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19.09.2010_Luke18:1–8
| 20.09.2010, 13:13 | |
| Rev. Tatiana Cantarella Psalm 144:8-21; Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:2-4; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8 In season and out of season Before vacation Davide and I were doing some shopping in the grocery store and decided to buy a watermelon. We chose one, had it weighed, stuck a sticker on it with the price, put it in our shopping cart and went on with our shopping. We put the watermelon on the conveyor belt to check out, but when it got to the lady checking us out the price sticker was gone. We both knew for sure that it had been there, but we looked our cart over anyway to make sure it hadn’t fallen off somewhere. We figured out that it had gotten stuck to the conveyor belt and had gone down underneath, invisible to us. We didn’t want to hold up the line, so Davide went off to the fruit department for a new sticker, although if we had just waited patiently, the sticker eventually would have returned to the checker all on its own as the conveyor belt completed its rotation. If we had only been patient enough to wait, the sticker would have returned! Patience... That is the theme of all the Scripture readings today. Persistence in the face of difficulties and injustice; perseverance in the face of repudiation and failure; patience in the face of trials and tribulations. But we’re not just talking about any type of patience or persistence. Our subject today is about persistence and patience in faith; about the sort of patience and persistence that are born of our hope in God and expressed in the way we live in this world, whether in good times or in bad. Often enough we get the bad kind of time. We’re often faced with problems a lot more serious than my story about our watermelon sticker and our two options: wait for the sticker to turn up again or go get a new one. We’re often on a collision course with the world where it seems sometimes that everyone has gone crazy, everything is out of control. We collide with a world in which it is so very easy to despair, to succumb to despondency. Today we read the words of the prophet Habakkuk, who also seems to be on the verge of despair: "How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, "Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me” (Habakkuk 1:2-4). It isn’t surprising, that it is so tempting to change the channel when we’re watching the news. When they show clips of poor and abandoned elderly folks in rural areas or the bodies of dead people it all seems so hopeless that we can’t even bear to look at it. But difficult times do not only concern us when we’re watching the TV screen, they are with us in our families, when people near to us die needlessly, when children can’t find a way to make it in life and end up making unwise decisions. We truly live in difficult times, and sometimes it is very hard to continue to trust God with our whole heart. Many lose faith, saying "How could God allow this pain, this suffering, this injustice?” It is easy to despair, to succumb to despondency in the face of these tribulations and to forget what are God is really like. It’s easy to forget the truth about Who created this world and according to Whose laws the world continues to move and to Whose decrees the world will eventually submit. The epistle lesson for today is addressed by the apostle Paul to his spiritual son Timothy. From the epistle it is evident that Timothy has had a difficult time. He tried to preach the Gospel, but he was threatened by the authorities. He tried to spread the Word of God, but people didn’t listen to him. He spoke about healing and salvation and peace, but many who believed later got wrapped up in harsh arguments with one another about things that weren’t really that important and in so doing destroyed the unity of their Christian community. Timothy probably felt that he was chasing the wind. Paul could see that Timothy was despairing and therefore wrote to him: "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, ... in the presence of God and Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage -- with great patience and careful instruction ... many will turn their ears away from the truth, but you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, discharge all the duties of your ministry...”. We all know that much evil attacks us from all sides and often it seems that there is only bad news and we start to despair. It often seems so to me. Every time I return from vacation I am greet by some sort of bad news. Just before I return I always have nightmares, to be quite honest, and my most treasured dream is to arrive and be greeted in church not with a story about all the problems that arose while we were away, but with the simple words, "everything is great here, we have good news.” But I catch myself in the thought that this is an "unrealistic dream”!!! But I am so thankful to God that He always gives us a reminder of the "good news” and for our sister Nelli Vasilievna, who became for me the bearer of good news. When I called her a couple of days before my return to find out how she was feeling after weeks of hard therapy that would justify lots of bad news, she said to me (these were her very first words!): "Everything is well, praise the Lord, He helps me so much, everything well! And how are you?” But many of us, when we encounter suffering and injustice start doubting and stop trusting in God. In Matthew 24: 12-13 Jesus warns us about this very thing: "Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” It is really sad that the enemy wins the victory in the lives of so many believers. But our battle, brothers and sisters, is not against flesh and blood, not against people, who, as we tend to think, complicate our lives. Our battle is against the spiritual powers of evil. Our main enemy is Satan, who waits for the people of God to lower their hands, to surrender, to stop trusting in God, to succumb to despair. We are waging a spiritual war and we need the spiritual armor of God in order to win, to keep the faith and to not give in to despair. One piece of that armor is prayer -- persistent, patient, stubborn prayer. This is why Jesus told the parable about the widow and the unjust judge. He wanted to show what our prayer should be like before God, to demonstrate what our dependence on him should be like: constant, relentless, stubborn, no matter what kind of resistance life throws our way. And our prayer must persevere until the day that God reveals HIS just judge and the Son of Man, our Lord Jesus Christ, returns in his glory. Jesus told this so that believers would know how to live in expectation of his second coming. This isn’t about the stubbornness of our prayers to God for everyday things, like more money or a better job. Stubbornness of faith means that we must fervently pray to see the Kingdom of God, to be part of it instead of living lives that contradict it and its values. This is prayer about seeing God’s victory over the sin of this world, over my own sin; it means that we strive to see how God can transform this world and how He can transform me. That kind of prayer is possible only when a person has living faith, which is why Jesus asks "But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Faith