Do not lose heart

Scripture Lessons: Jeremiah 31: 27-34 and Luke 18: 1-8, NT page 81 Sermon Title: Do not lose heart Preached on October 16, 2016 Last Sunday night – you might have missed the last question asked during the presidential debate. It’s understandable if you changed the channel long before then – but if you managed to weather the storm then you got to hear the most interesting question of the night, the very last one posed by a man name Karl Becker: “My question to both of you is, regardless of the current rhetoric, would either of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another?” Mrs. Clinton answered first. She said, “Look, I respect his children. His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald,” but as nice as it always is to hear someone talk about your kids, at the time I felt like this was kind of a non-answer, so my hat’s off to Mr. Trump who jumped right in there and said, “I will say this about Hillary: She doesn’t quit. She doesn’t give up. I respect that. I tell it like it is. She’s a fighter.” Now that was a real compliment I thought, and it put a nice bow on an incredibly strange presidential debate, and it also gave me a lot to think about – because like Mr. Trump I agree that Mrs. Clinton is a fighter and that being a fighter is a good thing, being a fighter is a virtue, but so is acceptance and one of the great challenges in life is balancing the two: fighting for change and accepting what cannot be changed. So we pray the Serenity Prayer written by that great saint of the Church, Reinhold Niebuhr, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Isn’t that the trick – the wisdom to know the difference? Too often that’s the part I’m lacking and I so often excel at the acceptance part. I once I had a mentor, she was my supervisor during the summer I spent at the women’s prison as a chaplain in training – she looked me in the eye one day and she said, “Joe, you’re really nice. I’ve seen you be nice to just about everybody, but you need to learn that there’s a difference between being nice and being kind.” Up until this point I kind of thought that being nice was the same as being Christian, but Jesus wasn’t always nice. When he saw the Temple turned into a marketplace, he didn’t nicely ask that the money changers evacuate the premises – he toppled their tables and went after them with a whip. When the woman caught in adultery was right on the edge of being stoned, he didn’t accept this behavior – he kneeled by the woman and challenged the crowd saying, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” He called the Pharisees a brood of vipers. He looked at Peter and said, “Get behind me Satan.” Jesus didn’t always accept people as they were nor did he always accept society as it was – for so often he was using his words and his love to work for something different so he tells his disciples this parable. “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 – and of course he did. He neither feared God nor had respect for people and you can imagine that he was one of those judges who thrives in the bureaucracy, taking responsibility for nothing, deaf to anyone’s complaints. Maybe he would have done well at the DMV, but in this case he was a judge and how difficult it is to gain justice from a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. How frustrating to realize that the judge – the authority you depend on to stand up for what is right cares more about getting to the golf course than standing up to defend the widow and the orphan. Given the situation, the attitude of the judge, some would have prayed that Serenity prayer and emphasized the first part: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change” but the widow, this widow was a fighter and so she just followed him out to the golf course. He’d go home for a 5 o’clock cocktail and guess who just happened to stop by. The phone would ring at his house and you can see him – he asked his wife to pick it up and he said, “if it’s that widow, tell her I’m busy.” A person can ignore someone that way for a while and eventually – most people take the hint and pray for the power to accept the world as it is, but this widow kept praying the second part of the prayer: “God grant me the courage to change the things I can” and went on saying to that judge, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ “For a while he refused; but later – 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?” The parable ends with this harsh question – “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” And what is faith? What does Jesus mean here by faith? Faith is the willingness of a widow to wake up morning after morning, day after day, rejection and rejection, still believing that justice will be hers. Faith can help us accept the things we cannot change, but faith can also fuel our fight, granting us the courage to change the things we can. Faith is perseverance. Faith is determination. Faith is never accepting injustice as the way things are, and this is where being nice won’t always cut it, because you know what nice people do when they knock on the door to demand a little justice? They say, “Pardon me sir, but I didn’t think your ruling was very fair and I’m so sorry to bother you but would you please reconsider?” You know what nice people do when the political climate gets crazy and people start arguing and writing all kinds of divisive things on Facebook? They graciously excuse themselves from the conversation. And do you know what nice people do when you hurt their feelings or when you treat them like a doormat or when you don’t respect their boundaries? Too often they do nothing – and there are two reasons injustice continues to exist in the world: on the one hand are some ruthless people with bad intentions but on the other hand are a whole bunch of people who are too nice to say or do anything about it, they’ve mastered the acceptance part of the serenity prayer and they lack the wisdom to know that they can change far more about this world than they ever imagined. We can’t just accept and move on, because not voting is not going to change anything. Not speaking is not going to change anything. Being too nice to say or do anything about it is not going to change anything. So here’s the thing about this widow. She was dissatisfied with the judge’s ruling and she was