"Losing Heart"  Luke 18:1-8

A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Oct. 17, 2004

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt, NY  13214 

Phone:  315-446-0960

                                                      phillchu@twcny.rr.com

          “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

          Apparently the church for whom Luke was writing his gospel was growing tired and weary with waiting for the promised return of the Messiah - the day of the coming of the Son of Man.  They had come to expect that it would happen within their lifetimes, that the Lord would return, that all the believers would be vindicated, that justice would be established.  But some of the earliest believers had died without seeing it, and time was moving on for the rest of them.  What was going on?  Why was their deliverance, why was justice for the people delayed? 

          And so Luke relays a parable of Jesus - and Luke alone tells it - about a poor widow who goes to a certain judge who “neither feared God nor had respect for people.”  She was seeking justice for herself.  The implication is that she had been taken advantage of, which was not an unusual thing in that time and place, widows being among most powerless of people in the society.  Judges had the responsibility of seeing that the powerless were protected, but this particular judge did not honor that responsibility, neither fearing God, whose command it was, nor regarding people who pressed their claims as much more than a nuisance.  Yet the woman would not let up.  She kept badgering him until he relented and granted her justice.

          Now if a crooked, unjust and self serving judge will relent and grant the justice that is due, how much more, Jesus continues, will a just and loving God grant justice to those “who cry to him day and night?”  He didn’t finish with that, however.  He concludes it with a question: “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

          It is not hard to see or to understand why many people lose heart.  Despite their efforts, their work, even their pleading with God, deliverance, in whatever way it is needed, doesn’t come - deliverance from illness, from difficult or oppressive situations and conditions, from perennial poverty, unemployment, from daily hunger, deliverance from war and terror.  Looking upon these things, sometimes from a distance, sometimes from close at hand, it is no wonder that people give up on hope, give in to disappointment and despair.  Not all do, of course.  Some do not actually  lose heart, but their hearts are turned and twisted toward rage and violence.  Desperate conditions sometimes give rise to desperate responses.  Is this not why we see primarily young people willing to blow themselves up in suicide bombings, along with everyone else around them?  What is this if not hopelessness turned outward, giving up on every possibility - the very opposite of persistence?

          Most of us know about losing heart in different ways than this, with different results.  The widow in the parable of Jesus was about as low as a person could get, someone already nearly invisible in society, disregarded, cast off.  Without a husband, she was at the complete mercy of others.  Some might be merciful, as their faith demanded of them.  But others would take advantage, as seemed to be the case with her.  She had little to lose in pressing her case persistently before the judge, demanding she not be ignored, returning again and again until she received the justice that was due her.

          It is different, I think, with those, like most of us, who feel that we do have something to lose, who are not in desperate straights.  “Losing heart” most often means something different for us than for those in conditions like those I’ve mentioned, certainly like those of a poor widow from the time of Jesus.  Our basic human needs are largely satisfied.  We are not, for the most part, nearly as vulnerable to being taken advantage of, though as a nation we have learned we are more vulnerable than we thought. 

          I think that for us “losing heart” is not so much finding ourselves in despair or hopelessness as it is living without expectation that things will be much different than what they are.  We often hear, and we might even hear ourselves saying, that certain conditions, certain situations will always remain the way they are, that we can’t see any way out.  Whether it be the middle east, with decades of violent stalemate between the Israelis and Palestinians, to what often seems like the permanent condition of poverty for many in our own country, to the ideological divisions in politics and religion, to the situations of our own churches, to the conditions of our own relationships - “losing heart” in these matters means to expect that things are pretty much as they will remain.  It is to live by the rather sad adage that if you don’t expect much, you won’t be disappointed.  For those who don’t have much to lose, who know about disappointment, why not expect, why not hope, why not badger the system, badger God?  If there is finally some “relenting” where there needs to be some relenting, then all the better.  If not, then it couldn’t be much worse.

          But for those who think there is more to lose, if you can live in a way that just lowers your expectations about how things can change and about what God can do, then maybe you can get by without falling into despair or even great disappointment, but it’s also to live in a way that keeps you just short of hope.

          It takes heart to live by faith.  It doesn’t start with the way things are, but with the way things ought to be.  When we lose that heart we fall into the temptation to live as though the way things are is the way they will always be.  Or we retreat from an active discipleship and remain passive, holding on to what we have, awaiting God’s intervention.  Or to lose heart can mean that we so focus on some current injustice that we despair that God will ever accomplish what God promises.

          This parable points to the powerful persistence of desire - that things need to happen.  We are not yet where we ought to be, as a culture, as a world, as a people, as a church.  And because that is so, we need to keep on making requests of God, to persist in our asking, to expect that God will do what God promises.  If we quit in this desire, if we become less than persistent and demanding in it, then we’ve been overcome by the power of apathy, which means “no passion” - no heart. 

          Do we not know that God grieves with us, that God shares our joy?  I would have no heart for faith if I thought that God was not affected by my life.  I occasionally lose heart, but I persist, because I would rather knock on a locked door until my knuckles bleed, knowing there is someone on the other side who knows my name, than I would believe in a god who was indifferent to me.  Maybe the door isn’t actually locked when we think it is.  Maybe at times we’re pushing and pushing with our prayers and we don’t realize the door opens out!  Maybe sometimes God wants to give us the ability to discern for ourselves what he is doing about our troubles and the world’s suffering, so that we might participate in his work in the world, that we might make God’s work our own.

          We have a kind of joke in our family that takes off on that rather mythical saying that is often shared with young people: “You can be anything you want to be.”  So, Dale will say to me, “So, Dad, can I be a six foot five, two hundred and sixty pound defensive end for the Minnesota Vikings?”  And I’ll say, “Sure you can, son, if you really want it and work hard enough.”  Well, being a lot closer to 5' 6" than 6'5", and a lot closer to 160 than 260, it ain’t gonna happen.  But dreams, hopes and expectations aren’t measured against others, but against ourselves. 

          There may not be much we can do to alter our bodies, with their inherent limits and potential, but our hearts are altered, shaped and formed, by the size of our hopes and expectations.  The church is shaped in the same way as the individual Christian life.  If we believe that God is affected by the way things are, it is important that we continue always to raise to God our concern for the struggles of the world, for these are God’s concerns too.  It is important as well to understand that we are agents of God’s mission and ministry in the world - instruments of God’s peace and bringers of God’s justice.  But before any of that will come, before God’s church can fully witness to the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit - we must have and share in common the expectation that something can, will and must be done about the way things are in this world.

          The church has to have high expectations, high hopes, high demands of God, yes, and of ourselves.  We may have to watch our budget, but there’s nothing that can limit our love for one another but the heart of faith.  We may be busy with work and family activities, but high expectations have a way of creating time to serve.  We may live with some disability, but hope finds a way to break through.  We may think that growth is a puzzle to be solved or some formula to be found, but loving desire for God and faithful persistence in the gospel - praying always and not losing heart - lead us to live in hopeful ways, ways that touch the hopes of others, helping them to grow in their expectations that God hears their prayers and is responsive to their needs - and that we might even be the agents of God’s mission in the world.

          Just think of it!  You can be the answer to someone’s prayer. 

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