Pray without ceasing

Luke 18:1-8
Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, 'Grant me justice against my opponent.' 4 For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" 6 And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"


Jesus tells his hearers and us what this parable is about before he even tells it. This is unusual because most of the time he simply tells the parable and leaves it for us to figure out. But this is really, really important and he doesn’t want anyone to miss this point. He tells them “a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” Fred Craddock writes it’s the ‘unavoidable truth that {this story} presents prayer as continual and persistent, hurling its petitions against long periods of silence. The human experience is one of delay and {this parable} honestly says as much, even while acknowledging God’s ways” (Craddock, Luke, pg. 209). It’s this delay, or our perception of God’s delaying that Jesus is talking about here. It is very human to wonder why God seems to take so long to hear our prayers or to answer them.

It’s been said that there are three answers to prayer: “yes”, “no” and “wait”. It seems to be that waiting is the answer we have the hardest time with.

The phrase “how long” is used 55 times in the Bible. Not just on the lips pf God’s people as they wait for rescue or salvation but also on God’s lips. God asks the children of Israel: “How long must I wait for you to turn to Me?” All the way back in the Old Testament, before the children of Israel had even gotten settled in the Promised Land, God was frustrated with them and asked: Numbers 14:11 11 And the LORD said to Moses, "How long will this people despise me? And how long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?

The people say “How long must we wait for you to save us?” The Psalms are our prayer book, they cover all of our emotions, wants and needs in some form or another and in Psalm 13, the frustration over God’s delay is recorded:
Psalm 13:1-2 NRS Psalm 13:1 How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

And at the end of the New Testament when the scenes from heaven in the last days are revealed to John, still there are saints asking God “How long”:
Revelation 6:9-10 9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; 10 they cried out with a loud voice, "Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?"

In our way of thinking “how long” sounds a whole lot like “why me?” When we stand in the midst of hardship and confusion, trouble or heart-rending pain and ask why, we are usually asking ‘Why me? Why is this happening to me?” There are several answers to that question, some of which are useful and some answers that are not productive at all. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the hurt we feel that we stop using our God-given reason to try to figure things out. God doesn’t ask us to just dumbly sit there and suffer, to just ‘grin and bear it’. He gave us brains and each other and we need to use both our own reason and the support of the people around us when we hurt or are in trouble.

Look at the situation that is causing the heartache and as “Did I actively do something to directly cause this?” If the answer is yes then you have some work to do to make amends for what you’ve done. The first step in any difficult situation is to take personal responsibility for your actions. You can’t blame other people for your problems without looking clearly and honestly at what you have done that has contributed to the problem.

When I say a clear and honest look, I mean just that. Don’t take responsibility for things that aren’t your fault. But by the same token, don’t blame your shortcomings and sins on someone else.

When you can honestly say that your problem comes from someone else’s actions, then you have another decision to make: Are you going to continue to live with or, try to do something about it or pursue some other more drastic option.

Now, I am not standing up here juts to give you advice on how to live. I’m not the “Dear Abby” of Bald Knob. As Christians we are called to be personally responsible, accountable to God and to each other for our actions. But we don’t do it all by ourselves.

This is a good place to emphasize that this whole process from beginning to end has to be bathed in prayer. Not just asking God over and over again for what you want but listening for the voice, the moving of the Holy Spirit that gives us insight, wisdom, courage and energy. It’s in prayer that we can see clearly, think rationally and make good decisions. That’s why the Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. Prayer is not a laundry list of requests or a one-shot deal, it’s a way of life that is characterized by constantly being in the presence of God, asking, listening, responding, back and forth in the most intimate of all relationships.

But we still haven’t looked at the main issue that Jesus is pointing to here, the reason He told this parable in the first place: the need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

Then there are situations where circumstances are totally out of our control. What happens when we pray and pray and there is seemingly no result, when all around us things seem to be going from bad to worse? The Bible is full of examples of people asking ‘how long?’ How much longer do I have to endure this? Look at Job who lost everything, whose wife told him to curse God and die. But God had an answer for Job. It wasn’t a comfortable or easy answer. Change your perspective God said. Realize who you are and who I am. That change in perspective is what makes all the difference.

Consider the Apostle Paul who tells us with brutal honesty that he pleaded for God to take away his ‘thorn in the flesh’, that sickness that plagued him. And God answered him. In 2 Corinthians 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Suffering is something we want to avoid at all costs. We don’t want to suffer, we don’t want to watch other people suffer, especially people we love. But suffering is part of being human. Suffering is what Jesus did for us. In the book of Isaiah, the prophecy points to the Messiah as the ‘suffering servant.”

