Banging Your Fist on the Threshold of God

Luke 18:1-8

Several years ago, I read this extremely popular book at the time, one that was highly controversial, although in my opinion a pretty unorthodox but beautiful account of describing what is indescribable, the Holy Trinity.  The book was titled The Shack.  The premise of the book on the surface was a man and his family goes camping.  His daughter is abducted and later evidence emerges that she was murdered by a serial killer in a small shack not far from the campgrounds.  The father, Mack, says that at this point his life enters what he calls, “The Great Sadness.” 

Four years later, he receives a letter from God which commands him to go back to the Shack to meet.  Sounds weird right?  And off Mack goes with some prodding and family encouragement and when he is about to leave the Shack, the whole world is transformed and he has this mystical encounter with the Holy Trinity.   Most of the book is a dialogue between Mack, and God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. 

What I found most powerful about the book, was the conversation of prayer and forgiveness that is established by Mack.  The first is an important concept – the need for Mack to forgive God for not disclosing all the answers to life’s most challenging and painful question.  Mack has to get to a place where he can let go of needing to know, to let go of having all of the answers, or even a suitable answer for the pain, the grief, and the sickening destruction of his own self by what he has experienced. 

The next is the work that Mack does to forgive his daughter’s killer.  Each day, it is a prayer.  Each day, Mack asks for help in forgiving the person who has caused more pain than I can possibly imagine a family or individual can endure.  But he prays.   He needs endurance.  He needs to not lose hope for his own grief and his own process of healing.   He knows that the task of forgiveness is the most challenging task he can possible take on, but he also understands the slow process and need to make that attempt, day after day, week after week. 

I thought of the character Mack when I read today’s Gospel.  He reminds me of the widow from the parable told by Jesus.  The widow and the judge are both familiar characters in our lives.  The judge is a politician who is always looking out for his own good and not the welfare of anyone else.  The whole town knows the character of the judge, even the widow in her time of need.  Maybe we are all too familiar with this judge during these times! 

And we can hear the plea of the widow.  She knows that the judge has not an ounce of feeling for anyone but himself, but she knocks anyway.  And she keeps knocking.  Please, please, please help.  By now, its 2am and the neighbors are furious.  They continue to slam their windows shut.  “Help me, help me, help me.”  And finally the door opens, “Fine, I will help you if you just leave me alone.  Now get out of my sight and don’t come back.”

The judge responds, but only to make his life simpler.  He wants sleep and it is easiest if he helps the widow. And the widow who has been seeking justice is appeased.  And we are told this is what prayer is like. Our lives are to be a constant stream of being, of asking for help, of asking for guidance, of giving thanks, even when it seems useless. And this is where we hear the character of Mack each day,   “God, help me.  Help me to forgive the person who has done the unforgivable act. I am not there yet.  Help me.”  Each day, going back, demanding help.  Each day, he assumes, will be like the previous, with forgiveness not fully there yet. 

When I was growing up, my parents constantly reminded, “Be nice to your sister.”  I remember being punished a few times where my father would make me write out on notebook paper, “I will be nice to my sister and my mother, and I will respect women at all times.”  He would have me write some sentiment like that over and over, 100 - 500 times depending on the severity of what I had done. 

Looking back (and after studying moral theology) I am much more aware that my father was not concerned with my immediate actions. If I continued to be disrespectful or mean to my mother, if the behavior was not curbed, then over time, it would be even more difficult to change my actions.  I would slowly grow into being a more disrespectful person.  However, if I would write something down 100-500 times, the sentiment would affect me by encouraging me to be that which the written statement called me to be. 

This underlying principle affects all vices in virtues in moral theology.  Think about lying.  If for say, you decided one year to bend the truth on your taxes.  I imagine it would be a little bit easier to make the same justification the next year, and even easier the third year, and many years down the road, you might find yourself saying, “Hey, everyone does this, it is not a big deal.”  A small action, when repeated begins to shape who we are. 

Or imagine learning how hard it is to apologize and admit that we are wrong to our loved ones.  I bet it is really hard the first time we have to do that, but overtime, it becomes easier, and we become more attuned to the people we are in relationship, and find it easier to admit to our own faults and limitations. 

