Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis   October 21, 2007

Luke 18:1-18

What do you do when you know what you want in your life, but you feel stuck behind a closed door?  Maybe you want to feel more love and trust in a relationship that’s important to you, but you just can’t seem to find the key.  Maybe your work feels stifling–it’s all stress and no satisfaction.  Maybe it’s one of the world’s big problems that the world seems stuck in–war, poverty, abused and neglected children, violence, global climate change.

If you read pop spirituality, you’ll hear two kinds of advice.  One philosophy says we should focus the awesome power of our mind on changing what we don’t want or getting what we do want.  We’re told that our thoughts and intentions have unlimited power, if we put enough energy into them.  Visualize what you want to see happen.  Write it down, look at it, hold it in your mind every day.  We have the power to create our reality.  Once we focus our mind on what we want and align our actions with it, the universe will begin to organize reality around that, if our thoughts are focused enough.

The other advice we often hear has to do with the power of acceptance.  We often hear, or say, “I guess it was just meant to happen.”  This approach might come from the belief that everything that happens is God’s will, or has a higher purpose or reason.  Or it might come from the Buddhist philosophy that says that we suffer because we resist life as it comes to us; we always want something more or better or different.  Enduring happiness doesn’t really depend on this person doing what we want, or that thing being in our life.  Struggling to change things around merely substitutes one fleeting prop for another.  We’re told that peace and happiness can be found in any situation, and in fact can only be found right here and right now.  Fantasizing about a different future merely takes you away from the gifts that are already present. 

So when we come up against closed doors, which is better–directing our energy to change the world and create a new reality, or learning to accept the world as it is and find the hidden gifts in life as it comes to us?  That’s a tough one, isn’t it?  I think Jesus helps us sort this out in this story he told about the wronged widow and the unjust judge.  

Right off the bat, we can see that this widow is not inclined to go to her room, close her eyes, and serenely savor life as it’s been handed to her.  She doesn’t assume that being victimized was “meant to happen.”  She’s not finding her life deeper and richer by simply embracing her pain of losing her husband and having no one to support her.  She’s not peacefully meditating on the sensations of her anger as it rages inside her and tingles through her limbs and creates all kinds of interesting fantasies of revenge for the person who has so cruelly wronged her in her vulnerability.  In fact, she’s not even content to accept her station in life–a poor woman who has no legal status or right to question the authority of a judge.  She not only questions this authority, she keeps going and banging on his door and relentlessly pestering him.

 If she lived in today’s world, we might imagine her organizing WAJE–Widows Allied for Justice and Equality–collecting petitions, calling Channel 13 and having a rally on the judge’s front lawn while the “Wajing Grannies” sing satirical songs, like,

Jesus doesn’t seem to encourage us to take life’s injustices sitting down, assuming that they’re meant to be, and simply looking for their hidden gifts.  But there are two more things we notice about this story.  The first is that this story isn’t really about widows and judges; it’s about prayer.  Jesus is saying that if even an unjust judge who has “no fear of God and no respect for anyone” ends up granting the pesky widow’s petition, how much more will God give God’s own people what they need.  So, as Luke introduces it, Jesus told this story to encourage believers to “pray always”–pray persistently–and “not to lose heart.”  Be active in your prayer life, Jesus is saying.   If things aren’t right, take it to the Lord in prayer.  You don’t even have to be polite about it.  Keep knocking; keep asking. You can even make a pest of yourself.  That’s better than passive resignation to the wrongs of the world.  As William Sloane Coffin said, “Hope criticizes what is, hopelessness rationalizes it.  Hope resists, hopelessness adapts” (from his book Credo, p. 19). 

The other thing we notice about this story is that the widow is going to the judge  to right an injustice.  In other words, what she wants is aligned with what God wants.  The story wouldn’t work if the widow was going to see the judge about suing the tunic off of someone who had offended her. 

So when I come up against doors that feel stuck in my life or in the world, this story gets me looking for that place where what I want and what God wants meet.  It’s not hard to figure out what my ego wants.  But if I go banging on God’s door asking for that, what kind of results will I get?  Ivan Turgenev cynically concluded that “every prayer reduces itself to this: ‘Great God, grant that two times two not be four.’” That’s not the kind of prayer that Jesus is talking about, even if it’s prayed with great persistence and passion. 

It often takes a lot of spiritual work and that deep acceptance to align our will with God’s will.  At the Casting Your Nets retreat in Binghamton yesterday, Pastor Martha, Jo Kenyon and I heard about a woman whose adolescent son contracted leukemia.  She quickly organized a prayer team in her church.  She had friends who went to other churches, and she went to those churches and organized prayer teams for her son too–even in a church in a different community.  She wanted to get as many people banging on God’s door as possible.  But the more people she added to her team of prayer warriors, the worse her son got.  So she went directly to God to try to straighten God out.  After a lot of beseeching and a fair amount of ranting, she found herself crying out,“God, you just don’t know what it’s like being a mother who’s losing her son!”  And then she heard what she was saying.  “Oh. I guess maybe you do know what it’s like to watch your own son dying.  Oh.  Well, God, you know that I want my son to be healed more than anything in the world.  But if it’s your will that he not be healed, I can accept that too.  Your will be done.” 

