Pentecost 21 (C) 2010

Breaking through

Introduction

Buddha said that all life is suffering.

He meant that there is always going to be pain; and that the only way we can escape that pain is to try and become detached from it. Jesus backed him up, claiming that the poor will always be with us, that we are a broken people, that the cross of life, the pain of life, looms large.

So think less of your own struggle and try and help diminish others… that was one of Jesus’ answers. Not so different than Buddha.

So what do you think? Has anything bad ever happened in your life? Have you ever felt pain? Have you felt despair?

Sure you have… There are so many choices, so many commitments that pull us from one thing to another each day. From the time we wake up we are bombarded with questions and concerns – some of which are horrific and stressful – for example today we are thinking about world food day… and we all, like it or not, hear tidbits of scary information about food. Half of the time it seems something is poisonous, deadly and recalled. Then there is that fact that it has what, quadrupled in price in the last couple of years. How about the fact that most of the world woke up hungry this morning and will go to bed hungry tonight. With global warming a lot of the world’s crops are failing and soon enough there will be a lot more starvation than we expect.

Cheery, is it not… but I don’t want to stay there. I want to move beyond that… I want to ask you to think about where you turn for answers about what to do…

Some Stories

I want to tell you some stories:

A long time ago God came to Abraham in the cool of the evening and said, “You are going to be a father” and Abraham actually questioned God, saying, “How is that possible?”

God told Moses to lead the people out of Israel and Moses wondered if God might have chosen the wrong person.

Nichodemus came to Jesus at night and questioned how one could be ‘born again’.

You see what I am getting at? There has never been a person – from the greatest saint in recorded history right down to each and every one of us, who has not had some questions, some doubts, some struggles with their faith.

Augustine’s most famous prayer is this “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!”

“The days are coming,” says Jeremiah, “when the people of God will be scattered. When no one will seek the Lord… When the church will lose its influence… and when the world forgets the values that Christianity has fought so hard to instill in us. The days are coming – the days are here – when faith will be filled with struggle.”

Of course, he doesn’t end there – he says that even when there is doubt, even when the world turns away from God… there is another day coming as well, a day when the laws of God shall be written on our hearts.

I love that phrase….

A time will come when we will know our faith so intimately, when it will be so much a part of us, that we will no longer need to search everywhere for answers – we will intimately know God’s love and that God is with us.

An article I read about motivations calls it an intrinsic rather than an extrinsic sense of reality… when we will act out of what is inside us, instead of from a place of wanting acceptance, or needing to look good.

Of Being Alone

Is God out there? NO!

Is God with you? YES!

A lot of people know that my own personal image of God is much closer to the idea of the force. I try not to think of God as the old man in the sky, or in any personally specific way – it is difficult, but for me, the idea of the force from Star Wars resonates the best,

The Force is that power that is both within you and connecting you to something larger – it is the creative aspect of the universe which flows and empowers us.

When I think like that it is easier for me to say that God is with me always.

Because you see, that is another thing we learn when we look back to Abraham, to Moses, to Jacob, to Jesus, to Paul, to Augustine, to Martin Luther King Jr…. – in the midst of their struggles and their doubts, there was an assurance that God was there with them – and it made all the difference.

God never said, “Go on ahead alone”, instead, our scriptures tell us that God called to the faithful and said – “I know you are scared and uncertain, but go on – I will be with you.”

So God is there, offering strength and support in the midst of life. God is there, urging us on – challenging us to be better people.

The Judge!

So what is wrong? Why don’t we feel God’s presence?

Well – the truth is the problem lies with us, not with God.

What if I tell you that the historically we have completely missed the point of this story Jesus is telling. In fact, they missed the point right off the bat, saying, ‘We should be persistent, just like the widow!”

No…. we are not the widow in this story… we are the judge.

Think of it a second, are people not a lot more like the judge than the widow? Is not one of the problems with the world that we tend to think only of ourselves, not having regard for others, or for God? Do we stubbornly try to go our own way and do what we want? Not all of the time, to be sure, but there are those moments…

So here we are, living in the world, dazed and confused, dazzled by the wonders of all that advertising and “me first” propaganda – and there is God, the persistent widow, pleading his case over and over and over…

God came to Abraham, but the people forgot, God was with Jacob, but the people forgot, God led Moses, but the people forgot, God spoke through Elijah, God was in Jesus, God has always been there – and we forget… we turn away… we don’t listen….

“The day’s are surely coming”

And for many of us they are here. Or we are close. Faith is something that is a part of us, something we have known for a long time. Our hearts beat in tune with God – we understand what it is that the Lord requires of us, and we do it – imperfectly to be sure, but we throw our hearts and minds and bodies and our souls into working for God’s kingdom and the good of all our brothers and sisters.

I feel Jeremiah’s words deeply in my soul – because I have been there, I know what that exile feeling is like, when you feel lost and lonely, and frightened that things will never be okay again. And I know what it is like when people don’t understand who you are, or why you do what you do, or how you could possibly have faith after all that has happened. And I am sure you feel those things too.

And my heart leaps for joy because I know that God’s word does eventually break through to each and every one of us. I know that God never gives up – that God is as persistent as we can imagine.

So where does that leave us? Listen to Paul’s letter to Timothy:

"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness… 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… But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.”

Life is a struggle. But we have all learned something along the way. There is much that is written on our hearts: Loss and loneliness, joy and success, love and hope – faith. And as Paul reminds us we have a responsibility to share that faith, those words of scriptures, all which is God-breathed into our lives, so that we can continue the ministry that Jesus has called us to.

May God continue to inspire and challenge us that our faith might grow. Amen.