What if part of the solution to our suffering is that’s God’s power is made perfect in our weakness? The only illustration I can make here is to being in childbirth/labor. That’s one of the worst pains I know. It comes and goes like a wave. It builds up, breaks and subsides and then starts all over again. Even in our deepest emotional grieving, like when we lose someone we love, our emotions have that same ebb and flow. For a little while, everything seems like it’s going to be OK and then the pain hits and life seems unbearable, unendurable. But in childbirth, you never forget there is a reason for the agony. And when you hold that baby in your arms, the pain is forgotten. The labor pains, even at their most intense, are bearable when you keep the result in sight.

I think that’s what Jesus is telling us here. Life is hard and it is always a temptation to quit, to give up but don’t lose heart, the end is in sight. My power is made perfect in weakness. Even while you are suffering, I am at work making all things new, your suffering is the birth pain of a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth. Not somewhere in the sweet by and by but right here, now. Even now all creation is groaning for that new birth. Not birth into a world of sin and death, but a world where sin and death have passed away.

Revelation 21:1-5 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." 5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new."

Even now when we participate in the sacraments of the church, baptism, marriage, communion we are not just practicing human acts that symbolize some other time, some day that is coming, we are actually participating here and now in the Kingdom of God with God the Father, Christ our brother and the Holy Spirit, our comforter and guide.

It's Raining

Lo and behold, it's raining. Physically, real precipitation coming down from the sky. Blessings falling like rain. Can we stop long enought to be grateful to the One who sends the rain and hears us when we ask and are grateful?

Let it pour!

20071014 Luke 17b

Luke is telling us again and again about healing and about hope. This is the third time in as many chapters that he has used the theme of being dead and made alive again. There was the prodigal son in chapter 15, Lazarus the beggar in chapter 16 and now these lepers in chapter 17. All three of those men were unclean in some way, and being labeled unclean in those times was just the same as being dead.

Having leprosy was one of those shameful, horrible diseases that you didn’t talk about. It is not so common today because modern medicine has found a vaccine that works against the infection that causes it. It is very, very infectious and spreads from on person to another quickly and easily. Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease of humans caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae. For many years, it was considered a mysterious disorder associated with some type of curse, and persons with the disease were isolated and ostracized. Today, there is effective treatment and the disease can be cured. There is no longer any justification for isolating persons with leprosy.The disease can affect the skin, mucous membranes, and eyes and some of the nerves that are located outside the central nervous system (peripheral nerves). These are primarily the nerves of the hands, feet, and eyes, and some of the nerves in the skin. In severe, untreated cases, loss of sensation, muscle paralysis of hands and feet, disfigurement, and blindness may occur. (medical info from www.webmd.com) Fingers and toes grow numb, the skin gets hard and dry. This happens to such an extent that the fingers and toes can literally be broken off without the person feeling them. Or they become so rotted from lack of blood flow that they simply fall off. The disease progreses up the limbs and finally to the lungs and heart which stiffen and stop, causing death. The key things to remember are the numbness, the hard, cracking of the skin and the loss of feeling.

The leper in today’s text had two strikes against him for being a leper and for being a Samaritan, the hated enemies of the Jews.

Who are the ones that are considered unclean or outsiders today? Because it is through the ones on the margins that Jesus showed who he was and what his kingdom is about. The first group that always springs to my mind are the illegal aliens, mostly Hispanic, in our culture that have come here to work in agriculture. There is truth and hurt on both sides of the debate but, I can’t help wondering if they are the disenfranchised, the ones on the outside, that are the modern-day equivalent of the Samaritans of Jesus’ day. I don’t have an answer here and I am not falling down on one side or the other of this debate. But I am saying that there is a pricking in my soul that tells me that this is important, that this is a topic we need to wrestle with as a community.

The ten lepers are healed by Jesus but only one comes back to thank him. And the one that comes back isn’t a Jew but a Samaritan. This foreigner, literally in the Greek, this alien, is showing us what real gratitude is all about. And in this context, I can’t help thinking about rain.

We’ve prayed a lot for rain this summer and we’ve gotten a little precipitation here and there. But, according to the way I see it, we haven’t gotten nearly enough. Everything is sort of OK for now but it is hard not to worry about what January and February will bring when it will be cold, the ground hard as stone and there won’t be much for our animals to even nibble on, even less than the little bit that they have right now.

What we need is rain. We need a soft shower everyday that will soften up this hard ground until it is able to soak up drenching showers that will sink deeply into the soil. We need cool, dewy mornings and warm afternoons to grow a fall crop of grass that will allow our herds to start off the winter already sleek and fat. We know we need the rain as much as the leprous men knew they needed healing.

Their disease-ridden bodies were as cracked and lifeless as our pastures. So they reached out to the one whom they believed could restore them. Yes, the one they hoped could resurrect them.

And without any special words of healing, Jesus sent them off to the priest, the human authority that could declare them well and allow them back into their families, their homes and their community.

