(Mark 14.32-41 and Luke 18.1-7)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time: July 19, 2009
The fifth in a summer series on topics the congregation has asked to hear sermons about.
Today's question: If you keep failing at the same thing, is God saying you haven't learned a lesson?
If you keep failing at the same thing, is God saying you haven't learned a lesson?
When I hear this question, I hear an ache and a hunger.
I hear the ache that comes with the words keep failing. The ache of trying over and over and over again to make a dream real. To find, create, or achieve something. And failing. It's an ache asks hard questions: Why can't I make this dream real? Am I a failure? Is God trying to teach me the lesson that I'm chasing the wrong dream? Or chasing the right dream at the wrong time? Is God trying to teach me I'm going about trying to make it real in the wrong way? Is God punishing me by keeping my dream from becoming real - even though I feel so strongly that this is God's dream for me because it would make me feel more joyful and loving and alive?
And I hear a hunger in this question. Does God talk to me? Does God have dreams for me? How do I know what God wants for me? How do I hear or see or feel God? Does God really love me?
If our dream never becomes real, no matter how hard we try, it may be that God is trying to teach us a lesson. But what that lesson is is far from clear. God could be trying to teach us any number of things.
I'd like to explore the question for this morning in several ways. The first is a hymn that sings of a God who comes to us, who calls and heals and frees us.
This hymn is on the middle page of your bulletin. The choir will sing the first verse; please join in on the rest.
Chorus: The God of heaven is present on earth in word and silence and sharing,
in face of doubt, in depth of faith, in signs of love and caring.
Gentler than air, wilder than wind, settling yet also deranging,
the Spirit thrives in human lives both changeless and yet changing. Chorus
Far from the church, outside the fold, where prayer turns feeble and nervous,
the Spirit wills society's ills be healed through humble service. Chorus
From rural quiet to urban riot, in every social confusion,
the Spirit pleads for all that leads to freedom from illusion. Chorus
Truth after tears, trust after fears, God leaving everyone wiser,
the Spirit springs through hopeless things transforming what defies her. Chorus
In terms of this morning's question, the part that touches me most deeply is the last part of the third verse: In every social confusion, the Spirit pleads for all that leads to freedom from illusion (John Bell & Graham Maule, "The God of Heaven," Iona Abbey Music Book, Wild Goose Publications, 2003).
When all of our efforts do not bring us what we are looking for - when in spite of everything we do we 'fail' to make real our dream - what do we pray for? I'm sure we pray that something will change so we can make our dream real. Along with that prayer, I think we need to pray for freedom from any illusions we're operating under. For a long time, Peter and I dreamt of finding a church that would hire us to be their pastors. We were sure getting a church to hire us was God's call. After we got 50 rejections, God's Spirit helped us understand that this was an illusion. Yes, we wanted to serve as pastors together. But at that point, we needed to be freed from this belief that by not getting any church to look at us we were 'failing' to achieve what God was calling us to. As we wondered if the God was calling us to something else, we got 20 or so more rejections. And then God's Spirit freed us from the despair and anger of this failure. She opened us to hear her call to keep knocking at the door of churches. To force 'Open and Affirming' churches to struggle with whether they were open and affirming enough seriously to consider calling a gay couple as their pastors. Letting the Spirit convince us that what we thought was our call wasn't our call was not something we did without kicking and screaming. We still wanted to be pastors. And I think hearing this new call from the Spirit kept us applying to churches. Because as we followed the call to keep knocking at church doors, we kept applying to churches. And 30 or so rejections later, a church in Seattle called us. But we needed to be open to hearing a different call than the one we were sure was our only true call. Or we would have given up.
When doors don't open for us - when our best efforts to make our dreams real end in failure after failure, we have at least two options. We can resist. Or we can surrender. We can resist by redoubling our efforts. Or by changing our strategy and tactics. Or, instead of trying to make our dream real all at once in one huge leap, we can pray for the wisdom to take a first step toward that dream. Choosing to resist means we feel confident that what we are trying to achieve is God's dream for us. Or we can surrender. We often think surrendering is a sign of weakness and cowardice. But sometimes to surrender is the most courageous and honest action possible. When we surrender, we admit that this dream isn't going to come true. Maybe it's the wrong time, or wrong place; maybe we're the wrong person to make this happen. Whatever the reason, we surrendering means we know we need to let go of a dream that may have been what we've been living for for a long time. But it's not going to come true. At least for now.
