Sermon
Text – Luke 18:1-8
It doesn’t take much imagination to find contemporary
parallels to the parable from Luke that we just heard. In fact, I kind of
laughed out loud a bit when I opened up my Bible on Monday to look at the texts
for the week and saw this story. Before I could stop myself, I found my brain
updating the parable, “In a certain nation, there were lawmakers who neither
feared God nor had respect for people. In that nation there were many widows
and orphans and convicted criminals and people dying of curable diseases who
came to the lawmakers saying, ‘Grant us justice.’ For a while, they refused,
but later they said to themselves, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect
for anyone, yet because I fear the loss of campaign funding and what will
happen to the stock market, I will grant them some measure of justice, so I can
be reelected.”
Oversimplified? Yes, of
course. But the parallels between Luke’s setting and ours can’t be ignored. The
people in power then and now often care about the wrong things. And the people
who are disempowered – like the widow – care so very much, but have an
incredibly difficult, uphill battle to get anyone at all to listen to them. So
they do what they can to make their voices heard. And, every once in a while,
someone seems to actually listen. For whatever reason, there is a brief
reprieve and they can breathe a bit, knowing that their immediate needs have
been taken care of for a few days, weeks, or months.
I can imagine that’s what
it must feel like for some in our country right now - those government workers who
live paycheck to paycheck and are still scrambling to recover from the
disruption in their lives these past few weeks. They are working to regain
their footing, but they won’t soon forget the nagging feeling that many in
Congress cannot be trusted, don’t seem to care, and don’t seem to have much of
a clue about how most of their constituents live. We have stumbled back to some
sense of normalcy, but I hope we won’t soon forget the weeks of uncertainty we
just lived through.
I take comfort knowing that
the Rear Admiral Barry C. Black is still praying with the Senate each day. As
the Senate’s Chaplain, Rev. Dr. Black took seriously his responsibility to
“comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” during the government
shutdown. He prayed daily that the lawmakers could be saved from “the madness,”
and begging God to deliver them from the “hypocrisy of attempting to sound
reasonable while being unreasonable.”
Rev. Black, unlike most of
his colleagues in the Senate, knows what it is like to live in poverty. His
mother was a domestic worker, his father a truck driver, and they made
sacrifices to send their eight children to private Christian schools. One of
those sacrifices was the ability to pay the rent. Black recalls coming home
from school three times as a child to find they had been evicted from their
apartment – their belongings on the street.[1]
So Black understands all
too well the true cost for everyday people of the government shutdown. I feel
confident he will not soon forget what has transpired these past few weeks. And
I know he will not be silent.
The widow in Luke’s parable
had that going for her, too. She refused to be silent. The Hebrew word for
widow carries with it the connotation of someone who is silent – who has no
voice. Legally, women in their culture had no voice. They were fully dependant
on their male relatives to speak on their behalf. So a widow, who had lost her
closest male relative, was silenced completely unless another male relative was
willing to take her in and become her mouthpiece.
This widow clearly has not
been this lucky. She is without voice – none of her male relatives are willing
to care for her. If they had been, she certainly wouldn’t have been out in the
streets yelling at the local judge. That type of behavior was a serious
embarrassment for her entire family, if she had any left to care. But she is
desperate – she has no where else to go, no other tricks up her sleeve, so she
does the only thing she can think of – raises her voice and keeps on raising it
until this unjust judge becomes so annoyed that he gives in and helps her out.
Is this a story about how
to get what you want even when the deck is stacked against you and you are
totally desperate? I guess you could say it is.
But I always tend to ask
myself, “What is this story trying to tell us about God?” when I am looking at
Biblical texts. And, in this case, the story is pretty clear in what it’s
trying to communicate about God. God is not like the unjust judge. God does not
have to be pestered and prodded and embarrassed into helping us in our hour of
need.
So we don’t have to beg and
holler and scream to get God’s attention. God pays attention to us even when we
speak with a whisper. In fact, I tend to think that God is paying attention to
us even when we don’t say anything at all. In God’s language, there is no such
thing as a person without a voice because all are valued, all are heard, all
are held closely and cherished.
Now I don’t think this
means we worship what I like to call “the Gumball Machine God.” We don’t pop a
quarter into the prayer machine and – pop! – out comes a gumball. I don’t think
God works in that way. I don’t even thing God has the ability to grant us our
deepest wishes and desires. God is neither a Gumball Machine nor a Genie in a
Bottle.
What God can do, I believe,
is accompany us. And what we can do is allow ourselves to be accompanied.
