-
Contact Info
- Office Hours
- M-Th 9-12, 1-3
- Closed Friday
- Telephone
- (503)640-1775
- Address
- 168 NE 8th
- Hillsboro, OR 97124
- Directions
-
Email
- General Info
- Office
- Spire
- Webmaster
- Gwen Drake
- Pastor
- Sandra Hunter
- Director of Family
- Ministries
- Lefty Schultz
- Visitation Pastor
- Laura Lillegard
- Office Manager
- John Hiestand
- Music Minister
- Youth E-mail
- Youth Ministry
- Oregon-Idaho UMC
- Main UMC Website
- Boy Scout Tr #240
Sermon - October 21st, 2007
Do Not Lose Heart
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: Luke 18:1-8
Message #1 “The Inconvenient Truth”
The parable Jesus told and Calvin read is the parable of the widow known for the inconvenience she caused. It is a story about two extremes. On one side was a powerful, corrupt, bad judge. On the other side was a poor defenseless, powerless woman without a man to speak on her behalf, so she spoke for herself. It is clear that this parable is about the good and the bad, the powerful and the powerless. Except, this poor powerless widow continually and persistently made a nuisance of herself before this powerful, corrupt judge. Over and over again, this woman interrupted his work, his thinking, his life by getting in his face. She had something to complain about. She was angry. She was stubborn. She was not going to play the role of the nice little old helpless widow at all. She was relentless in confronting the judge. She wanted justice to be done and she had only one way to get it—by pestering the powerful, by making a nuisance of herself, by annoying a judge until he gave in to her request just to get rid of her. Which is what happened. The judge granted the widow’s request NOT because her case had merit or because he was impartial and just in his verdicts. He decided in her favor so that he could be rid of her. He wanted to avoid being bothered. He chose to rule in her favor rather than endure her. He granted her justice because he did not want to continue being worn down by her inconvenient truth.
We know this story well. It’s about the “squeaky wheel getting the grease.” It’s when whining about something works. It’s about the unceasing efforts of one unlikely person whittling away at the resolve of one powerful person who didn’t care for anyone but himself. It is about a corrupt judge who finally gives in to what is right because he would rather do that than endure another moment with someone who was causing more trouble than it was worth. He took the easy way out, which in this case was the just way out. We know this story well. Because more often than not it is a story about how the world operates. We will listen to the truth and respond to the truth by changing when it becomes inconvenient, annoying, uncomfortable not to…when the high road becomes the easier way out.
Message #2 “Do Not Lose Heart”
Today, we are celebrating Children’s Sabbath. It is just one Sunday when we all come together to remember the children in the world, especially the ones who are having a really hard time because they are poor or sick or homeless. Of all the people in the world, children, all children have the least power, no voice, even when they whine they seldom get their way. So, we adults need to be like the widow in Jesus’ parable. We need to keep working to make things better for our children, and for our children’s children. We need to pray for our children. We need to ask for God to help us. We need to keep making a nuisance of ourselves on behalf of the children.
The parable Jesus told is about being persistent, not giving up. It is about praying without ceasing. It is about caring enough to pray and not give up. It is about caring enough to seek justice. It is about caring enough that even when we see our world crumbling, we will not stop caring. We are the ones called to be persistent. We are called to make a nuisance of ourselves in the name of justice. We are called to pray continuously to God. Not just because Jesus told us to. But because we care. We care for the children of the world.
We know the need for justice in the world is overwhelming. Jesus knew that, too. It would be easy to give up. It would be understandable to do nothing. No one would judge you harshly for wanting to crawl into a cave and never coming out. It is hard to know where to start. So Jesus told the story of the efforts of one widow woman—a poor, seemingly powerless person. And there are many, many stories like that.
Back in the 70’s when Argentina was ruled by a military regime, people who struggled for peace started to disappear. The numbers of missing people rose to the thousands. Lines began to form in front of government offices. Mothers of the missing came day after day, begging for information. They were turned away. They drew up a petition with a list of the missing, demanding information. They were refused. They began a silent, illegal protest. Every Thursday, they marched in a circle in front of the government offices in Buenos Aires, wearing a white handkerchief embroidered with the names of their missing children. Despite persecution, the silent group of walking women kept their vigil for years.
In El Salvador, mothers and widows fasted at the tomb of the assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero, demanding an end to repression. In Detroit, mothers whose children were gunned down in the streets have come together to demand gun control and an end to drug violence. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a powerful group now in our nation and laws have been changed because of them.
Powerless people all over the world have confronted the “unjust judges” who are disguised today as prime ministers, mayors, presidents, military regimes. They demand to be heard. And we are invited to join them.