Our first Bible story this morning is a story of resistance. Listen for a word from God.
Jesus told the disciples a story on the necessity of praying always and not losing heart: "There was a judge in a certain city who never gave God a thought and cared nothing for people. A widow in that city kept after him: 'My rights are being violated. Protect me!'
"The judge never gave her the time of day. But after this went on and on he said to himself, 'I care nothing what God thinks, even less what people think. But because this widow won't quit badgering me, I'd better do something and see that she gets justice - otherwise I'm going to end up beaten black and blue by her pounding."
Then the Master said, "Do you hear what that judge, corrupt as he is, is saying? So what makes you think God won't step in and work justice for the beloved, who continue to cry out for help? Will God delay long over them? I tell you, God will give them swift justice." (Luke 18.1-7; adapted from The Message ©1993-96, 2000-2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.)
This morning before worship Linda, Lauren, and I were talking about this Bible story. And Linda said, "I love that widow!" This widow is absolutely convinced of two things. First, she is convinced that her God is a God who demands justice - especially for widows and orphans. And she is convinced that this judge is giving her the shaft. So she breaks every social code that says how respectable women in Palestine should act. She goes to the house of a male who was not her relative without being accompanied by another male. And she stands outside his house and screams for justice. She keeps screaming and screaming, and will not be silenced. The neighbors start to talk among themselves: She keeps screaming. Maybe this judge isn't treating her fairly. And the judge starts to fear what the neighbors are thinking. If they believe I haven't given this woman justice, I'll lose their respect. I'll be shamed. I'll get kicked out of the country club. My life will be a wreck. So he gives her the justice she seeks. Her imaginative act of resistance gets her the justice being polite and playing by the rules never would have provided.
That's resistance. That's chutzpah. She knew God's dream was a dream of justice. And that certainty sustained her until God's dream became real.
Our second Bible reading this morning is a story of surrender. Listen for a word from God.
Jesus and the disciples came to an area called Gethsemane, the Place of the Olive Press. Jesus told his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took Peter, James, and John with him. He plunged into a sinkhole of dreadful agony. He told them, "I feel bad enough right now to die. Stay here and keep vigil with me."
Going a little ahead, he fell to the ground and prayed for a way out. "Papa, Father, you can - can't you? - get me out of this. Take this cup away from me. But please, not what I want - what do you want?"
He came back and found them sound asleep. He said to Peter, "Simon, you went to sleep on me? Can't you stick it out with me a single hour? Stay alert, be in prayer, so you won't enter the danger zone without even knowing it. Don't be naïve. Part of you is eager, ready for anything in God; but another part is as lazy as an old dog sleeping my the fire."
He then went back and prayed the same prayer. Returning, he again found them sound asleep. They simply couldn't keep their eyes open, and they didn't have a plausible excuse.
He came back a third time and said, "Are you going to sleep all night? No - you've slept long enough. Time's up." (Mark 14.32-41, adapted from The Message ©1993-96, 2000-2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.)
He plunged into a sinkhole of dreadful agony. That's how it is with us when we've tried everything to make our dream real and it hasn't happened. Jesus spent his whole adult ministry loving with a huge love and calling people to do the same thing. He spent his whole adult ministry telling the disciples that following him wasn't going to be easy; being his disciple came with a cost. He spent his adult ministry trying to convince the leaders of the Temple that if they didn't stop supporting people who wanted to overthrow Rome violently that this would only destroy the Temple. And nothing really worked. No one paid attention. Nothing really changed. So Jesus realizes he must surrender. He knows he will be executed. A love like his is too big and scary for the world to embrace. For now he knows he cannot keep fighting. So he puts himself in God's hands.
