Listen to the Sermon or the Entire Service
October 20:
Call: Luke 18: 1-8
Text: 2 Timothy 3:14 - 4:5
Prophet: Jeremiah 31: 27-34
Like James Bond gracefully sliding up to a bar in an elegant hotel
And ordering by saying,
"I'll have a martini - shaken, not stirred,
This Thursday, we are going to - hopefully, but not necessarily, gracefully -
Slide up to the Bible in this church or at Mayfield rather than in an elegant hotel,
and order by saying
"I'll have a Parable - with a twist."
Although to be accurate, what we really should be saying is,
"I'll have a Parable - and I will provide the twist."
For the parables were and are interactive
Long before computers, smart phones, and smart TVs
And as we read them interactively
We provide something to them
From our experiences and from our observations
From our knowledge and from our character.
That is why the brief - it is only three weeks long - Bible Study
That begins on Thursday
Is an experiment in interacting with Christ's parables
By seeing where we fit in
And By trying to rewrite them as if they took place
in the 21st century.
This Bible study comes at a good time because
For the last several weeks we have, in our worship services
examined parabolic texts.
This morning we visit still another parable
And it is sort of a prelude to the study
Because it provides us with an opportunity to test our reactions
For, as we have noted several times.
Christ expected his contemporary listeners to react
And He expects us to react
With our emotions
As well as - actually more than - with our minds.
We begin that process, of course, with the text itself
But when I finish reading it,
I will pause for roughly five seconds
During which, I want you to take note of what your immediate reaction was.
During those five seconds
I do not want you to try to figure the parable out
I do not want you to try to logically understand
what Christ was saying
I do not want you to defend or alter your immediate reaction
I do not want you to say to yourselves
"When I took a Bible study some years ago
I was told that the parable means such and such."
What I want is for you to identify that reaction for yourselves
What I want is for you to respond with your gut - not your brain.
After that brief respite
I will read another text to you
This second text is also a parable
In fact, the second parable is what I call
A fraternal twin to the first one
And again, I will give you five seconds
To identify your reaction.
Let's begin: Luke 18: 1-8 [How did you react?]
Now to the fraternal twin: Luke 11: 5-8 [How did you react?]
I don't know about you,
But my immediate reaction to both
Was that I found the two women to be pests
I found both of them somewhat irritating
But what is really irritating is that Jesus is using those two pests
As an example for me.
He is telling me that in terms of my relationship with God
And particularly my prayer relationship with God
I should be like them! I should be like the pests!
And so the rest of my immediate reaction is
"They are too annoying. I don't want to be like them."
After all, like most parents,
I have gotten irritated with my children
When they continually pester me
And thus - and again like most parents -
I have exasperatedly uttered those familiar words,
"If you ask me one more time, you will not get what you want!"
And Jesus is telling me that in terms of prayer
I should be like my pestering children
And like the irritating women in the parables.
But that is only my immediate reaction
I believe, though that is the reaction Jesus wants us to have.
For it grabs our attention and makes us think about it.
And so as I reflect, my irritation begins to soften.
I begin to recognize that
the woman who pestered the unjust judge is actually
somewhat heroic
Sort of like Jimmy Stewart in
"Mr. Smith goes to Washington."
I begin to recognize that the woman who wakes her neighbor
Is doing so to be hospitable
to an apparently unexpected guest
- as she was expected to in her culture.
And then my rational mind takes me one step further
I begin to recognize that what Jesus was doing here
Was reasoning from the lesser to the greater.
From the less likely to the more likely.
What he is saying is:
That if an unjust judge and a sleeping neighbor
Will give a pest what he/she needs
How much easier is it to be confident that
God, who loves us dearly
Will give those of us who are persistent in prayer what
we need.
That is logical, rational, reasoning.
But parables are more than logic and reasoning
They involve, as we have noted before,
Feelings, emotions, and guts
And thus,
to get me to experience - not just intellectually understand -
The message Jesus is trying to get across to you and me
I needed one more thing.
I had to feel it.
I had to experience it.
For me that meant putting myself in the role of the sleeping neighbor
(appropriately enough: on Pillow Sunday)
For despite my awareness of my own imperfections
I cannot relate to the role of the unjust judge
As I did so,
I looked back on my own life.
While practicing law,
Several times a year my phone would ring in the middle of the night with a call from a client who had been arrested.
One time I heard pounding on the door of my house
I looked at the clock.
It was 3:00 in the morning
I tossed my robe on and went to the door
There I found two young women
"Eddie's been arrested" they said
I still get middle of the night phone calls on occasion
While in Massena, I once got a call.
"Jim, this is Joan, can you come to the hospital?"
A couple of years ago, I got a call from an old friend at
about 6:00 AM
"Jim, my wife died, can you help me out?"
Well,
I helped Eddie out in the middle of the night
Across the years I helped dozens of others as well
I went to the hospital for Joan
And on my way, I realized that I had never asked which of her family members was the patient.
And I did the funeral for my friend's wife
As I thought about my own experiences
I began to realize that
despite my sighing "Oh, no!"
when I first heard the phone ring
I had taken those calls (and that door pounding) seriously.
And I had responded to them.
The persistence and pleading of those who called or knocked
Had been rewarded. Their needs had been met.
And then at last I understood emotionally and with feeling
what Christ is saying,
as he reasoned from the lesser to the greater
and the less likely to the more likely
What he is saying is:
That if someone as flawed as Jim Barnes
Will give a pest what he/she needs
How much easier is it to be confident that
God, who loves us dearly
Will give those of us who are persistent in prayer what
we need.
Paul understood this.
In the words he wrote to Timothy
(words that called us to worship today)
he gave this instruction,
"I solemnly urge you:
proclaim the message;
be persistent
whether the time is favorable or unfavorable ..."
In words he wrote in the earliest of his preserved letters
He instructed the Thessalonians
To "pray without ceasing." [1 Thess 5:17]
In the fraternal twin parables
And in Paul's letters
We are taught that persistent prayer
Provides us with both comfort and hope.
Comfort and hope were present many years before Christ.
Especially in the prophets.
Prophets like Jeremiah through whom God declared
"The days are surely coming
when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah
It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt
a covenant that they broke though I was their husband, says the Lord.
But this is the covenant that I will make ...
I will put my law within them
And I will write it on their hearts
And I will be their God
And they shall be my people."
That covenant was sealed by the blood of the one who told us through the fraternal twin parables
To be persistent and pest-like in prayer
And to not give up hope.
That's a pretty good lesson.
It even makes bearable
my knowing that people all week long have read,
"The Pest Rev. Jim Barnes"
as they walked, biked, and drove past our sign.
Although it was not originally planned that way
Now that I have reflected on what Christ was saying to us
I hope that in terms of my prayer relationship with God
I can earn that description.