Beneath the Surface

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

July 26, 2015

Beneath the Surface

Selected Texts

He stands imposing, impressive,

a proud knight in gleaming armor;

an image captured in oil

by a painter in the year 1520,

just three years after Luther nailed his 95 Theses

to the door of the church in Wittenburg Germany

and launched the Reformation.

The portrait speaks of a man who was a leader:

a bold, confident man,

his armor elaborate,

a spear in one hand,

a gleaming golden sword in the other.

        

In painting the man,

the artist took more than a little license,

for the artist painted a military leader

who had lived more than a thousand years before;

a man who had not been a knight

in service to a German king,

but had in fact been a commanding officer

serving the Roman emperor,

a leader of a legion of more than 6000 men

in the army of the Roman empire.

The officer’s name was Maurice

and the emperor he served was Maximian,    

who ruled the Roman empire

as the 200s gave way to the 300s.

Maurice was not a typical soldier in the emperor’s army:

he was a Christian.

In fact, the legion he commanded

was composed entirely of Christians.

Still Maurice and his legion were obedient, faithful;

soldiers dedicated to serving their emperor.

Toward the end of the third century,

the emperor sent Maurice and his legion

to the land then known as Gaul,

today known as France,

to put down a rebellion against the empire.

Maurice and his legion went

dutifully and obediently.

But when the emperor gave them his next order,   

they balked.

Maximian had ordered Maurice and his soldiers

to persecute the Christians in Gaul.

That was something neither Maurice nor his men would do;

they refused the emperor’s command.

We have to remember that for the

first 300 years following the death

and resurrection of our Lord,

proclaiming oneself a Christian

in a world dominated by the Roman Empire

was likely to lead to arrest and execution.

Maximian’s successor Constantine

would free Christians to live in the open,

worship in the open;

but in Maximian’s time arrest and death awaited

those who were exposed as Christians.

When Maurice and his men

refused the emperor’s order,

the emperor retaliated by decimating the legion.

In its original sense the word “decimate” meant

that every 10^th man of the legion was to be killed.

More than 600 men were put to the sword

for their refusal to do as the emperor had ordered.

Still, Maurice and his men refused to comply,

resulting in a second decimation,

hundreds more of the legion’s men

dying rather than betraying their faith.

Yet a third time, Maurice and his men

stood up to the emperor,

resolute in their faith.

The emperor didn’t hesitate:

this time he had Maurice and all his men killed.

They died as martyrs,

a word which in Greek means, “witness,”

men who gave witness to the strength of their faith

by dying for it.

As the centuries passed,

Maurice’s reputation as a martyr grew

and by the 10^th century, in an ironic twist,

the Holy Roman Emperor made Maurice

his personal saint and patron.

And, as was the custom at the time,

the emperor and religious leaders

accumulated relics thought to have been associated

with the man who was by then

known as Saint Maurice.

In the early years of the 16^th century

Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg

commissioned the great painter

Lucas Cranach the Elder

to paint an altarpiece for his church;

One of the panels was to feature Saint Maurice.

He was painted as a contemporary knight

in armored splendor,

painted just slightly smaller than life-size

as part of a magisterial altarpiece.

The rest of the altarpiece has been lost

to time and history,

but the painting of Saint Maurice

survived the centuries

and now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

in New York City.

This is one of those times when it would be wonderful

to have screens here in the Sanctuary

so you could see the painting,

see it for yourself.

It is a painting that would truly take your breath away,

not just for its magnificence as a work of art –

it is truly is a masterpiece –

but also because when you look upon

Maurice the knight,

the great military leader of a Roman legion,

the Christian martyr,

you would look upon a black man,

an African. 

Maurice: military leader,

commander in the Roman army,

leader of a legion of 6000,

devout Christian,

martyr…

and a black man.

The color of his skin,

his birthplace –

those things that we are so quick to use to judge—

what a travesty if we were to do that to Maurice.

Racism and prejudice have been

an ugly part of human history

for virtually all of human history.

God recognized our proclivity

right at the beginning of the Bible,

telling the children of Israel to welcome the alien,

not to persecute those who looked different,

who came from different parts of the world,

but rather, to feed them,

welcome them,

assure them of justice:

    “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien,

for you were aliens in the land of Egypt….”

(Exodus 22:21)

     “You shall not strip your vineyard bare,

or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard;

you shall leave them for the poor and the alien…”

(Leviticus 19:10)

There is racism everywhere in our society,

a cancer we can’t seem to eradicate.

