The only way in

 John 10:1‑10

 “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

   7 So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

How do you go to a place you want to be? GPS answers that question easily for driving there. You enter your destination and Google Maps, for example, usually offers three different routes.

Have you ever wanted to go somewhere and found there was only one way to it? Or along the way there was a place that there was no choice but to pass through? When Cathy and I lived in Oklahoma, we found there are destinations in the Great American Desert for which there is one way to go and that’s it. Either follow it or don't get there.

In our passage for today, Jesus describes himself like that. He speaks of himself as a shepherd who guides and leads his sheep. In fact, Jesus taught that not only is he the Way, but he is also the gate for his flock. The actual gate.

The only legitimate way into Christ’s kingdom is through him. He is the gate. We may think there is another way, but we are only fooling ourselves to think that.

We are familiar with thinking of Jesus as a Good Shepherd whom we follow. But what about Jesus as the actual gate, or actual entrance to the kingdom?

The implications of that are very important. So let’s take a look.

I was stationed in Germany from 1983 to 1986. Cathy and I lived in a small farming village called Dorf-Guell, about 35 miles north of Frankfurt. Behind our house was a large, open field that lay fallow the three years we were there. One morning I opened the blinds in the back window and was startled to see a flock of sheep all over our backyard, some grazing right next to our house’s wall. At the edge of the field stood the shepherd, attired in German shepherd’s clothing just as if he had come straight from central casting. I called Cathy and we watched for awhile. After several minutes, the shepherd walked to the right. When he reached the side of the flock he turned and spoke to the sheep. Right away the sheep stopped grazing and walked toward him. The shepherd turned and walked on, the sheep following docilely behind him. The sheep dog brought up the rear, keeping the sheep in formation.

Jesus' hearers would have understood the images of ancient Judea shepherding, of course, in a way that tends to escape us. At night, shepherds in Judea would bring their flocks together for the night for security, but how to separate them in the morning? Each would simply call his sheep, who recognized their shepherd’s voice and ignored other voices.

William Barclay explained that in the fields shepherds would construct a simple pen for the flock at night with only one entrance, and the shepherd would sleep across the entrance. The shepherd literally was the gate for the sheep. Obviously, anyone having legitimate business would come to the shepherd. Anyone who went into the pen by going through the simple fence was up to no good.

But, as John explains in verse six, Jesus is speaking figuratively. His words must have called to mind passages of the Jewish Scriptures in which God describes himself as a shepherd and the people as his flock. Ezekiel 34, for example, portrays most kings of Israel as bad shepherds who through misrule and corrupt religion place the flock - the people of Israel - in danger both physical and spiritual. Ezekiel counters that God alone is the good shepherd who will rescue the sheep and place them in the care of “my servant, David” - meaning a monarchy restored to righteousness of King David.

But in Jesus' day the kingdom of Israel was gone forever. The Romans ruled Judea, so it is highly unlikely that Jesus was referring to any political entity as thieves and bandits. Nor would he have meant that the long line of Jewish and Hebrew prophets who came before him were the bad men because Jesus respected Moses and his successors.

Jesus' teaching, then operates on a religious level, and on at least three of them. New Testament scholars agree that Jesus was directly referring to the Pharisees as the thieves and the bandits. Some versions of the passage say so explicitly. John's Gospel is especially harsh toward them - the prior chapter relates their cold accusations of blasphemy toward a blind man Jesus has healed. They hardly have the best interests of the flock in their hearts, while Jesus, who removed the blindness, is a shepherd to tends to the sheep. So, at one level Jesus is contrasting himself with the Pharisees and the Pharisees come off poorly.

But there is more. If the only authorized access to the sheepfold is through the gate - and the gate is Jesus himself - then membership in the flock is determined solely by one’s relationship to Jesus. The only approved way into the fold is through Jesus.

We live in a tolerant age, and this is an intolerant passage, at least in part. On the one hand, there are no preconditions as to which sheep can be part of the flock. If they enter through the gate, through Christ, then they are part of the flock not because we say so but because Jesus says so. Their membership in the flock is assured. On the other hand, there is no way to be a rightful part of the flock except through Jesus; sheep who try to jump over the fence may get into the sheepfold, but they don't belong and are merely Christian imposters whom Jesus does not include in his flock.

There are staggering implications for churches here. It is easy to become a member of a congregation or denomination. But this passage constrains us from thinking that being listed on a church’s membership roll is the same thing as being part of Jesus' own flock. The act of joining a church does not guarantee salvation, for if the joining is done by jumping the fence, then it is religious pretension. The only thing that counts is one’s relationship to the shepherd: Christ alone gives entrance into the eternal Kingdom of God; no one else does, and there is no other way.