Small actions, repeated over and over and over can affect who we are becoming, both positively and negatively.  Just as it is not likely that a person just randomly goes off and robs a bank.  It is much more likely they have been committing crime after crime, escalating, until they reach the point of robbing a bank. Or imagine a philanthropist.  It is not probably not likely that a very wealthy person all of a sudden for the first time gives away a lot of money.  There have likely been acts of charity over time that have helped that person become more charitable. 

To some extent, I believe that this understanding of moral theology and how vices and virtues shape who we are as people can help us to understand the intent of the parable that Jesus offers.   Why is it important to pray always?  Why should we be concerned with not losing heart?  What if we are not feeling the inspiration that we desire every Sunday?  Why continue?  Why not just stop going to church?  What if we are not inspired by the sermon, or what if we are not inspired by the music?  Why do we keep praying?  What draws us back?  Shouldn't we just take a break?  Or stop, maybe pick up a new hobby?  Whittling sticks?  Or taking nature hikes?  Playing the tuba? 

To use the famous words of a liturgical theologian – Praying shapes believing.  Just in the same way that writing 500 times, “I will not make fun of my sister’s braces” can help me to be more compassionate to my little sister, what we say and do each week slowly works on each of us as individual humans, opening a relationship to God through prayer.  It is why we need to say the confession over an over.  It is why we need to say peace be with you over and over.  It doesn't mean that from time to time, more often than not, we don’t feel like the widow banging her hands on the door of the unjust and selfish judge.  We do, but we are called to continue to pray, to be open, to be available, to be in relationship. We are called to gather here week after week, to say, “Peace be with you to our friends and family, including those who royally ticked us off, because eventually we will believe that.”  We are called each week to ask for forgiveness and slowly over time we will truly believe that we have been forgiven, and week after week we pray for God to restore the entire universe, trusting that one day that work will be complete, the kingdom come, salvation present.  

Praying shapes believing.  And prayer shapes us, it molds us, and calls us forward.  So do not lose heart, Pray always, banging your fists on the door of the threshold of God.  Because, will God not grant justice to those who cry to him day and night?  Amen.  

Sermon Preached at Church of the Annunciation

October 20th, 2013

Gratitude as a Response to God's Faithfulness

I want to share a funny little event that happened on Tuesday evening.   We headed out to our local neighborhood Asian Cuisine place – Pei Wei.  Jack took with him a gift from his God parents, a bendable Jesus.  As we were getting ready to leave the house, he wouldn’t let the little bendable Jesus out of his grasp, so bendable Jesus joined us on our quick dinner date.  As I held Jack up at the counter, ordering, Jack slammed down bendable Jesus with a big grin saying something like, “Doh, Doh, doh”  and the young guy at the counter, got real excited and looked us.  “Hey little guy, who is your superhero?”

Anne and I just stood there kind of laughing, “umm.  It’s Jesus.”

“Oh, Well I guess that is the ultimate super hero.  Super Jesus!” 

So today, we encounter Super Jesus, fully man and fully God who takes ten people with leprosy and makes them whole. Our passage from Luke this Sunday arrives to us on Jesus’ journey between Samaria and Galilee.  If you recall from a few weeks ago, Samaria was the place where no observant Jew would go.  The Samaritan’s were not just foreigners, but political opponents and theological heretics, a despised group by the entire faith.  Galilee on the other hand, was full of Jewish people, but still a hotbed of political activity and radical thought.  In United States standards, it was considered the Berkley, California of the ancient world.  To call someone a Galilean at the time might mean they are Jewish, but it has a connotation of not being of the traditional sort.  A Galilean applies leaning somewhat outside of the spectrum of orthodoxy.  

And Jesus is journeying in between the two, in between those who stand against and those who mix it up.  And he encounters 10 lepers.  We hear a lot about lepers in the Bible.  We hear a lot about Jesus healing.  And often we as the reader are invited to think about the radical call of Jesus to seek out those who are on the outskirts of society, isolated from the rest of the world because of their physical condition.  The healing of the leaper is so often about the value of those who society has not seen any value in, and healing is extended to all, well beyond the scope of what we have come to value. 