bold enough to do something about it, again and again she was bold to do something about it and if a judge “Who neither feared God nor had respect for people” changed his ruling and gave the widow what she asked for why would you or I ever stop knocking on the door of our Father in Heaven, crying out to him for help and justice? Too often we are just too good at the acceptance part. We learn to live with it – and we’d rather learn to live with it than cause a stink about it. After all, nobody likes someone who causes a stink. Those people who just can’t accept things the way they are – do you know how difficult it is to have lunch with people who just can’t accept things the way they are? Who want to make all those changes to their order? They see the menu, but they say to the waitress, “I’d like the chicken, but it comes with onions and I’d like for you to leave off the onions, and instead of fries I’d like a salad, and rather than the bun I’d like a croissant.” Some people are so bad about this that they might walk into the Chick-fila to order a roast beef sandwich. Now what kind of person can’t order off the menu? I’ll tell you what kind of person – the kind of person who sees what’s there, but who isn’t satisfied with it. And what’s there? Out in the world, there’s conflict between police and crowds of angry people. Plenty of people have thrown up their arms in frustration at these problems. Plenty of people have said that there’s nothing that can be done, but the Chief of Police here in Columbia, Chief Tim Potts – a little more than two years ago as he recognized that East Columbia is a high crime area, he asked his police officers to patrol the Eastside on foot. And in the Daily Herald about a year ago there was a picture of an 8-year-old African-American boy playing basketball in his driveway with a police officer. Here there was something different – here the reality was becoming different, but that takes the leadership of a police chief who won’t accept the way things are, convinced and faithful that things could be different, that things can be better. The same thing is happening out at Cox Middle School. I was eating lunch again, this time with the Director of Schools, Dr. Chris Marczak, and I was trying to make some nice conversation so I asked him to tell me about nice things happening in Maury County Schools and he said that he was the most excited about Cox Middle School. “Cox Middle School,” I said, “but isn’t that place really bad?” And I asked, since I had heard some pretty bad stories and I read last year about how the school’s discipline issues were so bad that all the clubs and sports were being taken away as punishment for poor behavior. Well, Dr. Marczak told me that I had gotten the wrong impression and asked me to come out with him to tour the school which I did last Wednesday. Here’s the thing about this school – last year there were 4,000 disciplinary referrals. What does that mean? That means that pretty much every day last year our own Matt Campbell who teaches out there had to break up a fight. 4,000 disciplinary referrals are so many disciplinary referrals that the principal and two assistant principals spent no time in their office because they were out in the halls dealing with unruly students – in fact, they put what they needed on push carts and made mobile offices so they would be closer to the problems as they were happening. Last Wednesday Principal Webb met us there at the front. He shook my hand, looked me in the eye, and then introduced me to the students who were walking with him who in turn shook my hand, looked me in the eye. That was the case with every student who I met last Wednesday at Cox Middle School – Principle Webb knew all their names, even Jevon who was there for his first day of school, and everyone who he introduced me to shook my hand and looked me in the eye. Not only that – there on the wall by the front entrance were test scores reporting 56% growth in 7th grade math, an improvement from 16% proficiency – there numbered were total books read for each grade numbering in the thousands. At some point I asked him, “where are all the bad kids?” And he told me that there weren’t any bad kids. These were just kids, and every one of them had the potential to be a great student. How does this kind of thing happen? It happens when someone – a widow, a police chief, a principal – refuses to accept what is right in front of them and instead knocks and pesters and fights until justice comes. And why wouldn’t justice come? If a widow can get justice from a judge who “neither feared God nor had respect for people” “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?” When the Son of Man comes, what will he find at First Presbyterian Church? I’ve been here with you for nearly six years, and for these six years I have been amazed – amazed and overjoyed to witness the ways that you proclaim the Gospel in word and deed, not just on this corner, out in the world – but more and more I become convinced that we are not doing everything that we can. That we are not having the impact on this community that we could. That while our building is beautiful and are staff is paid fairly and the heat and air work most of the time I can’t help but imagine what would happen in this town if we were able to double our support to the Family Center. Last year when we were blessed with a donation large enough to buy our new church bus we were able to donate our old church van to the Family Center and now they use it to transport food and donations and they take homeless men and women to shelters – but is that all that we can do? Two months out of the year men and women from this church give up their time and their talent to cook for hungry people right here in this community – but is that all we can do? I worry that we are all getting too good at acceptance – and I don’t want to be good at acceptance – I want to be good at fighting for the world to change and I believe that God will be on our side. So think with me – and during this month of Stewardship is just as good a time as any – think with me not just about what you’ve done, not just celebrating all that you’ve done, but think with me about what you could do. For if a widow can squeeze justice out of a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people, will not God grant justice to his chosen ones? Amen.