This is not a warm, fuzzy teaching. It's a smack upside the head. Whoever enters the sheepfold through Jesus is saved - but no one else can admit entrance nor is anyone who enters another way saved. By Christ and by Christ alone is our eternal place in the pasture both granted and assured.

Jesus is at one time the entryway into the eternal kingdom, and at the same time the true leader of the flock for abundant life. The church's identity can only be determined by the identity of Christ: if Christ is the one who saves and leads, we are those who are saved and are led.

We become members of Christ's flock by entering into relationship with God through Christ, in whom we receive abundant life. Most importantly, we are among those for whom Jesus was willing to die. By his death Jesus paradoxically opened the gate to life both abundantly Spirit-filled in the here and now and to eternal life in the presence of God.

So, we cannot understand ourselves as some of his sheep unless we keep foremost in mind who Jesus is as our shepherd. When we reflect on what and whom our church is supposed to be in the world, we should ask ourselves whether we are being sheepish enough to be part of Jesus' flock. What does it mean for us to live as Jesus's sheep? How do we manifest our sheepish identity in the world? How do we as Christ's flock point the way to Christ as the shepherd, and not merely the shepherd for us alone, but for the world?

Most urgently, perhaps, we need always to remind ourselves of whose voice to listen to. There are hundreds of different voices calling to us sheep and it is easy for the shepherd's voice to be lost in the cacophony. As author Robert Kohler wrote, there are different kinds of voices calling us to different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which voice is the call of God rather than the voice of self-interest, cultural values, or something else. "All we, like sheep, have gone astray," said Isaiah, we are all doing our own private thing (Is. 53:6). We are called by the thieves and bandits of politics, consumerism, selfishness, entertainment, inactivity, work work work work - the list is endless. Do we still hear the shepherd's voice?

What does the Good Shepherd call us to?

He calls us to love one another, John 13:34 ‑ "I give you a new commandment: that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.

He calls us from labor to rest (Matt. 11:28): Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

·     Calls us from death to life (1 John 3:14): We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another.

·     Calls us from bondage to liberty (Gal 5:13)

·     Calls us out of darkness into light (1 Pet. 2:9)

·     Calls us from bondage to peace (1 Cor. 7:15

·     Calls us to the fellowship of His Son (1 Cor. 1:9)

When we faithfully answer the call, here is what happens:

·     We become children of God (John 1:12)

·     We become the servants of God (Matt. 25:21)

·     We become God's witnesses (I Thess. 2:10)

·     We become workers together with God (2 Cor. 6:1)

·     We live a holy calling (2 Tim. 1:9)

These are merely some of the things that come to mind from this passage. But foremost always we have to remember:

·       the only valid way into God's kingdom is through Christ. To think we have a place apart from going through Christ is lethal self-deception.

·       only Christ is the shepherd; the sheep must heed only his call and follow where he leads.

·       that is the way to life more abundant.

Remember what Paul wrote in Galatians 5.13: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self‑indulgence, but through love become servants to one another.”

Lent and Chocolate - What's the Point?

The story is told of Sean O'Flannery, a lad who moved to Boston from Dublin. Coming home from school one day he went into an ice cream shop and told the jerk behind the counter (the soda jerk) "One scoop of yer best chocolate ice cream in four dishes!"

Soda jerks get strange requests, so he set four dishes with one scoop each in front of Sean. Sean took a spoon of one, held it before his face and loudly announced, "This is me beloved cousin eating ice cream back in the old country!" He ate the ice cream and took a spoonful from another scoop, "This is me dear friend Kelly eating ice cream back in me homeland!" The third dish he said was his favorite uncle, Finian, eating ice cream back home.

Sean raised the last scoop and said, "And this dish is for me!"

This practice went on for several months until one evening as the soda jerk was filling the four dishes Sean stopped him and said quietly, "Only three dishes today, please."

The soda jerk asked, "Did you suffer a loss and that is why you only want three scoops?"

"Heaven's no!" protested Sean O'Flannery. "It's Lent now, and I've given up ice cream!"

The word “Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word, “lencten,” meaning Spring, the season in which Easter occurs. The forty days before Easter constitute the Lenten season, but the forty-day count does not include Sundays. All Sundays celebrate the resurrection, and so are excluded from the forty days count. The forty days duration is drawn from the length of time Jesus spent in prayer and fasting in the wilderness before he set out on his three-year ministry.

Matthew 4.1-4:

1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

As originally conceived by the church long ago, the Lenten sacrifice was instituted as a “means of penitential preparation and preparation for baptism, which in the early church customarily took place on Easter Sunday.”

