Sermon – Luke 7.11-17, I Kings 17.8-24, P5, YC, June 5, 2016

Tags

Elijah, eyes, God, heal, Jesus, look, miracles, mundane, see, Sermon, suffering, vision, widow

The scene that day is pretty chaotic.  Two parades collide – a parade of life and a parade of death.[i]  The parade of life includes Jesus and his disciples, high off the sermon on the plain and the healing of the Centurion’s slave, Jesus’ followers are full of hope and optimism.  People are beginning to talk about who this Jesus might be and the enthusiasm is palpable.  Meanwhile, another parade is underway – a widow has lost her only son.  Widows were already at risk in that day due to their lack of financial stability and support from a husband.  Having a child, especially a male child provided a slight assurance that all hope was not lost.  Not only would the son be able to provide for his widowed mother, he is also the legal heir of his father’s inheritance.  But when he too dies, not only does she mourn his loss, but her safety net is totally gone.  She and the mourners with her wail their way to the cemetery.

Two groups full of noise and energy, but their energy could not be more different.  Into this chaotic scene of wails and cheers, people struggling to carry the lifeless body of promise, and people struggling to lay claim on the messenger of hope something tremendous happens.  The text says, “…the Lord saw her.”  That simple phrase may not sound like much.  The Lord saw her.  But surrounded by a growing crowd of faithful, Jesus could have been distracted by the hype.  On a long journey of travel, Jesus could have seen the coming commotion and steered another way.  Or Jesus could have been in deep thought about the next phases of his own journey.  But in the middle of the chaos, as if in a movie that screeches into slow motion, we see Jesus’ eyes lock on the grieving widow and mother.  The noise of the surroundings disappears and all that is important in this moment is that Jesus sees her.

On Memorial Day, my family and I went out for lunch.  We were managing our own little bubble of chaos:  multiple orders; hungry, cranky children; and the looming, necessary nap time.  As I stepped out of our bubble to throw away a pile of trash, I noticed a veteran sitting by himself at the table beside us.  He was silently sitting with his meal, seemingly in moment of deep quiet.  Seeing him almost made me stumble into halted motion.  I wondered what his story was.  I wondered if he was remembering those who had died by his side while he fought for our country.  I wondered if he was one of the veterans who managed to have reentered after war relatively unscathed or whether he was struggling to get by.  I wondered if Memorial Day meant something more to him than Memorial Day meant to me.  But my seeing him and wondering about him was not the same as Jesus.  You see, I was looking at him, but I was not seeing him – not with the same eyes as Jesus.  I couldn’t even get up the nerve to talk to him that day.

That is what is so profound to me about this story in our gospel lesson today:  Jesus’ ability to see the childless widow.  We actually get two very similar stories about widows in our readings today.  But despite the similarities, the contrasts are more informative about what is powerful about Jesus’ encounter.[ii]  In the lesson from first Kings, the widow of Zarephath also loses her only son.  Her son is also revived by Elijah, but the encounters with the widows have a lot of differences.  First, the encounter between the widow and Elijah is passionate.  The widow in that story accuses Elijah of being at fault for her son’s death.  She is outraged and Elijah panics, pleading with God to save the boy and the family from whom he has taken so much.  But the widow in our gospel lesson and Jesus have no such encounter.  The gospel widow does not talk to Jesus and does not plead her case.  She does not blame others around her – in fact, she does not speak at all in the story.  Were it not for Jesus seeing her and stopping the procession, we can only presume this woman would have slipped into dangerous oblivion.

Next, in the Elijah story, Elijah knows the son who dies.  The three have already bonded over the miracle of food.  So Elijah is intimately familiar with how precarious the family’s situation is.  But Jesus does not encounter the widow in his story until her son is already dead and being processed for burial.  Jesus’ saving action then comes not from relationship, but from seeing the grave nature of the widow’s loss.  No one introduces Jesus to the widow, no one whispers to Jesus that the grieving woman is a widow in addition to being a grieving mother – Jesus manages to see all of the complexity of this woman’s life in one glance.

The final contrast to the Elijah story is the healing itself.  Elijah has to stretch himself over the boy three times and cry out to the Lord for help.  His healing requires great effort and exertion.  Meanwhile Jesus simply touches the funeral bier and commands the young man to arise.  The immediate response of the boy sitting up and speaking demonstrates the extent of Jesus’ power.  Healing comes not by a request from God but from Jesus himself.  Jesus is not simply a prophet through whom God speaks – he is the long awaited one who is to come – the Messiah.[iii]

The differences between Elijah and Jesus teach us something about God.  Jesus’ teaches us that God sees us – sees us when we are most vulnerable, without us ever having to speak or ask for help, and is actively compassionate toward us.  Now that reality may leave us wondering today, “Well then why doesn’t Jesus see my suffering and offer me compassion?  I wanted things to go differently for me and they did not.”  That is why I find those words so powerful today.  “Jesus saw her.”  I do not think the story of the widow today is about how Jesus rescues us from our deepest pain and suffering.  This story is about how Jesus sees us when we are suffering and invites us into a similar vision.