It takes the form of the overt racism

we see in individuals and groups who aren’t afraid

to speak out against black or Latino or Jew or Asian.

And it also takes a more insidious form:                 

the polite kind that resides in churches,

businesses, neighborhoods, schools;

silent, but toxic,

lurking in the minds of men and women

who would never think of themselves as

racist or bigoted,

but who are so quick to judge a person

based on the color of their skin,

the accent of their speech,

the clothing they wear,

the country they or their ancestors came from.

When God sent the prophet Samuel

to anoint King Saul’s successor,

God sent Samuel to the man Jesse,

who presented his first-born son,

a strong, solid, strapping young man

who Samuel could see clearly

looked the part of a king.

But God was quick to tell Samuel

that that young man was not the one God had in mind

to be Saul’s successor as king,

telling Samuel,

“Do not look on his appearance

or on the height of his stature,

because I have rejected him;

for the Lord does not see as mortals see;

they look on the outward appearance,

but the Lord looks on the heart.”

(1 Samuel 16)

We cannot fool God.

God knows us,

knows our minds.

We do look at outward appearance.

and then we do make judgments.

But do you hear what God is teaching us,

how God is telling us to live our lives?

Look past the skin, God tells us,

look deep beneath the surface,

look on the heart.

That’s what matters.

That’s all that matters.

Jesus reinforced God’s teaching

when he told his disciples,

“Do not judge by appearances,

but judge with right judgment

(John 7:24)

reminding his disciples,

and that includes you and me,

that it is by our love that we are known

as disciples of Christ,

not by the color of our skin,

or where we live,

or the clothes we wear,

or where our ancestors came from.

A recent survey found that both

white and black respondents

feel that race relations have

deteriorated in our country, rather than improved.

In an article discussing the survey’s results,

a writer observed that this has been a year

“that has seen as much race-related strife and violence

as perhaps any since the desegregation battles of the 1960s.”

(New York Times, July 24, 2015, page A15)

As if to prove the point,

a candidate for the highest office in the land

makes shamefully racist comments

and becomes more popular.

                                            

There is no place for racism or bigotry

in the church of Jesus Christ;

no place for racism or bigotry

in the lives of disciples of Christ;

no place for prejudice,

no place for intolerance.

After all, didn’t we just hear these words last week:

“As many of you as were baptized into Christ

have clothed yourselves with Christ.

There is no longer Jew or Greek,

there is no longer slave or free,

there is no longer male and female;

for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

(Galatians 3:28)

We are all one in Jesus Christ.

I am guessing that Maurice knew that,

which is why he couldn’t and wouldn’t

persecute or kill

his brothers and sisters in faith,

even though to him and his legion

they were foreigners,

aliens,

people who looked different,

spoke a different language.  

An elderly man came to join in a recent protest

as part of a white supremacist group

in Columbia, South Carolina.

He was wearing a t-shirt that bore a swastika.

He slumped on the steps of the building

overcome by the heat and humidity of the day.

A state trooper saw his distress,

came to his assistance,

and began to walk him up the steps

toward the building

to get the man inside in the air-conditioning and shade.

A fire fighter stepped in to help the trooper,

one on each side of the elderly man,

guiding him slowly up the steps,

and then inside the building,

where they found a couch for the man

and helped him sit in the coolness so he could recover.

The trooper and the firefighter were both black,

the two of them helping an avowed white supremacist.

(New York Times, July 25, 2015)

“I give you a new commandment,

that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you,

you also should love one another.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.’”

(John 13:34-35)

This, brothers and sisters,

this is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

AMEN

Minds in the Stars

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

July 19, 2015

Minds in the Stars

Mark 12:28-34

One of the scribes came near

and heard them disputing with one another,

and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him,

“Which commandment is the first of all?”

Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel:

the Lord our God, the Lord is one;

you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,

and with all your soul,

and with all your mind,

and with all your strength.’

The second is this,

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Then the scribe said to him,

“You are right, Teacher;

you have truly said that

‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’;

and ‘to love him with all the heart,

and with all the understanding,

and with all the strength,’

and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’

—this is much more important than all

whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him,

“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

After that no one dared to ask him any question.

***********************************************************

What sound does it make as it passes?

In the vacuum of space

there is no sound at all,

…or is there?

We know what a train sounds like as it approaches.