But this week is different.  It is not a group of others that we see as the leper, but ourselves.  We are one of the 10, hopefully called to be the one who turns back to Jesus, praising God.  We find ourselves in the story as a people who need cleansing and healing, somewhere between unorthodoxy and a hotbed of political activity.  So if you don’t feel like you understand everything.  If you feel like you have it all figured out one day, and not the next.  If you feel like you have you faith under control some of the time, but tot the rest, then ok.  If you question, if you doubt, if have reservations, if you have concerns, then maybe you are in the right place, a place where you can truly encounter Jesus.  A place where you can truly seek restoration. 

And this is where we find the 10 lepers.  They ask for healing and Jesus sends them to the priests to be healed.  And off they go.  Somewhere along the journey one turns around to go back to Jesus and he realizes that he has already been made well.   And Jesus responds, “Get up – go on, you faith has made you well.”  Which causes us to pause and wonder, is it our faithfulness that heals us, restores us to communities, and keeps us from isolation?   

I think when we explore this sentiment, similar to last week’s Gospel and sermon, it can be problematic.  It causes us to wonder if the situation we are in is a result of our own lack of faithfulness.  If we were just more faithful would we feel more contempt with who we are, or would we see ourselves as being fully restored in the eyes of God. 

Which brings me to point number 1 – It is not the faithfulness of the leper, but the faithfulness of God that restores all people to him through Jesus Christ.  This is the promise made by God, and the promise of our Eucharistic prayer.  It is our theology to know that God has promised to restore all of us through the blood of Christ that we partake in each Sunday.  In contrast, it is our faithfulness that calls us forward to walk down this isle, to cross our hands and to take the body of Christ, but it is God whose faithfulness that restores us.  It is not by our own merit, but the grace of God that healing, restoration and unity take place.  In our places between Samaria and Galilee, in our places of pain, doubt, and concern, we do not have to rely on ourselves.  There is nothing we can offer to change where we are.  The bond that God has created is indissoluble.  Our faithfulness is only the acknowledgement of God’s faithfulness.  Our lack of trust, or pain, or grief does not change the promise. 

Inevitably the other nine lepers have been healed, they just fail to understand the whole picture as we see it.  The other nine lepers are healed because that is what God has promised, and it is out of that promise that we are to respond.  The other nine lepers forget the response.  They forget that God has acted and now we are commanded to act. 

Which brings me to point number 2 – but first I need to tell a joke. 

There was a tailor named Mendel and he was worried about his business. Mendel was down to his last $50 and was torn between buying a sign and getting food for his family. Mendel decided to pray.

“Dear God,” he said, “I don’t know what to do. If I buy a sign it may bring in business, but I need to buy groceries for my family…and if the sign doesn't bring in sales, we will starve.

God replied, “Mendel buy the sign. Don’t worry, your family won’t starve.”

So, Mendel bought the sign and business took off. The tailor fed his family and all was well. However, as time passed it became evident that Mendel couldn't keep up with orders all by himself. He contemplated hiring on a helper, but wondered if he could afford it. So, he asked God if getting help would be a prudent move.

“Go ahead,” God tells Mendel, “hire some help, you’ll do okay.”

And so Mendel did. And business took off beyond his wildest dreams. After a time, the tailor decided to move to a larger site that would accommodate the growing demands of his business. As he surveyed certain locations, he found a perfect storefront, but the rental price was really steep.

“God” Mendel again prayed, “I found the perfect place to relocate my business. But the cost of the lease worries me. I don’t want to get in over my head.”

“Go ahead and a get a lease on the store, Mendel,” said God. “Trust me, you’ll be okay I haven’t steered you wrong yet, have I?”

So Mendel signed a lease on the 5th Avenue store and profits from his business went through the roof. Out of heartfelt gratitude, Mendel proposed to the Almighty that he dedicate the store to Him.

“How do you like the name “Yaweh and Mendel,” the tailor asked.

“Nah,” God said. “Let’s go with ‘Lord and Taylor.’”

Point number 2 - The response to God’s faithfulness is gratitude.  