Resistance and surrender. Two ways to respond when we realize we keep failing at the same thing. But how do we know which to do? How do we know what lesson, if any, God is trying to teach us? How do we listen for what God is saying to us? How do we trust that God says anything to us? And open ourselves actually to feel like God loves us?
Some people feel God's love as easily as they take a breath. And I think children feel it pretty naturally as well. Then they grow up . . . and it becomes a lot harder for many of us to feel God's love. Harder for us to hear God and see God and feel God's presence as close as our breath. So for most adults, trusting that God speaks and calls and loves and reaches out to us takes practice. These practices are called spiritual disciplines. For most of us, discipline is not an attractive word. I have the image of a strict nun in India breaking a ruler on my hand for misspelling a word. That's discipline. But a spiritual discipline is different. A spiritual discipline is something we do every day to help us love and feel loved by God.
I've noticed something in the churches I've worked in. Someone's loved one is dying. The person comes up to me and says, "I'm praying all the time, and nothing's happening. I don't feel like God is answering me at all. I don't even feel like God is there. So how can you say God cares?" Asking if God cares when someone we love is dying is a fair question. And at the same time, there's something I want to say to them that I still haven't figured out how to say pastorally. What I want to say goes something like this. If you'd never played the trombone, you wouldn't wake up one morning, borrow your friend's trombone, try out for the band, and expect to get first chair. A casual jogger shouldn't expect to wake up one morning and decide to run a marathon. If you meet someone and then don't talk to them for five years, you don't expect to give them a call and have heart-to-heart conversation. It's the same way with God. If we don't practice building a relationship with God - if we don't do some daily spiritual discipline that helps us love and feel loved by God, then we can't expect just to start praying in the midst of a crisis and feel God close as our breath. If we want to build a relationship with God, we need to practice.
So if I keep failing at something, I need to have been practicing some spiritual discipline if I hope to be able to hear any lesson God might have for me in that failure. That's where examen comes in. Right under the Bible stories in your bulletin you'll find a method of examen. Examen is a way to pray that involves examination and investigation. It was developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola, who was a 16th-century Spanish man who founded the Society of Jesus or Jesuits. What I have in the bulletin is one way of doing examen. Once you get used to this form of prayer, it's something you can do at the end of each day in about 10 minutes. Practiced each day, over time it can help you feel God's love for you, hear God's dreams for you, and trust God's presence in your day-to-day life and in the life of the world. So you can know if it's time to resist or time to surrender or time to do something else.
Let us look at this spiritual discipline together.
AN EXAMEN FORMAT
(adapted from the Ignatian Spirituality Center, Seattle, WA)
THANK YOU
God, my Creator,
I give you thanks for
the gifts of this day . . .
HELP ME
Lord, give me increased
awareness of how you are
guiding my life. . .
I LOVE YOU
Lord, you are present in my life today.
Let us look together at my day.
Let me see through your loving eyes . . .
when did I listen to your voice today? . . .
when did I resist your voice today?
FREE ME
I ask your healing for . . .
I ask your forgiveness and mercy for . . .
I ask your freedom from . . .
I ask your freedom for . . .
BE WITH ME
Filled with hope and a firm
belief in your love and power,
I entrust myself to your care.
Continue to be with me each
and every day of my life.
This isn't rocket science. It's wisdom passed down to us from women and men who were hungry to know God, and found a way to pray that gave them food. If you'd like to build a closer relationship with God. If you'd like to be able to hear more fully God's dreams for you. And find guidance in those deeply painful times when you are so sure what it is you want . . . and nothing seems to be getting you any closer to it. Try it for six months, and see what happens.
I close this sermon with words from Teilhard de Chardin. de Chardin was a biologist and paleontologist - an expert on prehistoric life forms. And he was a Jesuit, a follower of Ignatius of Loyola. So he probably knew something about the spiritual discipline of examen. For all of us who fail, for those of us who wonder if anything we do matters, and if God is working with us or through us or by our side, de Chardin offers this words. Let us say them together.
Trust in the Slow Work of God
by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ (1881-1955)
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to
something unknown, something new.
And yet is it the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability -
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually - let them grow.
Let them shape themselves,
without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Amen.
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