating a Christian worldview is essential to keeping our eyes on the prize in hard times as well as good ones. When I got home after worship last week I realized that I left out of my message an essential truth.
In order to keep things moving and be respectful of your time, I cut out my whole discussion of Jesus and the waters of Babylon – and in retrospect I see that this was a mistake. You see, I believe that learning how to live faithfully by the waters of Babylon is an integral part of the Jesus life. It gives us the ability to see beyond the obvious and trust beyond the limits of our feelings. It is, in fact, part of what it means to be counter cultural in a way that matters. “We live in a culture,” writes Eugene Peterson, “that doesn’t know how to suffer.”
We grow up thinking that if we are good we won’t suffer; or that if we raise our standard of living
sufficiently we won’t suffer; or that if we acquire an education we will be smart enough not to suffer. And should suffering rudely intrude upon our lives anyway, we call for anesthesia. Anesthesia, which is most useful on occasions of surgery, is most harmful in matters of the soul. St. Peter got it right when he told us: This is the kind of life you’ve been invited into – the kind of life that Christ lived – he suffered everything that came his way so that you would know that it could be done – and also know how to do it, step by step. (I Peter 2: 21)
That’s the first insight for this morning: somewhere along the way, the North American Christian community of faith forgot that learning how to suffer is a part of the Jesus life. We much prefer to hear about the gospel of prosperity or some pop psycho-babble about self-esteem than learning from the Cross. And while I believe that joy is JUST as powerful and important a sacred teacher suffering, if we emphasize only one without the other, we are NOT nourishing the Christian worldview. That’s what Paul was reminding young Timothy:
Stick with what you learned and believed, sure of the integrity of your teachers—why, you took in the sacred Scriptures with your mother's milk! Remember: there will be times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching, but will fill up on spiritual junk food—catchy opinions that tickle their fancy. They'll turn their backs on truth and chase mirages. But you—keep your eye on what you're doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God's servant.
And here is where that troubling story of today’s widow and the judge begins to become helpful. For you see, the point is NOT about “badgering God with our incessant ‘to-do’ requests and requisitions” – this is NOT a story about our gimme lists – but rather a reminder of both God’s grace and our need for training. Consider what we learn about living and seeing by faith from the widow. One scholar put it like this: “Women’s behavior was extremely limited in ancient times – much like
the women of Afghanistan during the recent Taliban oppression.” In Christ’ day: unmarried women were not allowed to leave the home of their father.
• Married women were not allowed to leave the house of their husband. More often than not, women were restricted to roles of little or no authority.
• They could not testify in court, they could not appear in public venues, they were not allowed to talk to strangers. And they had to be doubly veiled when they left their homes.
So what are we to make of the widow in our story who not only kept after the crooked judge – going out into the public daily against social convention – but who also demanded justice like a man? In every way we might imagine, she was constrained. Some preachers have said that “she could only cry out to the judge unofficially. Perhaps she called to him as he passed her way on his way to the city gates to judge the disputes and charges of the men in the marketplace for the day.” (Peter Woods, http://www.thelisteninghermit.wordpress.com/)
We know that the word for “widow” in Hebrew means “the silent one” or the “one unable to speak for herself.” (Kate Huey, http://www.ucc.org/ So what does it mean that she not only found her voice, but kept speaking up for herself? What’s going on here? Could it be an upside-down reminder that this woman was well-versed in living by faith? The Hebrew Scriptures are ripe with reminders that God holds a tender place in the sacred heart for widows, orphans and all who are without voice. She obviously trusted the way of God: despite the evidence, the limitations of her culture and even her own feelings this woman models persistent faith. She won’t quit not only because she has experienced something of God’s grace within her heart but also because she knows that suffering goes with the territory.