Not a lumbering freight train,

but a streamlined passenger train,

straight out of the 1940s, racing across the country,

the low rumble of the diesel felt as much as heard,

the air horn piercing and demanding,

the steel wheels singing their rhythmic song:

“clickity-clack, clickity-clack.”

The sound grows in intensity

as the train approaches,

and then in whoosh,

flying down the tracks,

the sound fades away even faster than it approached.

As the sound dies out

you have a vague recollection

from high school science class,

about something called the Doppler effect.

Imagine now you are sitting on an asteroid,

a million miles from Pluto,

almost 3 billion miles from Earth.

Imagine as you look toward earth

you see it coming,

tiny at first, a mere speck of light

but growing with every second,

something approaching,

approaching very fast.

It gets larger and larger,

brighter and brighter,

and then in an instant it shoots by:

a satellite, the New Horizons satellite,

something made by humans on earth,

traveling at 30,000 miles per hour.

Would it have made any noise at all

as it approached, as it flew by?

Would you have heard anything,

anything at all,

even an imaginary sound,

something your brain created

to fill the silence,

the vacuum void: a cosmic “whoosh”?

On it went, that satellite,

closing in on its destination,

nearing the end of its 9-year journey

covering 3 billion miles

as it prepared for its rendezvous with Pluto.

On it went, the New Horizons satellite,

its camera snapping away furiously,

like a tourist seeing the sights of Washington

for the first time.

I grew up in the 1960s,

the halcyon days of the space age,

the days of the Mercury astronauts,

those first seven who had “The Right Stuff”.

They were followed by the pairs of Gemini,

and then Apollo,

which gave us those dramatic pictures of earth

taken from the moon,

those pictures showing our brilliant blue planet

hanging in space,  floating,

beautiful,

yet looking so terribly alone.

I have always marveled at the accomplishments:

of our space program over the decades –

from the first human orbiting around the earth,

to the many achievements of the Space Shuttle,

including placing the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit.

Who could have imagined

we’d land a probe on Mars?

Who could have imagined we’d send a satellite

on a 9 year, 3 billion mile journey

to a heavenly body less than a quarter the size

of our own planet,

too small even to be called a planet?

There is something about space exploration

that seems to bring out the best in us,

that seems to use,

seems to focus all our God-given gifts:

our intelligence,

our creativity,

our imagination,

our determination,

our perseverance,

and our ability to dream.

There is something about space exploration

that I find exhilarating,

not only for the scientific accomplishments,

but because everything we learn about the cosmos

reflects on the glory of God the Creator.

There is also something about space exploration

that helps us to understand what Jesus means

when he teaches us to love God with our minds

as well as our hearts, our souls, and our strength.

We are to use our minds to worship God;

we are to use our minds to glorify God;

we are to use our minds to learn about God,

to ask questions,

to wonder,

to explore.

Church leaders have discouraged thinking

for so much of our Christian history,

demanding acceptance of beliefs without question.

Galileo’s experience more than 300 years ago

was one of the more notorious examples:

when he was branded a heretic for proposing

that the sun did not revolve around a stationary earth,

but rather the earth revolved around the sun.

Church leaders condemned him for his theory,

condemned for looking up at the stars and thinking.

They denounced him, saying,

“Doesn’t scripture tell us in three distinct places,

“The world is firmly established,

it shall never be moved.”

(1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1; Psalm 96:10)

End of discussion.

End of thinking.

But we should think.

We should question.

We should ponder.

Our minds should be in the stars

and in the world all around us,

for they all reflect the glory of God!

We know the Bible isn’t a book of science;

it is a book about relationships;

it’s a book about discovery;

it’s a book about wonder;

it’s a book about exploring;

and of course, it’s a book about love.

                                            

We children of God have shown

time and time again

how we can be just like Job,

who, with his friends,

“darkened counsel by words without knowledge”,

We too so often close our minds,

speak without thinking,

and, as we say in our Brief Statement of Faith,

accept lies for truth.

When we send our young people to

Massanetta Springs,

Montreat,

Triennium,

even Vacation Bible School,

it isn’t to drum dogma and creeds into their heads;

It’s to awaken them to the glory of God all around them,

and to encourage them to think:

think,

think about God,

think about their relationship with God;

use their minds to learn about God,

use their minds to help them worship God.

Imagine what might happen

if we use all our minds to learn –

learn about God,

learn about God’s creation,

learn about our relationship with the Lord our God,

learn about what we can do,

what we can accomplish with God,

through God?