Ten are healed but only one returns to Jesus to give thanks to God.  And it sounds like Jesus is upset. I have to wonder if our Gospel is a commentary on the way humanity has always lived in this world.  Do the nine lepers believe that their journey to the priests make them whole? Do we believe that out of our own merit we have received the grace of God?  If the answer to these questions is yes, then we fail to live in gratitude.   Maybe the nine lepers that got away illustrate how easy it is to overlook the importance of gratitude as the appropriate theological response to God’s grace.  Maybe the nine that got away are a clear example of how selfish the human ego can be. 

Sermon Preached on October 13th 2013

To have faith in God’s faithfulness calls us to a life of gratitude.  This kind of exploration of gratitude calls us into a life that looks at every opportunity as an opportunity to give thanks.   What would life be like if instead of our normal interactions with all, we gave thanks for each person, each gift that the offer, each part of who they are.  A life of gratitude calls us to show appreciation for all, to give thanks for all, and to give of our own time, talent, and treasure.  Yes, we are approaching stewardship time in the church.  More formally in a few weeks, but our Gospel leads us this way today. 

And this creates an interesting tension in the church.  It is possible that we often think that God needs our money, or we have to give in order to survive or do X,Y, and Z.  God doesn't need our money.  What would our giving look like it we viewed it as the kind of gratitude that our Gospel calls us to explore?  Maybe we should give, because gratitude is what we desire our life to be.  Maybe we should give because gratitude is more important than keeping the lights on.  Maybe we should give because gratitude is the appropriate theological response to God walking up to the counter and offering us the ultimate superhero, bendable Jesus who has restored all of life and made all things new.  Gratitude in life could be our faithful response to what has already been done and promised, that is the faithfulness of God.

Lord, Increase Our Capacity for Forgivness

Has your faith or lack thereof every made you feel guilty?  Does shame play a role in how we participate, how we engage, how we interact in church?   When I was in high school, there was a mainstream Christian band called Jars of Clay with a hit song called “Like a Child.” The chorus had that famous line, “They say that I can move the mountains, send them crashing into the sea.” All, with faith like a child.  Move mountains.  It is a powerful image that calls us to a deeper faith, but does an unexplored or glossed over reading of our Biblical text, really do that? 

If we stop and think, the lessons we have learned over life, the messages we have heard in church, create a challenging dialogue for each of us.  Our life is a myriad of experiences, events, and overall series of emotional periods.  This is why we might say, ‘I am going through a really tough time right now,’ or ‘that period in my life was really dark.’  Or, ‘this year has been a really good year and I just feel so blessed!’ 

When life is not entirely as easy as we think it could be, we can so often have the tendency to feel like our faith is supposed to dictate where we are supposed to be.  If I just had more faith, maybe I wouldn’t be so sad.  If I just had more faith, maybe grief wouldn’t be so overwhelming.  If I just had more faith, I could be more content knowing where I am today.  When we examine faith from this perspective, doubt and shame both begin to permeate our central belief system.  The lesson of having the faith of a mustard seed almost always undergirds our reasoning.  And for good reason, as we hear the plea of the apostles, to have their faith increased. 

However, we cannot just turn to the story of the mustard seed to understand what Jesus means when he says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed.”  We have heard this Sunday, the follow up about the worthless slave or servant, an emotionally charged statement that comes from Jesus.  And just before this passage, the disciples are struggling with causing each other to stumble. The disciples are rebuking the offenders and then Jesus says you must forgive those who repent, even if that person sins against you seven times a day.  Forgive.  Forgive. Forgive.  And the apostles respond, Increase our Faith!

I want to change directions for just a bit and share with you the beginning of George Saunder’s commencement speech from Syracuse University this year which just appeared in an editorial in the New York Times.

Now, one useful thing you can do with an old person, in addition to borrowing money from them, or asking them to do one of their old-time “dances,” so you can watch, while laughing, is ask: “Looking back, what do you regret?”  And they’ll tell you.  Sometimes, as you know, they’ll tell you even if you haven’t asked.  Sometimes, even when you’ve specifically requested they not tell you, they’ll tell you.