Message #3 “God, the Persistent Widow”
There is one more very important message in this parable. It is the message that Anne Lamott wrote about in her book Traveling Mercies. She was working on forgiveness in her life because she was starting to believe that bad things were happening to her because she was not willing to forgive. She wrote, “forgiving was like trying to become a marathon runner in middle age.” (Gee, I can certainly relate to that!) You can’t just decide to do it and do it. You have to train yourself for it. Anne Lamott had tried to will herself to forgive “four former Republican presidents, three relatives, two old boyfriends, and one teacher in a pear tree.” And she said it was like “The Twelve Days of Christmas meets Taxi Driver.” So she took C.S. Lewis’ advice in Mere Christianity: “If we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo.” So, Anne decided to start with someone she barely knew—the mother of one of the children in her son’s first grade class. Anne just could not forgive this mother for being well-dressed, lean and fit, and pretty—everything that Anne was NOT. Oh, and this mother also had a Ronald Reagon bumper sticker on her white, shiny Volvo seven years after he left the presidency. One more thing that bothered Anne, this mother brought delicious homemade cookies to her son’s first classroom party, telling Anne, “I just want you to know, Annie, that if you have any other questions about how the classroom works, I’d really love to be there for you.” Anne thought to herself, “What is there not to hate.” This woman was making her feel miserable and it drove Anne to her knees. She prayed about it. She wrote, “I prayed because my son loves her son, and my son is so kind that it makes me want to be a better person, a person who does not hate someone just because she wears latex bicycle shorts. I prayed for a miracle. I wrote her name down on a slip of paper, folded it up, and put it in the box I use as God’s In Box.” And then she said to God, “Help.”
Well, something started happening. Anne said that God started acting like the Dr. Seuss character, Sam-I-Am, who is the little boy who likes green eggs and ham. Everywhere Anne turned there was a message about forgiveness. She called them, “helpful household hints on loving one’s enemies, on turning the other cheek, and on how doing that makes you look in a whole new direction.” She saw forgiveness tips in fortune cookies, on postcards and bumper stickers, everything but writing in the sky. She wrote, “yet I kept feeling that I could not, would not forgive her in a box, could not, would not forgive her with a fox, not on the train, and not in the rain.”
Then one day Sam was playing with his friend. And when Anne came by to get Sam, the mother of all mothers invited Anne in for a cup of tea. Anne was about to decline but, gosh darn it, something inside her made her voice say yes. And while she was sitting and sipping her tea, every judgmental thought she had about the mother went through her mind. She wrote, “Everywhere you looked was more façade, more expensive stuff—show-offy-I-have-more-money-than-you stuff, plus you’re-out-of-shape-stuff.” Finally it was time to go and Anne got up to help Sam put on his shoes. Sam’s shoes were on the mat by the front door, next to his friend’s shoes. “And as I loosened the laces on one shoe,” she wrote, “without realizing what I was doing, I sneaked a look into the other boy’s sneaker—to see what size shoe he wore. To see how my kid lined up in shoe size…..And I finally got it….the veil dropped. I got that I am as mad as a hatter. I saw that I was the one worried that my child wasn’t doing well enough in school. That I was the one who thought I was out of shape. And that I was trying to get her to carry all this for me because it hurt too much to carry it myself.”
What Anne realized was that she was the one filled with so much self-contempt, she had been spewing it out into the world. The mother was the one pouring her more tea, that was all. She was the one taking care of Sam, that was all. She was the one who had already forgiven her, before she had done anything that she needed to be forgiven for. Anne was the unjust judge in the story and God was the persistent widow. God kept coming at her, working on her, through her son, messages here and there, and finally through the mother Anne thought she needed to forgive. God, the persistent widow kept working on her until she discovered that she was the one who needed to change. The judge was that part of Anne who didn’t want to see any other side, that resisted change, that was closed, judgmental and overwhelmed.
I do that too. Before I am the widow woman with something to complain about—I am the judge who says there is nothing I can do to change the situation. That judge keeps me quiet, safe, secure, and out of trouble. That judge also keeps me from taking a risk, believing in myself, working for change, and from living life to its fullest. That judge tells me to give up the fight before I have even tried. That’s the part of me that has little hope in myself or humanity or God.
But, thank be to God, God won’t let me, not for long. I’ve tried that. And you know what? God is like that widow woman. She finds a way to tell me to stop feeling sorry for myself! She sends me message after message until I finally start to get it. That’s what God does. She will never give up on us. She will find a way to us and through us. God will bother us and pester us with the inconvenient truth. She will get in our face. She will not stop not matter how long it takes until we open the door of our hearts—even if it is just a crack, that’s all God needs, just a tiny little opening and the light will burst through. Then if we turn around and respond—if we care with just a portion of the love that God has for us—we will find ourselves pounding on the doors of justice, praying without ceasing for peace in our lives and in the world, we will be helping others and discovering once again that we do believe—we believe in miracles, in ourselves, in humanity, in God. We will be like the widow woman who never gives up.
Amen.
Poem by Pamela O’Brien
I want my children to be strong and brave,
To do what they believe to be right
Even when it costs them a lot.
I want my children to be weak,
To know what it means to be lonely and scared and vulnerable,
And to be able to cry and to say, ‘Please help me.’
I want my children to love, to love a lot, life and other people,
especially those who aren’t very lovable;
to love buttercups and red maple leaves and gentle snows
and shells that cover ocean beaches after a storm;
to love hot cider and clean floors and great books and classical music.
I want my children to despise, to despise a lot,
Pretense and lies and killing, cruel words, violent acts and mean tempers,
Diseases that ravage the body and the mind.
I don’t want them to despise pain and death and endings,
Things that in their essence are a part of living.
I want my children to love God and no matter what,
No matter how dark it gets at night,
No matter what awful something the light of day exposes,
I want them to never ever let go of God.
I want my children to go to bed each night,
To rise up each morning, hoping, beyond that trusting,
Beyond that believing that God loves them,
That God will never let them go.