Perhaps one child of God, as she is learning,

will find in the story of the loaves and fishes

a lesson leading her to feed more hungry people

not through greater production,

but through better distribution.

Perhaps one child of God, as he is learning,

will find in one of the stories about Jesus healing

a lesson inspiring him to help healing

by finding a cure for disease that kills or cripples.

Perhaps one child of God, as she is learning,

will find in Jesus’ call to love even our enemy

a lesson leading her to work for peace and reconciliation

in a situation everyone else thought hopeless.

Perhaps one child of God, as he is learning,

will find in the text that tells us

the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,

a lesson leading him to work for more sustainable living

among all God’s children.

It isn’t flippant to say,

we should have our heads in the clouds.

We should have our minds in the stars,

for there we will see the glory of God;

there we will learn about the glory of God.

Think about it.

AMEN

Whose Values?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

July 12, 2015

Whose Values?

John 8:1-11

Then each of them went home,

while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

Early in the morning he came again to the temple.

All the people came to him

and he sat down and began to teach them.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman

who had been caught in adultery;

and making her stand before all of them,

they said to him,

“Teacher, this woman was caught in

the very act of committing adultery.

Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women.

Now what do you say?”

They said this to test him,

so that they might have some charge to bring against him.

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

When they kept on questioning him,

he straightened up and said to them,

“Let anyone among you who is without sin

be the first to throw a stone at her.”

And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.

When they heard it, they went away, one by one,

beginning with the elders;

and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.

Jesus straightened up and said to her,

“Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

She said, “No one, sir.”

And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.

Go your way,

and from now on do not sin again.”

********************************************

Could the title be more provocative:

“If The Church Were Christian.”

It is the title of the book our Adult Ed. class

is studying this summer.

The subtitle is even more provocative:

“rediscovering the values of Jesus”.

The author is Philip Gulley.

Gulley is a Quaker pastor

who served in a number of churches

in his denomination for many years

and who is now a writer and speaker.

His many books include his fictional “Harmony” series

and a number of nonfiction titles.

I’ve been reading Gulley’s books for years

and I have been deeply influenced by his faithfulness,

his ability to step back and look at how we are called

to live as disciples of Jesus Christ.

                 

He doesn’t come at his subject

with a sledgehammer or a megaphone.

He doesn’t unleash a flood of statistics.

Rather, he simply asks questions:

Why do we do this,

why do we do that?

Is what we are doing something Jesus would do?

Is what we are saying, what we are doing

something Jesus would approve of,

something that reflects Jesus’ values?

The thread that runs through all of Gulley’s books

is the thread of grace:

God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ,

God’s grace given us in Jesus Christ,

grace we are given freely,

grace we are to share equally freely.

In his current book Gulley asks,

if God is love,

and grace is revealed in Jesus

why do we Christians seem to work so hard

at building a church that so often lacks love,

a church where grace is so often missing,

replaced by judgment and self righteousness,

exclusion and preference,

doctrine and certainty.

Gulley thinks it is because we’ve gotten too obsessed,

too focused on “right beliefs”

and “theological purity,”

that we are too quick to shout,

“the Bible says”.

Did Jesus test people

on their knowledge of Scripture?

Did Jesus quiz people on how faithfully, regularly,

they offered sacrifices at the Temple,

on how carefully they observed the Sabbath,

the Passover,

the Day of Atonement?

Did our Lord, as he walked the roads of Judea,

as he ministered in the towns around the Sea of Galilee,

keep a list of scriptural laws and rules from Leviticus

at the ready so he could test people

to check whether they had the “right” beliefs,

the “right” theology

before he taught them,

ate with them,

healed them?

Our lesson provides one of the best examples

of grace we’ll find in the gospels.

The facts are clear: Jesus is confronted

with a woman who had been caught

in the act of adultery;

“the very act,” as the text tells us. 

The woman didn’t deny it;

She didn’t protest her innocence;

She didn’t try to shift the blame to the man,

the man who seems to have gone missing in all this.

She stands before Jesus guilty,

guilty of adultery.

And, the law was very clear on that,

on what to do with someone caught in adultery.

In fact, the law was so adamant

that it appeared not just once in the Pentateuch,

the first five books of Scripture,

but twice, first in Leviticus,

and then again in Deuteronomy.