“While we wish for signs and wonders, for the parting of the seas, for the lightning bolt of a Damascus road conversion, we risk missing the miracle of the mundane, says Thomas Lynch.  We miss seeing our friends and family who show up when we need them, ‘the ones who have known us all along.’  [Like those friends of the paralytic who lowered their paralyzed friend down to Jesus], or the widow who helped Elijah, these ordinary, obscure, and unsung people…, ‘do their parts to get us where we need to go, within earshot and arm’s reach of our healing, the earthbound, everyday miracle of forbearance and forgiveness, the help in dark times to light the way; the ones who show up when there is trouble to save us from our hobbled, heart-wrecked selves.’”[iv]  Today’s lessons about healing are not meant to make us question why we cannot receive similar healing.  Today’s lessons encourage us to see God in all the tiny miracles around us every day – the miracles that come in less dazzling forms.[v]  To see as Jesus sees.

When we attempt to see with the eyes of Jesus, something shifts dramatically for us.  What is so powerful about seeing as Jesus sees is that Jesus does not see without action.  When Jesus sees he also acts.  Once we have honed our better sense of vision, Jesus’ invitation to us is not just to see with the eyes of compassion, but to use those compassionate eyes for the service of God.  I have already begun to see the ways in which Hickory Neck is a place where that kind of active vision is in place.  You already see that the homeless man does not simply need food or money – you throw in a pair of socks because you know how hard life is without the decency of clean socks.  You already see the indignity of prison and see how a homemade cookie, while seemingly trivial, provides that miraculous glimpse into the tender care of Christ.  You already see how unexpected medical costs can push a struggling family over the edge and how free, compassionate, quality healthcare gives more dignity than we can imagine.  That is our invitation today:  to see the mundane miracles around us every day and to be reinvigorated to see as Jesus sees – with the eyes of compassion and insight that offer tangible, sometimes small acts of compassion to our brothers and sisters who struggle.  My guess is that when we offer that compassion to others, we will see more clearly how we receive that same compassion from Christ every day in similarly small, mundane, and yet profound ways.  Amen.

[i] Gregory Anderson Love, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 120

[ii] Steven J. Kraftchick, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 117, 119.

[iii] Kraftchick, 121.

[iv] Dan Clendenin, “The Miracle of the Mundane,” May 29, 2016, as found at http://journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay on June 2, 2016.

[v] M. Jan Holton, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 120.

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Sermon – Luke 18.1-8, P24, YC, October 20, 2013

Tags

God, Jesus, judge, persistence, prayer, Sermon, transformation, widow

“Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”  From the very beginning of our gospel lesson, Luke tells us what this funny little parable is all about:  persistent prayer.  That message sounds simple enough, but once we hear the actual parable, the realities of persistent prayer sound like a lot more work than most of us care to think about, let alone do.  The parable today is about an unjust judge, who has no fear of God or respect for people, who is constantly harassed by a widow demanding justice.  The translation we hear today says that the judge finally decides to give the widow her way because he does not want the widow to wear him out by continually coming.  But the literal translation of the original Greek is a little stronger.  One translation reads that the judge gives the widow her way for fear that the widow will “slap me in the face.”[i]  Another translation reads that the judge gives the widow her way because he does not want to “end up beaten black and blue by her pounding.”[ii]  There is something about these more figurative translations that help us see that when Jesus says the disciples’ prayers need to be persistent, he means knock-down-drag-out, stubborn-headed, unrelenting, radically-vigilant persistence.

I don’t know about you, but most people I know do not approach their prayer life with this kind of rigor.  Many people who keep up this type of persistence for any amount of time eventually lose heart, finally concluding that prayer just does not work – or they are not praying the right way.  For those who have prayed without ceasing for months and years only to watch a child, a spouse, a friend, or a mother die, may have begun to question whether prayer is not just what people do to fill the time – not an effective means of healing.  And for those who have faced horrible atrocities, who can find no sense in a world that abuses, oppresses, and starves its people, may have given up not only on prayer, but on God too.