Suffering is a part of faithful living – not the whole story – but an integral part to be sure. The second insigh
t for today is that living by faith rejects the “quick fix, romantic and Utopian obsessions of our culture that always expect our relationships with God to be fulfilling” in ways we can comprehend. (Peter Woods, ibid) Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want or even expect, right? Much of life, in other words, is lived by the waters of Babylon watching and waiting in uncertainty. So what are we supposed to do if this is true? How are we to be faithful and joyful people even by the waters of Babylon?
Both the words from Timothy and Luke give us a third clue:
There's nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.
It is clear to me that the widow not only knew the heart of God’s love through her connection to the Hebrew Bible, but she also was well practiced in prayer. She knew how to wait. She knew how to make a life beyond the obvious. That’s something else that has been misplaced in our culture, too: taking time to learn and
reflect on God’s counter cultural vision. You see, the widow did not discover God’s grace and presence beyond the injustice of her life by accident. Kate Huey, one of the finest preachers in the United Church of Christ today, gives us some perspective through the story of a social activist from Myanmar by the name of Ma Thida:
This writer and physician was held in solitary confinement for six years after she documented the abuses of her government. When a BBC reporter asked how she survived those long years of suffering and waiting she said: “First I turned to books for they are like vitamins to a prisoner. And then I turned to prayer and meditation… as a Buddhist sometimes I meditated for
18-20 hours a day.” Can you imagine that?
Another great American preacher and writer, Barbara Brown Taylor, once noted that “most people pray like they brushed their teeth – once in the morning and once at night and only as a part of their spiritual hygiene program.” Not persistently – not vigorously – not with the assurance that God would be there regardless of their feelings or the evidence.
Taking in the word of God in scripture and being prayerful have always been the foundation for living with joy even by the waters of Babylon. And sadly this has either been forgotten or forsaken by many in the Church of Jesus Christ. Once again I return to Eugene Peterson:
Despite – or could it be because of? – our vaunted affluence and learning, we men and women in North America seem for the most part to be scandalously ignorant with regard to human suffering. More scandalous still, a great many Christians are currently complicitous in this ignorance. Christians right and left, Christians whose identifying symbol is the cross of Jesus and whose vocation is determined by that same cross are abandoning it for careers in anesthesi
ology. And this is a scandal, you see, because Christians used to be the world’s experts on suffering. And the world deserves to know what we know about suffering – it NEEDS to know what we have learned from Jesus at the cross… The people in our neighborhoods need to know that suffering is not the worst thing that could happen to them.
And here is where the mean-spirited and cruel judge finally comes into focus: sometimes there isn’t a pretty ending in our lives – sometimes we have to endure injustice and pain and deep questions without answers – sometimes we wake up and discover that we’re suffering by the waters of Babylon. Because faith, you see, adult faith in our tradition, “doesn’t fix things as much as gives us the capacity and courage to bear hard things well.”
• God, of course, is our loving ABBA, who yearns to bring us blessing and bounty, not the cruel SOB of this parable even when life has led us to the waters of Babylon.
• And as we seek to know ABBA through prayer and the Word of God, we come to see that the judge is not the main character in this story: the widow is – the one who knows and trusts the Lord by faith.
And that is why Jesus ends the story wit
h a question; he's asking: do you get it? Do you understand that suffering is part of the life of a disciple? Do you get that the waters of Babylon are more often the rule than the exception? And that God’s loving presence can be real even in there?