In the act of simply turning away to follow his instructions, they were made physically whole and well. Their skin was restored to dewy softness; the cracked and hardened places were warm and flexible. Fingers and toes that had been stiffened with disease could curl and uncurl, could grasp and hold, were functional again. All from the single word of Jesus – “Go.” There response in just a small amount of faith, just mustard seed-sized was all that was needed to turn and set out on the path he directed.

Now, let me say here that using the illustration of how we need rain here falls a little bit short of perfection. I am NOT saying that God is withholding rain from us because of some bad behavior on our part or because we haven’t prayed hard enough or in the ‘right’ way. God knows we need rain just like he knows about every other need we have. And we humans can’t force God to act or understand the mystery of why things happen the way they do.

But I do think the kind of rain that we’d like to see falling on out fields is the kind of softening healing that God wants to rain on our hearts. The same way that the leprosy had deadened the bodies of the men Jesus healed, there is a spiritual and emotional leprosy that deadens our hearts and souls. Oh, our hearts may keep physically beating but our feelings and spirits are so dead, numb and lifeless that we become just an empty shell. That healing and softening comes to our hearts by simply exercising the faith that we have, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem. As we turn to follow Jesus’ instructions to go, we are made well. Maybe just a little at a time, maybe not in ways that we even immediately recognize.

But that’s not the end of the story. One of the men, realizing the magnitude of what has happened, turns back to Jesus to say thank you. And in that action, Jesus gives him more than any physical healing. “Your faith has made you well” our English translations say. But in the Greek it is more than that. “Your faith has saved you.” Jesus says and he means not just from physical death but spiritual death as well. Salvation comes from obedience and gratitude.

That kind of gratitude is what we are being called to. It’s not a one time thing but an attitude that characterizes a lifetime.

Being a grateful person grounds us in the things we know to be important. Tonight when you go to bed, count 5 things you are thankful for, starting with the 5 breaths you take while you think about it. And tomorrow morning, before your feet hit the floor, thank God for 5 more, especially the 5 beats of your heart while gratitude crosses your mind.

No matter whether rain is falling or the sun is shining, or as sometimes happens around here, both are happening at the same time, remember the words from 1st Thessalonians: “Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of Christ Jesus for you.” Are there hard places in your heart that need softening? Not the places where we live most of the time, when we consider our spouses, our children and grandchildren, the friends that surround us.
What about when we consider folks who are different from us, folks that are offensive to us in some way: foreigners living in our land, people who live lifestyles that we despise. Where do you need the softening touch of the Master’s hand? It may be in places you can’t even identify, places where fear and anger have sunk so deeply down into your soul that you don’t even know it’s there but you react out of that fear and anger when you least expect it.

The rain may not fall from the sky everyday or as often as we want it to but the blessings of God through the Holy Spirit continue to flow all the time, abundantly, overflowing in ways that are more than we can ask or imagine. All we have to do is be open and willing to change, willing to follow Jesus’ simple command “Go” and to be grateful, to live in an attitude of thanksgiving.

Remember the words of the 10 lepers to Jesus? “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” He did and He has.

Amen

What is lost, really?

20070916 Luke 16

Today we are looking at three well-known parables in the gospel of Luke. They are: the parable of the lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost son. These three are so familiar that when we even hear the titles, our minds go on ‘auto-pilot’ and we automatically stop really listening to the Scripture and start thinking about what the parables mean to us individually. We turn off the hearing part, breeze through the explaining or exposition and arrive quickly at applying the truth that we think we know; that we have heard a million times before.

But stop and think for a minute, these are the actual words of Jesus. Yes, they are being reported by Luke and have been shaped by him to tell the kind of story, to make the kind of point he wants to make about who Jesus really is. But these are Jesus’ actual words. And what do we know about the words of Jesus?

We need to remember that they are not ordinary words like we speak to each other. Oh yes, when we read them off the pages of our Bibles they sound like ordinary words. They sound like words telling us what to do, how to live but Jesus was not just saying words, He IS the Word. So the words he speaks, even though we can’t physically hear his voice, these words are not just syllables in English that tell a story. Jesus didn’t come to tell us fairy stories about a magical kingdom far, far away. He came to be the incarnate Word and the words he tells them and tells us are sharper than a two-edged sword:

Hebrews 4:12 12 Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

And these parables are that word. They explain who Jesus is and what God is really like. They are about not the things that are lost, but they are about the One who does the searching and the finding and the One who rejoices when the lost are found.
What do these parables tell us about God?

He actively seeks that which is lost. But what does it mean to be lost? To be separated from the place where one is useful or meaningful; to be separated from the place or from the people that help us make sense of life. For example, counselors tell us, and most of us know, that when someone we are close to dies, we feel lost because we have to learn how to make sense of the world, how to make sense of life without that person.

A coin lying in the dust is useless
A sheep separated from the herd is doomed.
A person separated from home and culture is separated from his or her identity, from the elements that make life make sense, make it meaningful.