In the book of Leviticus we read:

“If a man commits adultery

with the wife of his neighbor,

both the adulterer and the adulteress

shall be put to death”

(Leviticus 20:10)

And in Deuteronomy we read:

“If a man is caught lying with the wife

of another man,

both of them shall die,

the man who lay with the woman

as well as the woman.”

(Deuteronomy 22:22)

The punishment was clear.

The scribes knew it,

the Pharisees knew it,

the woman knew it,

and certainly Jesus knew it.

But look at what Jesus did:

He didn’t argue the law;

he didn’t argue the facts;

he just said so simply:

“Let anyone among you who is without sin

be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Do you hear what Jesus was saying?

He was saying in effect: “the law is clear,

the woman is guilty,

so go ahead, enforce the law,

mete out the punishment.

The one among you who is without sin –

you get things started;

you throw that first stone.”

As Gulley observed in his book, “If Grace Is True”,

written with James Mulholland,

what Jesus should have said,

if he truly was a man obedient to scripture,

was, “The law is clear.

We must kill her.”

And then he should have picked up a rock

and thrown it at her,

encouraging the others to do the same,

all of them throwing rocks at the woman

until she was dead,

until they had imposed the punishment

that scripture demanded.

And then Jesus should have stood over

the woman’s lifeless, bloody body

and said, “Let the who sins be stoned.

Let the one who flouts God’s holy law

be punished as scripture demands.”

We would be horrified if that was what

Jesus had done, wouldn’t we?

But of course, that’s not what Jesus did;

Jesus acted with grace,

Jesus acted with love,

saying to the woman,

“Woman, …Has no one condemned you?”

To which the woman replied, “No one, sir.”

And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.

“Neither do I condemn you.”

Churches are filled with condemning words:

words aimed at men and women

for their decisions,

for choices they make,

for how they live their lives,

even for who they are.

And as if that isn’t bad enough,

those who don’t join in the chorus of condemnation

often then find themselves condemned in turn.

Why are we so quick to judge,

so quick to criticize,

so quick to condemn

and so slow to extend grace?

Why are we so quick to say,

this is what “right belief”

and “proper doctrine”

and “theological purity” require

and so slow to ask ourselves,

what does love require of me in this situation,

what does grace require of me in this situation?

In his book, Gulley tells of conversation he had

with a man who Gulley knew

did not attend any church

in the small town where they lived.

When Gulley asked the man about it,

not in an accusatory or judgmental way,

but as part of their conversation,

the man’s response was revealing,

“I love the theory of church.

It’s the practice of it that leaves me cold.”

If the theory of church

is the grace and love of God

revealed in Jesus Christ,

then shouldn’t that be our practice?  

Gulley calls “gracious religion”

a religion of humility,

a religion of openness and acceptance,

a religion of mercy and compassion.

Gulley reminds us that Jesus didn’t teach doctrine

as much as showing us

how we should live our lives:

joyfully, faithfully,

loving our neighbors,

and recognizing that all are our neighbors,

not just those we know and like.

“The joy of Christian faith,” Gulley writes,

“is to be found in modeling Jesus’ mercy and love.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ showed by his life

that he valued grace and love

in all parts of life,

grace and love even more than obedience

to religious doctrine.

Grace was so wonderfully on display here

this past week

as more than 80 children,

along with 40 teachers and helpers

participated in our Vacation Bible School.

There were children from our church,

children from other churches,

children from other faiths,

and they spent the week

laughing, learning, singing, playing,

making new friends,

children from different neighborhoods,

cultures,

backgrounds,

all of them with tongues coated purple,

red and orange from popsicles,

all modeling grace,

without their even thinking about it

We are not the sole possessors of truth,

nor are we the gatekeepers of heaven;

we are simply disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ,

followers of our Lord Jesus Christ,

called to model our lives on his life –

a life of service,

a life of love,

a life of grace.

AMEN

Disgruntled to Gruntled

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

July 5, 2015

Disgruntled to Gruntled

Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about

their need to pray always

and not to lose heart.

He said, “In a certain city there was a judge

who neither feared God nor had respect for people.

 In that city there was a widow who kept

coming to him and saying,

‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’

For a while he refused; but later he said to himself,

‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone,

yet because this widow keeps bothering me,

I will grant her justice,

so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’”

And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says.

And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones

who cry to him day and night?

Will he delay long in helping them?

I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.

And yet, when the Son of Man comes,

will he find faith on earth?”

**********************************************

A pest.