We grow up thinking that if we are good we won’t suffer; or that if we raise our standard of living
sufficiently we won’t suffer; or that if we acquire an education we will be smart enough not to suffer. And should suffering rudely intrude upon our lives anyway, we call for anesthesia. Anesthesia, which is most useful on occasions of surgery, is most harmful in matters of the soul. St. Peter got it right when he told us: This is the kind of life you’ve been invited into – the kind of life that Christ lived – he suffered everything that came his way so that you would know that it could be done – and also know how to do it, step by step. (I Peter 2: 21)That’s the first insight for this morning: somewhere along the way, the North American Christian community of faith forgot that learning how to suffer is a part of the Jesus life. We much prefer to hear about the gospel of prosperity or some pop psycho-babble about self-esteem than learning from the Cross. And while I believe that joy is JUST as powerful and important a sacred teacher suffering, if we emphasize only one without the other, we are NOT nourishing the Christian worldview. That’s what Paul was reminding young Timothy:
Stick with what you learned and believed, sure of the integrity of your teachers—why, you took in the sacred Scriptures with your mother's milk! Remember: there will be times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching, but will fill up on spiritual junk food—catchy opinions that tickle their fancy. They'll turn their backs on truth and chase mirages. But you—keep your eye on what you're doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God's servant.
And here is where that troubling story of today’s widow and the judge begins to become helpful. For you see, the point is NOT about “badgering God with our incessant ‘to-do’ requests and requisitions” – this is NOT a story about our gimme lists – but rather a reminder of both God’s grace and our need for training. Consider what we learn about living and seeing by faith from the widow. One scholar put it like this: “Women’s behavior was extremely limited in ancient times – much like
the women of Afghanistan during the recent Taliban oppression.” In Christ’ day: unmarried women were not allowed to leave the home of their father.• Married women were not allowed to leave the house of their husband. More often than not, women were restricted to roles of little or no authority.
• They could not testify in court, they could not appear in public venues, they were not allowed to talk to strangers. And they had to be doubly veiled when they left their homes.
So what are we to make of the widow in our story who not only kept after the crooked judge – going out into the public daily against social convention – but who also demanded justice like a man? In every way we might imagine, she was constrained. Some preachers have said that “she could only cry out to the judge unofficially. Perhaps she called to him as he passed her way on his way to the city gates to judge the disputes and charges of the men in the marketplace for the day.” (Peter Woods, http://www.thelisteninghermit.wordpress.com/)
We know that the word for “widow” in Hebrew means “the silent one” or the “one unable to speak for herself.” (Kate Huey, http://www.ucc.org/ So what does it mean that she not only found her voice, but kept speaking up for herself? What’s going on here? Could it be an upside-down reminder that this woman was well-versed in living by faith? The Hebrew Scriptures are ripe with reminders that God holds a tender place in the sacred heart for widows, orphans and all who are without voice. She obviously trusted the way of God: despite the evidence, the limitations of her culture and even her own feelings this woman models persistent faith. She won’t quit not only because she has experienced something of God’s grace within her heart but also because she knows that suffering goes with the territory.
Suffering is a part of faithful living – not the whole story – but an integral part to be sure. The second insigh
t for today is that living by faith rejects the “quick fix, romantic and Utopian obsessions of our culture that always expect our relationships with God to be fulfilling” in ways we can comprehend. (Peter Woods, ibid) Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want or even expect, right? Much of life, in other words, is lived by the waters of Babylon watching and waiting in uncertainty. So what are we supposed to do if this is true? How are we to be faithful and joyful people even by the waters of Babylon?Both the words from Timothy and Luke give us a third clue:
There's nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.
It is clear to me that the widow not only knew the heart of God’s love through her connection to the Hebrew Bible, but she also was well practiced in prayer. She knew how to wait. She knew how to make a life beyond the obvious. That’s something else that has been misplaced in our culture, too: taking time to learn and
reflect on God’s counter cultural vision. You see, the widow did not discover God’s grace and presence beyond the injustice of her life by accident. Kate Huey, one of the finest preachers in the United Church of Christ today, gives us some perspective through the story of a social activist from Myanmar by the name of Ma Thida:This writer and physician was held in solitary confinement for six years after she documented the abuses of her government. When a BBC reporter asked how she survived those long years of suffering and waiting she said: “First I turned to books for they are like vitamins to a prisoner. And then I turned to prayer and meditation… as a Buddhist sometimes I meditated for
18-20 hours a day.” Can you imagine that?Another great American preacher and writer, Barbara Brown Taylor, once noted that “most people pray like they brushed their teeth – once in the morning and once at night and only as a part of their spiritual hygiene program.” Not persistently – not vigorously – not with the assurance that God would be there regardless of their feelings or the evidence.
