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.