So: What do I regret?  Being poor from time to time?  Not really.  Working terrible jobs, like “knuckle-puller in a slaughterhouse?”  (And don’t even ASK what that entails.)  No.  I don’t regret that.  Skinny-dipping in a river in Sumatra, a little buzzed, and looking up and seeing like 300 monkeys sitting on a pipeline, pooping down into the river, the river in which I was swimming, with my mouth open, naked?  And getting deathly ill afterwards, and staying sick for the next seven months?  Not so much.  Do I regret the occasional humiliation?  Like once, playing hockey in front of a big crowd, including this girl I really liked, I somehow managed, while falling and emitting this weird whooping noise, to score on my own goalie, while also sending my stick flying into the crowd, nearly hitting that girl?  No.  I don’t even regret that.

But here’s something I do regret:

In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class.  In the interest of confidentiality, her Convocation Speech name will be “ELLEN.”  ELLEN was small, shy.  She wore these blue cat’s-eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore.  When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.

So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing).  I could see this hurt her.  I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear.  After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth.  At home, I imagined, after school, her mother would say, you know: “How was your day, sweetie?” and she’d say, “Oh, fine.”  And her mother would say, “Making any friends?” and she’d go, “Sure, lots.”

Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.

And then – they moved.  That was it.  No tragedy, no big final hazing.

One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.

End of story.

Now, why do I regret that?  Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it?  Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her.  I never said an unkind word to her.  In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her.

Saunders continues to go into his advice for the graduates, how we understand ourselves as humans intellectually and the need for kindness and how kindness is essentially what we need to be working for in life, and he says, that “as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.  You will gradually be replaced by love.”  

I was struck by his story for a number of reasons.  First, what a wonderful message for college students who are so worried about jobs and careers – kindness.   But there is another part of me that sees the human person in all of life, oscillating between Ellen and George.    Our human experience, our stories in life invite us to see ourselves as both Ellen and George.  We have been the one who has stood their silently ashamed of not offering a response, and we have stood their listening to others, angered and harboring resentment.

There is so much guilt and hurt that makes up each of our collective stories.  Maybe we weren't the young child who chewed on her hair and stared awkwardly at our neighbors, but regardless we carry the burden of things done and things undone with each of us.  We hold resentment at others who have hurt us.  Days, weeks, years later, we stand both as Ellen and as George, wishing we had acted differently or others had been more generous.    If you have been around people long enough, you have probably both been offended and offended others.   This is a part of being human. 

And even in Christian community, human interactions have a way of unsettling our being, causing turmoil.  Even in churches, Christian communities, feelings are hurt.  Just look at the apostles in our lesson today.  They have a deep desire for their faith to be increased.  Their faith is linked to forgiveness.  They needed help with forgiveness, even if their fellow apostles are offending them seven times a day.  They need help forgiving their fellow disciples in Christ, the people they are intimately connected with in relationship.  And in forgiveness there is always a duality.  There exists the need to forgive others and the need to forgive ourselves.   Faith is the driving factor for the way we care for each other.

As I look at the train wreck of our national government, the excessive bickering between parties and the parties’ leaders, the failure to lead and instead to shut down and blame the other, I have to wonder if Luke would have something to say to each member of our Congress.  Faithfulness as seen in light of the ability to forgive one another would have the power to move mountains.  It would have the power to pick up this mulberry tree and plant it in the sea.  Forgiveness (which requires the ultimate faith) has that kind of transformative power to change the course of Washington. 

Maybe Jesus’ response that we only need the faith of mustard seed, is invitation to realize how close and how tangible forgiveness can be.  Something as small as a letting go or a refusal to harbor feelings of animosity, or lay blame on the other can be utterly transformative, utterly life changing.  In a small action lies unimaginable results.  In a small action, forgiveness has the power to do what seems impossible, inconceivable  and to defy not only the law of physics, but human understanding in the way that we behave and function. 

And maybe we need to have that kind of faith.  Our world is so polarized and we long for an appropriate response.  Just like the apostles, we demand for God to increase our faith.  Could the answer as small as a mustard seed?  Could the answer be letting ourselves off the hook for all the things undone?  Could the answer be in our response to ourselves and our response to our fellow friends and family, our neighbors, and those whom we stand in opposition with? Could the answer be rooted in our ability to drop the need to be right, the need to be appeased, or the need to see a limited view of justice?  Could the answer be in the size of a mustard seed?

Thinking Ahead: Faithfulness, Forgiveness, and the Government Shutdown

Luke 17:5-10