That’s what this parable seems to suggest we become:

Pests,

pestering God with prayer,

unrelenting, never quiet.

“C’mon, God, answer my prayer.

C’mon God, give me what I ask for.”

Surely that cannot be the lesson.

That cannot be what our Lord

wants us to learn from his parable.

Yes, Paul told us to “pray without ceasing”

(1 Thessalonians 5:17)

but he surely he didn’t say that

because he thought we could wear God down.

A quick read through these few verses

and it seems simple, what we are to learn:

As our Lord said right in the first verse,

“pray always and don’t lose heart.”

But as with so much in the Bible,

we cannot skim across the surface and say,

“Easy; I get it.”

A widow and an unjust, faithless man:

could our Lord have given us

two more extreme ends of the spectrum?

                          

How many times does Scripture tell us

that widows were to be looked after,

watched over,

and protected?

Among the final words Moses said

to the children of Israel was,

“Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien,

the orphan, and the widow of justice.’

(Deuteronomy 27:19)

The Psalmist calls God

“the protector of widows.”

(Psalm 68:5)

In Jesus’ day, anyone who knew

even a little Scripture

would have known those words,

would have known the special responsibility

society had for looking after the widow.

And judges had a higher standard than others.

Moses made that clear, too,

a thousand years before our Lord

taught this parable,

telling those called to the vocation of judging:

“Give the members of your community

a fair hearing,”

and judge rightly between one person and another,

whether citizen or resident alien.

You must not be partial in judgment:

hear out the small and the great alike;

…for the judgment is God’s.”

(Deuteronomy 1:16-17)

Obviously the judge in our story was as callous,

cold, and hard-hearted as could be,

not interested at all in dispensing justice,

relenting only to rid of himself of the widow

and her pestering.

And so, Jesus concludes the parable

by telling us that God will grant us justice

if we just persist, hang in,

don’t give up;

that with tenacity even the most disgruntled

can find themselves gruntled –

which isn’t a word, but should be.

(HBA).

But then why do so many of our prayers

often seem to go unanswered?

Why do we pray and pray and pray

for what we believe is right and good

and just and fair,

only to feel ourselves praying as though

to the wind

rather than to the Lord our God?

Is it that we haven’t been persistent enough,

tenacious enough;

have we simply not yet reached the point

where we’ve worn God down?

It is the last line that guides us,

opens our eyes and our minds;

that line that almost seems to be a throwaway,

a line that Jesus seems to have included

only as one final dig at the unjust judge.

But Jesus’ point about faithfulness

is aimed at you and me.

It is a reminder that when we pray,

we are not to pray to God

as though God was Santa Claus,

there to grant our every wish.

We are to pray ceaselessly,

but we are also to pray faithfully;

and to pray faithfully means we need to understand

that sometimes the things we pray for

may not happen,

no matter how tenacious we might be.

As the great preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick observed,

“What discord should we bring to the universe

if our prayers were all answered “yes”!

Then we should govern the world and not God.”

No, we should pray relentlessly to align our wills

with God’s will.

Or as Fosdick put it,

“Prayer should become

not the endeavor to get God to do our will,

but the endeavor to open our lives to God

so that God can do in us what he wants to do.”

Kierkegaard put it this way:

“A person thinks and imagines that when he prays,

the important thing is that God should hear

what he is praying for.

Yet in the true, eternal sense

it is just the reverse:

the true relation in prayer is not

when God hears what is prayed for,

but when the person praying continues to pray

until he or she is the one who hears,

who hears what God wills.”

The corollary to this parable

is the lesson Jesus teaches us,

not through another parable,

but by example:

we are to pray that in the end,

it is God’s will that is done,

not our own.

Prayer should be “the discovery of God within us;”

as Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, wrote.

We are to “listen for the unexpected,

in which we are open to what we do not yet know,

and in which we slowly and gradually prepare for

…a new level  of being with God.”

That is why we are to pray without ceasing.

As you come to our Lord’s Table,

come forward prayerfully,

lifting up words of praise and adoration,

words of gratitude and thanksgiving,

perhaps even words of confession and contrition.

But then once you return to your seat,

pray as our Lord taught us by his own example:

“Not my will,

but your will be done;

done through me.”

Pray that ceasely.

Pray those words relentlessly.

Pray those words faithfully.

Do that, and you’ll never lose heart,

for in time you will know

that all your prayers are answered.

AMEN