And in that moment, she was healed.  She felt the peace of God’s presence filling her.  She was healed of all her pain and anguish and despair.  She knew that no matter what, God would be with her, and God would be with her son, and both of them would be okay.  It turned out that this feeling of peace was what her soul wanted, even more than her son being alive–the assurance that they both would be held by God’s eternal love.  And, as it turned out, six months later her son went into remission.  But it was so important for her that her inner peace be founded on something deeper than what happened to her son.

So in the face of life’s stuck doors, we need to begin by opening the door inside our self to God’s highest will for us.  And I have always found it to be true that God’s highest will for me is also what my soul most deeply wants and needs.  What do you suppose that might that be for you?  Could it be that inner peace that’s based on the assurance and knowledge that there is nothing in life or in death that can separate you from God’s love?  Could it be liberation from your old wounds, hangups, anxieties, and regrets, so that your light can shine forth fully and freely in the world?  Could it be the courage and wisdom to deal creatively with the challenges and obstacles you face in your work or family?  Could it be a new to offer your gifts to the world? 

And what does your soul most deeply want to see in this world?  People learning how to respect, understand, and trust each other, from your own family to the human family?  Children being valued and encouraged without threat of abuse, starvation or war?  People creating a sustainable future by learning to live in harmony with creation?

Frederick Beuchner said, “Our calling is where our deep joy and the world’s deep need meet.”  That’s where we find enthusiasm for living–where our deepest will and God’s highest will and the reality of the world converge.  The word “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek roots en, or “in,” and theos, or “god.”  It means God in us.  Our power and God’s power are joined. 

But even when that happens, these things that we most deeply seek can rarely be fully realized in this world.  We may envision ourselves loving people fully and compassionately, no matter who they are.  That’s what we really want, and we know God wants that too. But then there’s our spouse.  He keeps telling the same sick jokes to people over and over again, and he always leaves his wet towel on the floor.  Or she gets so whiny and critical and annoying when she doesn’t get what she wants, but she never says clearly what it is.  If God wants me to love people fully and compassionately, why did God put such a difficult person to love right in my face all the time?  Why not give me the spouse of my dreams? 

This is where we need to learn the spirituality of deep acceptance.  The only people we’re going to be able to create love with is the people we’re with when we’re with them.  The only world we’re going to be able to create peace in is the world where wounded, limited, sometimes angry people live.  The only way we’re going to be able to effectively share our gifts with the world is by starting where we are and developing our humble talents through trial and error and learning from our mistakes.

But it’s our prayers–our persistent knocking on God’s door, our opening to what God’s highest will is, our awakening to what our soul most deeply wants, that keep us moving towards our hope, while keeping us alert and open to the doors God opens inside us and in the real world we live in. 

What Jesus points us to is faith in action; to a blending of an acceptance of the world as it is with a passion to join God in making it what it can be.  That kind of faith opens the door between us and God’s will, and it opens the door between our gifts and the real world.

It strikes me that this kind of faith in action is what our church is all about.  Our open doors invite one and all to come in, just as we are, because God loves each of us just as we are, no exceptions.  And yet we know that God has created us to stretch and grow and deepen beyond what we are, so that we reflect more and more fully Christ’s very nature and spirit, Christ’s love and light.  And so we open the door to God’s transforming Spirit when we come to worship, and when we go to spiritual growth groups and support groups and fellowship groups.  We encourage each other to develop our gifts and to share them with the church and with the world in our weekday ministries.  And we open the door between ourselves and the real world in our benevolence giving and special offerings, our CROP Walks, our hands-on mission projects like Habitat for Humanity, RHAFT, FISH, and Cameron, our use of Fair Trade coffee, our efforts to be caretakers of God’s creation--in each case taking the world as it is and using our time, talents and treasure to be instruments of God’s transforming peace, love, healing, and hope. 

That’s what I love about HUCC.  We truly are a church of open doors.  We keep these doors from closing by supporting it with our gifts to the church, yes.  But we keep these doors open to the renewing wind of God’s spirit by our persistent prayers that our wills be aligned with God’s will, and that God’s will be done, on earth, in this real world--with the needy, flawed people God puts in our lives–through us--the needy, flawed people we still are.  And somehow through that faith in action, old doors that were stuck get opened.  Flaws begin to heal.  Needs begin to be filled.  We and the world change for the better–when we gather up our hope, don’t lose heart,  and persistently knock on God’s door. 

So where does Jesus’ story find you today?  Is there a stuck door you’ve come up against in your life or in our world?  Can you open the door inside yourself to God’s highest and best will for you, and find the place where it awakens your deepest will for your life?  Can you feel some enthusiasm welling up as you envision yourself following God’s will and giving your own unique gifts with God’s power working in you?  Can you put all of this in God’s hands, and keep that door of faith open, trusting that God will show you each door that God wants you to go through when you are ready to open it and when it is ready for you?  And when those doors open, can you find the courage and the faith to go through, even though you can’t always see what’s on the other side?

Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given you.  Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you.”  The verbs in Greek all imply continued action: keep asking, keep seeking, keep knowing.”  We have to be like the widow–be bold, be persistent, keep at it.  But if an unjust judge would finally open the door to a poor widow and give her what she needs, can we not trust the God who gave us life to give us what our soul deeply wants, when it is what God most deeply wants too?