But the sheep, the coin and the son didn’t stay lost, the first two were actively sought out by a power that could do for them what they couldn’t do for themselves. Jesus drives the point home with the parable of the prodigal son, or the two brothers or the rejoicing father. Why so many titles? Because we are continually trying to place ourselves in the story. Bout our place in the story isn’t the main thing…It’s about God!

God is the one who seeks and finds and rejoices. So who is the father who runs down the road to meet the wanderer as soon as he comes in to view? It is a God who so much longs for relationship with his children, who is so overflowing with unconditional love that the past actions and the road dirt don’t matter as he throws his arms around this boy who has been lost and is now found. This boy has been rode hard and put up wet. He has made decisions and done things that no parent really wants to hear the details of but there is enough love to cover all that, enough patience and acceptance to negate the road weary miles.

But let’s be clear about what’s going on here. We are talking about sin, plain and simple. Wrongdoing, bad choices, selfish motives that take God off the throne of our hearts, if he was ever there in the first place, and put our own wants and desires on that throne to rule our lives by the impulses of what I want right now. That’s sin and it’s ugly and it’s real.

But praise be to God that’s not the end of the story. Beyond our puny little selves is a God so big that only he can erase the consequences of our sin, only he can bridge that gap between His holiness and our unrighteousness. And he doesn’t just sit around waiting for us to come up on the porch and ask for His forgiveness, to ask him to make things right.


Brothers and Sisters, hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as soon as you step your foot on the road of repentance that leads to the house of God, God is already running down the road to meet you, to throw his arms around you, to rejoice in your homecoming. What a glorious knowledge of the surpassingly abundant love of God that reached down to where I am and keeps on reaching. Amazing love, how can it be that you my king would die for me? Amazing love, I know it’s true and it’s my joy to honor you in all I do, I honor you.

But church, let me tell you it’s not the last word. And this is the word I struggle with, the one I don’t want to preach and the one I don’t want to hear. We are called to be like Him, made in his image, working in his Kingdom. We know the fields are white with the harvest and God calls us to labor in those fields.

Look around, those lost and dying people are not here in this room. Where are they? Sleeping off last night’s drunk? Waking up in somebody’s bed that they can’t remember their name? Wondering why their wallets empty and where could they have spent all that money? Or maybe it’s not so dramatic. Maybe they woke up this morning with a longing to be with people who really cared about them, a longing to do something with their life that was important and had a purpose but they’d gone to a church one time and it was all full of hypocrites, or somebody hurt their feelings or they couldn’t believe that if God was so great that there could be so much hurt in the world, so they gave up on Him. But they still hear the echoes of a voice telling them that there is more to life that what they have right now.

As long as we sit here, on the porch, waiting for those people to come to the door and ask for forgiveness and ask to know God, as long as we wait here, we are not being like Him.

Remember why Jesus told these parables in the first place. Luke 15:1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." 3 So he told them this parable:

The tax collectors and the sinners were coming near to him. Where would we have to go, what would we have to do so folks who need Christ would come to us to hear? We have to run down the road to meet them. This is a hard thing to think about but consider the places that we don’t want to go because of the kinds of folks that are there. The Six Mile Jamboree, the Downtowner, a bar or a pool hall.

NRS Romans 15:1 We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. 2 Each of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor.

What does that mean, to please out neighbor? I think it means that we have patience with where they are, we literally meet them where they are. Doesn’t that mean that we should go to where the hurting people are? Not to be like them in their sin and disillusionment and not to judge them and tell them what bad people they are but to befriend them, to love them like Jesus did, to love them enough to help them see a better way. Maybe just one person at a time, this isn’t a one shot deal and it isn’t a quick fix and we are not all called to minister in this way.

My dream house that I want to build on the farm has a porch all the way across the front and across the back. I can’t think of anything better than sitting on the porch on the farm watching it rain, or watching the horses in the field or talking with good friends and family. But I can’t stay on the porch. I know what it’s like to be lost and, praise God, I know what it’s like to be found. Because God loves me, I can risk loving you and I can risk loving people outside this circle.

It’s scary to love other people, to even try to get to know other people and tell them the Good News. People may talk badly about me and misunderstand. I may be horribly rejected by the very ones I am trying to help. There are mission fields far away where Christians labor to spread the Gospel. And there are mission fields not a half a mile from here where folks get together to relax, to hang out, to connect with others where Jesus is as much unheard of as he is in the deepest Amazon jungle.

Matthew 28:19-20 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

We are all good at the teaching part and we can stay inside these safe 4 walls and teach each other for a long time. But Jesus said “Go” and that is what we have to do. What does that going look like? We can know and follow Him through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that he would be with us, there is no place we can go that is too far away from His love. That assurance gives us the assurance to carry His name into places where it hasn’t been heard and must be carried.

Amen