is a living thing, and, like all other living things, it generates life... if it doesn’t die first and if it is nourished as it should be. A farmer once decided to get some laying hens, however, one of the fifteen hens refused to eat with the others. When the farmer would come, this hen would greet him, look at him, look up in the sky and let out a heart-rending squawk, calling out for help but at the same time refusing to lower her beak and peck with the other hens. The farmer tried to feed her, gave her feed from his hand, but no matter how he tried to feed her she would refuse. And so she grew thinner and thinner with each passing day and her clucking grew weaker and weaker. After several days the farmer decided to deliver her from a long and hungry death. A lot of believers are like that ken. They call out to God and to their neighbors for help, they complain about how difficult life is and how much they are suffering, but they don’t ever start doing what they should be doing: they don’t feast on the Word of God, they don’t seek comfort and strength in what God has prepared for them. All of their prayers are limited to "Lord, give me this day my daily bread, Lord, deliver me from this horrid neighbor...”, etc. How often our faith gets infected by the syndrome of spiritual atrophy and dies!? When he returns, will Christ find faith in us? Because one thing is what I find here when I come back, after all it’s not so crucial. But when Christ comes back, what will HE FIND? That is a life and death questions! Will he find people who partake of His Word and who ask not only for daily bread but also thirst for "the Kingdom of God to come on earth and in their own lives”? Will he find us to be people prepared to weep with those who weep, to bring healing and justice even in the face of injustice, to show mercy and patience in His love? Will he find us to be people who continue to pray for the coming of God’s Kingdom and who with faith await the true, final and just judgment that God with bring over the world? What the scripture has to say to us today is really very simple. God gave us everything we need to stubbornly persist in our faith. He gave us everything we need to live a victorious life. There is victory! There is justice! The truth is that there will come a time when everything returns to its right place, just as our sticker would have eventually made its way back to the checker if only we had let the conveyor belt run long enough! Remember how God answered Habakkuk’s plea. Jesus gives us the same answer in His Gospel... "This vision relates to the future, but it will be fulfilled, it will not deceive and although the fulfillment of the promise seems slow in coming, it will surely come to pass; wait for it, for God will not revoke it. Look at the proud. Their soul will not find peace. But the righteous shall life by faith.” You know, the fact that it is painful for us to look at this world tells us that our spirits are still alive and that we’re not indifferent. The world grieved Jesus too: He wept over Jerusalem, knowing that it would be destroyed. He wept when his friend Lazarus died, he empathized with the grief of Mary and Martha. He was furious in the Temple when he saw how religious teachers heaped empty laws and burdens on people instead of leading them to God. Of course we, like the Lord, can not watch the lawlessness of the world with indifference. But empathy is not the same as despair, helplessness and loss of faith. Up until his very death Jesus continued to pray to the Heavenly Father, knowing that God would reveal His judgment and impart His deliverance. And His last prayer in the garden of Gethsemane ended with the words, "not My will, but Thine be done.” Faith looks beyond difficulty and never doubts the coming of God’s righteous judgment. God will repay, and faith will continue to remain faithful. Just as you find out who your real friends are when you are in a pinch, real faith makes itself known in relentless faithfulness even in the midst of tribulations, not in a single burst of inspiration. Once several officers came to Napoleon to recommend a young captain for promotion and Napoleon asked them, "why do you recommend him?” They answered that he had displayed unusual bravery and intellect in a battle several days before. Because of his actions they had been victorious. "Ok,” said Napoleon, "but what has he done since then?” Nobody had heard anything else about him. There are two types of people in the world: those who display an amazing zeal only at first or from time to time and those who continue to remain faithful every day of their lives, from year to year until the very end. This is the faith to which the Lord calls His Church. The backbone of the Church are people who remain faithful from day to day, in season and out of season, in the good times and the bad, until the very end. On September 17, 1911, Calbraith Perry Rodgers left the East coast of the US and on November 5 landed in California, on the West coast. He was the first pilot to complete a transcontinental flight. He spent three days, ten hours and 14 minutes in the air. On the way, his airplane survived 39 accidents and completed 30 forced landings. The only parts of the original plane to make it from one coast to the other were the steering wheel and the propeller, all of the others had to be replaced. But he flew to the end. It is possible that you have already had several dozen accidents in life: injustices, trials, losses. I know I have! Perhaps it is hard for you to believe that God will ever change anything, perhaps it’s hard to believe in the promised Kingdom of God and all you can think about is daily bread, how to just survive this day. But we can be among those in whom Jesus will find faith when he returns. We can remain faithful, if we don’t stop seeking God in prayer every day, if our supplication before Him is directed by the desire, "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on Earth, as it is in Heaven, and first of all, in my life, Lord.” The one who endures to the end will be saved, the one who seeks God will find Him, the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven will be opened to the one who knocks and God’s mercy will be given to the one who asks. Maybe today, amid all the cares and difficulties of our lives, amid everything that obscures from us God’s salvation, someone needs to renew their faith, to again experience the hope that God will not be slow in coming nor slow to reveal His salvation. Our difficulties are not eternal. Perhaps today you need to pray a prayer that goes something like this: "Lord, help me believe again that there is a sun behind the clouds, although I can’t see it right now, help me to be faithful, even if everyone around me decides to go their own way, help me believe in your promises, believe that there is no better place than to be with You in sorrow and in joy, renew me.” If you need to pray a prayer like that then bow before God in the spirit of this prayer. If I am honest, I need to pray this prayer. I know several of our sisters need to pray this prayer. Let’s spend this time together in humble adoration before God, opening ourselves to His Spirit, His will, His strength, His love, His mercy, His truth... lets pray. | |
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