We can allow ourselves to
be open to God’s presence – both in those mystical, mysterious otherworldly
moments and in those mundane, everyday situations. We can allow ourselves to be
fully aware of God’s accompaniment and we can take strength and solace in
knowing that the One who is called Love never leaves us alone, never allows us
to be silenced, never forgets our plight.
I think that – more than
anything – this is a story about the power of listening and the miracle of
being heard.
The widow lived in a society
that told her time and time again, “You have no worth,” but she refused to
believe the lie they were selling her. She knew she had worth and she insisted
on being in relationship. She insisted on being heard. And the unjust judge –
as shameless and he may have been – did eventually do the thing she needed him
to do. He listened. Her case was heard.
I read a news story this
week about a 15 year old named Davion Only who is insisting on being heard.[2]
Davion has been in the
foster care system in Florida his entire life. He was born while his mom was
incarcerated. He has never known his parents. He cannot count all the places he
has lived. This past June, Davion sat down at a library computer and Googled
his mom. He found her mug shot. And he found her obituary. That’s when he knew
he had to give up on the idea that she was ever coming to save him.
And so he decided he would
have to save himself. He began working harder in school, bringing his grades
up. He began taking better care of himself physically and lost 40 pounds. He
learned to control his rage and stopped lashing out at everyone around him who
was trying to help.
When he was ready, he
decided it was time to ask. It was time to take himself out into the world and
raise his voice until someone heard him and answered his cries.
Last month, he walked into
St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church in St. Petersburg. He had cold feet at the
last minute, and told his case worker he was having second thoughts. But he sat
through the service. As he listened to the preacher, he wondered what he could
possibly say so that people would finally listen to his story. A lifetime of
being unheard. A lifetime of feeling abandoned. And here he was taking a chance
in a room of 300 strangers – just hoping someone would hear him out.
So after the sermon was
over, the pastor invited him to the front and Davion did what he had come to
do. He used his own voice to tell his story. He asked boldly that someone
present might adopt him. His story has since been published numerous times
online and in print media and the center where Davion lives has received
hundreds of inquiries about Davion. I can only hope and pray that Davion, like
the widow in Luke’s story, will get what he asked for – a second chance, a
family, a hope for a secure future.
And Davion has that chance
because a group of people listened.
The website for St. Mark
Missionary Baptist Church says their mission is “creating a haven of hope, help
and healing for Christ.” Sounds to me like they’re doing it.
They took time to listen to
Davion. I don’t know if it will lead to justice for him, but I do know that
there is power in listening. That 300 people would take time to hear his story?
That has to mean the world to a kid who has rarely been given a chance to use his
voice. In taking the time to listen, they were telling Davion, “We want to hear
you. We believe you are important. We are taking seriously our call to listen
as Christ would listen.”
Listening is where it all
begins. I think that’s why Luke tells us that this is a parable about “their
need to pray always and never lose heart.”
That’s an unusual thing for
a parable to be about. There are 24 parables in Luke and only 3 have anything
to do with prayer. But that’s what Luke tells us this parable is about. It is a
parable about being in relationship. About taking the risk of raising our
voices – to God, to one another – a parable about hoping to be heard. And it is
a parable about the gift of listening – a story about the power we wield when
we simply take the time to focus our attention on an individual who longs to be
heard; the beauty of what can happen when we open ourselves to another person’s
story and take it fully into ourselves.
I have found that, in my
own life, I am best able to put on my listening ears and truly hear those
around me when I am in a good place myself. When I am struggling; when I feel
worthless; when I feel fearful or despairing? Those are the times I find it to
be very difficult to hear people around me. But when I feel like I am worthy,
like I am loved, like I am heard? Well, those are the times when I feel like I
can listen and listen well.
I have to put the oxygen
mask on myself before I can put it on others. And, for me, one of the ways I
put that oxygen mask on is through prayer. For me, it’s not necessarily about
sitting down and folding my hands to say an official prayer. Instead, it’s
about trying to live my life in a way where I am fully aware of God’s presence
in each and every moment. It’s about remembering I am accompanied by the One
whose name is Love, no matter where I go.
Oh, there are so many days
that I fail at this. But when I am able to get it right – when I am able to
remember how important it is to “pray always and never lose heart” I am so
thankful.
Because when I can remember
these things, I begin to feel like I have been heard; like I have been found
worthy; like I am loved. And then from that place of strength, I am able to
open myself and listen to those around me.
Listening is where it all
begins.
When we can rest assured
that God hears us, we are better able to listen to each other. And when we
listen to each other, we discover that we are in relationship – for better or
for worse.
And if we can all just stay
in relationship with each other – holding each other’s stories, seeing one
another as God sees us – well, that’s not everything, but it certainly is a
good place to start.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Black#cite_note-11
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