I remember the first time Scott and I tried to get pregnant.  We had been trying for almost a year, when I finally brought the subject up with my spiritual director.  I had not wanted to talk about the issue, but I think my distance from God was too obvious for the spiritual director to ignore.  When she pushed me on the issue, asking whether I had been giving my pain and suffering to God, I admitted to her that God felt dead to me.  I had nothing more to say to God because, quite frankly, God felt absent from my life at the time.  When I shared that sense of absence in my life, my spiritual director suggested another way.  She suggested I start praying through Mary instead.  My first reaction to her suggestion was rage and indignation.  How insensitive could this woman be to suggest that I, unable to conceive, try praying through a woman who was able to conceive without even trying?!  Though I left my session angry with my spiritual director, a few days later, I gave her suggestion a try.  Two things stuck with me about that experience.  One, Mary now holds a very special place for me in my faith and prayer life.  Two, what I realized was that my spiritual director never suggested I stopped being persistent in prayer.  She simply suggested prayer in a different way.

In some ways, I think we lose this understanding of persistence when we hear Jesus telling us to be like a woman who will physically fight her way through prayer.  We imagine Jesus telling us to keep doing the same thing over and over again until that thing works.  But I do not think that is exactly what Jesus means.  Staying persistently in the prayer relationship is essential, yes.  But that does not mean that relationship does not evolve and change over time.  I think about that widow in our parable today.  I am guessing that her approach with the judge was not the same everyday.  I imagine her starting with the traditional way of begging for justice as anyone would.  But when she is refused, I imagine her trying everything else possible.  From just being a constant presence as the judge was judging other cases; to interrupting the judge’s walk to work in the morning; to following behind him on the way home, pleading her case; even situating herself at a nearby table at his favorite lunch spot – maybe even loudly pleading her case in front of other people, so as to embarrass the judge in front of his friends and colleagues.  Perhaps this is what the judge means when he says the widow is wearing him out.

If we think about the widow’s persistent actions, they are not all that different from the actions of God with God’s people.  As our Thursday morning Bible Study group works its way through Genesis, I have been thinking about the persistent pursuit of God toward God’s people.  Adam and Eve sin, and yet God stays in relationship with them.  The whole earth falls into abominable sin, and even after flooding the earth, God forms a new covenant with humanity.  God’s people break covenant after covenant, and God continues to pursue them.  God’s people disrespect, dishonor, and disparage God, and yet God tries again and again to redeem God’s people.  God is so persistent in God’s relationship with us that God even sends a Son to redeem us from our sinful ways – allowing Jesus to die on a cross for us.  If the widow is the consummate example of persistence in prayer, she learned this persistence from the God is ever pursuing us.

So how do God and the woman do it?  How do they manage this kind of vigilant persistence?  I think what both of them experience is that they are changed in the process.  We have heard many times in scripture how God changes God’s mind – how the flood leads God to vow to never destroy the earth again, or how the argument of Abraham makes God tone down God’s judgment, or how the repentance of the people of Nineveh changes God’s mind about punishment.  I imagine the widow is changed too.  With each attempt at convincing the judge she must have become more and more bold.  In the story, she is transformed from a woman who is likely powerless about her own future and the future of her orphaned children to a woman who is almost feared by a powerful judge.  She is transformed through her persistence.

That transformation is what happens in the life of persistent prayer.  “Repeated, habitual prayer gradually tests and sifts what you believe is really important and what is of ephemeral value.”[iii]  I think about the many times I have prayed and prayed over a particular issue, fully aware of how, when, and why I wanted God to intervene.  But slowly, over time, my prayer about the same issue changes.  I may go from wanting a particular outcome, to being willing to accept a positive outcome, to accepting the defeat and being open to God’s will, to simply wanting God to be present in the midst of it all.  That is why persistent prayer is so important.  Our one-time prayers or our perfunctory prayers do not really open us up to God.  Those rote prayers are just our lips moving without our hearts being equally moved.  But when we are persistent in our prayers, constantly evolving our conversation with God, constantly amending our approach toward God, constantly leaning on others to inform our prayer life, slowly our prayers become transformed, leading us to that God who responds to the deepest, most vulnerable versions of ourselves.

I remember a story of a seminarian who studied at General Theological Seminary.  Desmond Tutu was on campus and the seminarian was excited to watch Tutu in action.  He was happy to see Tutu join the students and faculty at Morning Prayer.  Later, on his way to class, he noticed Tutu in the chapel again, praying on his own.  That afternoon, he saw Tutu in the chapel once more praying.  He watched this pattern again and again over three days.  Finally, at evening prayer one day, the seminarian got up the nerve to approach Tutu and ask Tutu how he ever got any work done when he spent so much time praying in the chapel.  Tutu’s response was simple, “Oh I could never do any of my work if my work were not first rooted in prayer throughout the day.”  This is the kind of persistence in prayer Jesus invites us into today:  prayer that takes us out of ourselves, transforms our desires and actions, and reshapes our relationship with God.  Jesus’ instruction to the disciples is the same for us:  pray always and do not lose heart.  Amen.

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[i] New Jerusalem Bible.

[ii] The Message.

[iii] Maggi Dawn, “Prayer Acts,” Christian Century, vol. 124, no. 2, October 2, 2007.