Taking in the word of God in scripture and being prayerful have always been the foundation for living with joy even by the waters of Babylon. And sadly this has either been forgotten or forsaken by many in the Church of Jesus Christ. Once again I return to Eugene Peterson:
Despite – or could it be because of? – our vaunted affluence and learning, we men and women in North America seem for the most part to be scandalously ignorant with regard to human suffering. More scandalous still, a great many Christians are currently complicitous in this ignorance. Christians right and left, Christians whose identifying symbol is the cross of Jesus and whose vocation is determined by that same cross are abandoning it for careers in anesthesi
ology. And this is a scandal, you see, because Christians used to be the world’s experts on suffering. And the world deserves to know what we know about suffering – it NEEDS to know what we have learned from Jesus at the cross… The people in our neighborhoods need to know that suffering is not the worst thing that could happen to them.And here is where the mean-spirited and cruel judge finally comes into focus: sometimes there isn’t a pretty ending in our lives – sometimes we have to endure injustice and pain and deep questions without answers – sometimes we wake up and discover that we’re suffering by the waters of Babylon. Because faith, you see, adult faith in our tradition, “doesn’t fix things as much as gives us the capacity and courage to bear hard things well.”
• God, of course, is our loving ABBA, who yearns to bring us blessing and bounty, not the cruel SOB of this parable even when life has led us to the waters of Babylon.
• And as we seek to know ABBA through prayer and the Word of God, we come to see that the judge is not the main character in this story: the widow is – the one who knows and trusts the Lord by faith.
And that is why Jesus ends the story wit
h a question; he's asking: do you get it? Do you understand that suffering is part of the life of a disciple? Do you get that the waters of Babylon are more often the rule than the exception? And that God’s loving presence can be real even in there? Beloved, I am a huge fan of celebrating the truth and depth of every spiritual tradition - I respect and honor the sacred in every faith tradition - but let me be explicit: if you do not specialize and focus in one, you will be forever unfocused and fuzzy when it comes to living into God's grace. This is simply a hard, cold fact. We are Christians - people who follow Jesus into the celebration and suffering of real life - and that means we must turn to him and God's word if we are to find persistent faith.
• You see, God’s grace can be real even by the waters of Babylon, but it takes training and focus.
• It is not automatic: and THAT is the good news for today for those who have ears to hear.
credits:
• You see, God’s grace can be real even by the waters of Babylon, but it takes training and focus.
• It is not automatic: and THAT is the good news for today for those who have ears to hear.
credits:
2) Bomb @ http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/07/in-the-name-of-the-father-the-gun-and-the-holy-ghost-amen.html
3) Eye @ http://www.sbcw.ch/
6) Publican @ http://stanfordtranscripts.blogspot.com/2009/01/luke-18-uc-davis-12009-9to-some-who.html
7) Bible study @ http://withlove-eileen.blogspot.com/
8) Prayer and meditaiton @ http://www.questforbalance.com/2009/05/31/dalai-lama-art-of-happiness-inspiration/
9) Cross and nails @ http://www.questforbalance.com/2009/05/31/dalai-lama-art-of-happiness-inspiration/
10) Pictures of First Church Sunday by Dianne De Mott
Lots here, James.I'd say you're quite right on the whole, but there is a tendency to make suffering a fetish, as though if you're suffering, you're OK in the eyes of God, and/or your faith is automatically real.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your insight: I agree and am striving for some type of balance which is tricky given the tradition and its obsession. But I also sensed I had to jump in, too.
ReplyDeleteI'd have been more surprised if you didn't jump, James! ;)
ReplyDeleteYou are the best, my man! ;-)
ReplyDelete