Reminder... congregational and voters meeting tonight at 7pm in the fellowship hall. Dont worry if you arent a voter or have never attended one of these before. Its real easy and its nice to see everyone again. Come on out and join us. Here is the sermon from Sunday in case you missed it or simply wanted to reread it: WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMES The sin of mankind will attract final judgment like road kill attracts a vulture. That’s one Author’s commentary on the verses which lead up to the Gospel reading for today. They are dramatic Words, & the author happens to be Jesus. He ends Chapter 17 in this way: “Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it. I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken & the other left. There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken & the other left.” And they said to Him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” That last phrase is self-explanatory. Most of us have probably seen a crow or two, if not vultures, picking away at some poor animal that was hit by a car along the road. In the 17th chapter of Luke, Jesus is speaking about the last day in time – Judgment Day. It’s coming & it will be as obvious as the gathering of vultures around a carcass. That leads into the Gospel reading for today: “[Jesus] told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray & not lose heart.” That’s where we are in our personal lives today, as well as the life of our school & our congregation. As for our personal lives, all of us are getting older. With that comes a natural decline in what we can do. Some of us are dealing with illness, short term & long. Others are recovering from accidents, including the surgeries that follow. There’s the heartache of grieving someone’s death. There’s the pain of failed & broken relationships. If you’re a Detroit Tiger’s fan, there’s the disappointment of great potential that was not fulfilled. Financial hardships are abundant & our political system is filled with men & women of both parties who care nothing for the people they represent, but are concerned only with their welfare & reelection chances. The Word of God is no longer their guide, & they don’t care what the average man or woman in America thinks of them. Truth be told, far too many of our politicians are like the judge in today’s reading from Luke 18: “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man.” The inner sense of what constitutes a good act, & what is a shameful act, is missing in this judge. He’s become totally corrupt & is the epitome of ungodliness to the point that he admits there is no spark of honor left in his soul to which anyone can appeal. Nothing shames him.[1] Into this setting arrives a widow & in Jesus’ day there was no one more typical of the innocent yet powerless individual. She’s being oppressed in some illegal manner; however, she has no one of influence to coerce the judge, nor the money to bribe him. Lastly, under normal circumstances, women did not even appear in court unless their very life was in danger. This widow symbolizes anyone who is totally & completely helpless to fend for themselves. Women in our culture have infinitely more legal & financial standing than this. To get a sense of how destitute this widow was, in our day you’d have to think in terms of a homeless, ex-con, suffering from mental illness, in a city something like Detroit. She has nowhere else to turn but to this corrupt & heartless judge. Her only means of influence is to bother him until he can’t stand it any longer. Then, possibly, he may grant her request. So, she: “…kept coming to him & saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” The meaning or purpose of this parable has nothing to do with much of the preaching you may have heard on Luke 18. Often it’s used to teach people they should pray with persistence. They merely need to insist that God answer their prayer & they’ll get whatever they ask for. If you pray hard enough, long enough & in just the right way, you’ll get everything. Yes, our sinful nature thinks it would be nice if God had given us some magic formula to prayer that gains for us our every heartfelt desire. However, if you read & study this parable in its context, this is what Jesus was teaching. He’s giving us a comparison between the wicked judge & our righteous, heavenly Father. Given the unjust, corrupt & wicked judge, if he will meet the woman’s needs after her petition, how much more will the needs be met of those who pray to a loving heavenly Father? When grief or fear or despair grips your heart & soul, Jesus encourages us to pray continually even in the face of all discouragements: “…we ought always to pray & not lose heart.” We can have full confidence that God will act in our best interests, not because of how we pray, but because of Whom we pray to. Which then leads to the question that Jesus asks at the end of this reading: “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” The widow was a brilliant example of such faith because she knew where her only source of help was & did not allow discouragement to turn her away. We should be like that woman in knowing that our heavenly Father is our only source of help & we should not allow discouragement to turn our heart & soul away from our Lord & Savior. Psalm 68 tells us this: “Sing to God, sing praises to His name; lift up a song to Him who rides through the deserts; His name is the LORD; exult before Him! A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy dwelling.” The OT reading today is from Genesis & it’s the well-known story of Jacob as he wrestled with God. Prayer is the gracious opportunity that our Father in heaven gives us to wrestle with Him for all our needs & in all our struggles. Whatever our need, whatever our trial, whatever our grief, whatever our pain, our Lord bids us to pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” As the Introit, or the responsive reading, stated: Remember your congregation, which you have purchased of old, which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage! Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs, and a foolish people reviles your name. Do not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild beasts; do not forget the life of your poor forever. Let not the downtrodden turn back in shame; let the poor and needy praise your name. Have regard for the covenant, Arise, O God, defend your cause. There’s a movie out right now titled Gravity. Dr. Ryan Stone is a brilliant engineer on her 1st shuttle mission with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski. On a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone & Kowalski completely alone – tethered to nothing but each other & spiraling out into the blackness of space. The deafening silence tells them they have lost any link to Earth & any chance for rescue. As fear turns to panic, every gulp of air eats away at what little oxygen is left. The only way home may be to go further out into the terrifying expanse of space. At one point, the main character Ryan Stone has reached her last hope to survive & we hear her say: “I never learned to pray.” I wonder this morning how many us, & those whose paths we cross, would say they the same? However fictional the story, it ties in perfectly the question Jesus asks at the end of today’s Gospel reading, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” In Holy Baptism, God’s Holy Spirit created faith in you. Through the power of His Holy Scripture, He also creates & sustains faith in us. Through the precious Body & Blood of our dear Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit also sustains our faith in Jesus as our Savior from all sin. No matter what the struggle, prayer is the antidote to all of our anxieties. What caused the widow to persist in coming to the judge? It was her conviction that justice was on her side. What causes a Christian to endure to the end? The conviction that God is for us in Christ Jesus & this has been so from all eternity. Only the true saving faith can cause a person to cry to the Lord day & night, as did David in the many Psalms he wrote. Even when we see the vultures circling we can still pray, & our Lord is faithful to answer our prayers. Under such circumstances Christians are tempted to grow weary. Lest we grow weary, Jesus spoke this parable to encourage us. Amen.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 14:22:37 +0000
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