The tradition of fasting during Lent is an early one, originally done between Good Friday and Easter morning, the forty hours that Jesus was in the tomb. Christians would partake of no food or drink at all during that time. The fast was extended to the forty days before Easter sometime between 300 and 325, and changed so that food could be eaten only when evening had come.

The idea behind the fast was to imitate Christ. In addition to fasting, Christians would devote themselves to making prayer a faithful habit. So “prayer and fasting” have been closely linked for a long time.

And that brings me, by a rather circuitous route, to chocolate.

Chocolate is an absolutely unessential food, nutritionally speaking. We eat chocolate for no reason other than it is pleasurable. Since denial of the flesh is a prominent theme of Lent, rejection of chocolate in Lent is often offered as the Lenten sacrifice, particularly by people who wish to diet anyway.

The Lenten season is the time when we are supposed to ponder the extravagance of God’s love for us through Jesus Christ. Perhaps that fact could put a different spin on our concept of giving something up for Lent. The Lenten sacrifice is best oriented toward that which most blocks our spiritual growth. If that thing is chocolate, then it is appropriate to give up chocolate for Lent. But if something else is one’s greatest obstacle in being more Christlike, then giving up chocolate is spiritually pointless. 

The question is this: “What is the one thing that most hinders my Christian growth into the person whom God wants me to be?” The answer may not be easy, but it will always involve self-denial. We think that following Christ is hard because to obey Christ we must first disobey ourselves, and it is disobeying ourselves that makes us think following Christ is hard.

But Jesus said his yoke is easy, his burden is light. We just have to get over ourselves to do it.

As Robert Mulholland put it, “Jesus is not talking about giving up candy for Lent. He is calling for the abandonment of our entire, pervasive, deeply entrenched matrix of self-referenced being.”

If we focus on that between now and Easter Day, then we have a chance to become more mature in Christian faith and practice. It may be a habit that is out of true with Christian character that needs to be overcome for further growth. Or it may be a thing undone which must be done for deeper development to occur. The Lenten idea is for our habits to change enough in the next few weeks so that we can continue at a higher level of discipleship after Easter. The Lenten season and the Lenten sacrifice are not the points in and of themselves, the whole life of discipleship is.

Focusing on the one big thing is not the only Lenten discipline that would be helpful for spiritual development. Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, insisted that the only thing that distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian are how we use our time and money. So, for the period of Lent I would suggest focusing on those two things in addition to whatever one big spiritual obstacle you might have. Some suggestions:

• Tithe your income until Easter. 
• Devote yourself to prayer daily and attending worship every Sunday. If you are traveling, say on business or spring break, then worship wherever you are.
• Read the Bible each day. 
• Call someone you love and let them know. 
• Ask people who live alone to join you for lunch or whether you can visit them. 
• Become involved in Christian ministries.
• Re-establish or reinforce important relationships in your life.

Spiritually speaking, it is not enough to simply excise sin or personal vices from our lives. We have to replace vice with virtue. Thus, simply giving up something like chocolate for Lent is simply silly if we are only counting the days when we can start doing it again. That’s a game, not a spiritual discipline.

Lent should be a period of joyful, God-directed introspection into how we may be further united with Christ in godly love. If we make Lent into a severe, joyless, self-justifying exercise in self-denial, we have missed the point. Jesus sternly admonished teachers of the religious law and the Pharisees not to practice the letter of the law while neglecting “the more important matters of justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matt 23:23).

When a lawyer asked Jesus, “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

That is the whole point of spiritual growth and spiritual discipline, and hence the whole point of Lent: love. We are to be living ambassadors from God to one another and the world at large in Christ’s name. Christ was crucified, buried and raised from the dead for our sake and the sake of the whole world. Let us rededicate ourselves to being Christ’s ambassadors. It’s Lent, after all; it’s all about love, you see, Lent is all about love.

Life and dust and promise

Before I retired from full-time pastoral ministry, I had a particular dread every Ash Wednesday that lay people did not share. It arose from the fact that I imposed ashes upon everyone’s foreheads, but in years past I also placed ashes on the foreheads of my wife and children and said to them, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” I really would rather not have said that to my own blood.

Ash Wednesday is the one day of the Christian year that is supposed to fill us with dread. Dread that God is just, dread that God will judge, dread that we might be judged in justice rather than in love. If wearing ashes on our foreheads should do anything for us, it should confront us with the fact that for all of us, there is an end coming one day. Before the most holy God, all the things we value will be as ashes. 

The American dream is that we can have it all. Therefore, we often seem not to understand that Christian discipleship is a zero-sum game: if we are to grow in discipleship, we must shrink in something else. If we are to add holiness to our lives, we must give up ungodliness. In his book I Surrender, Patrick Morley writes that the church’s main misconception is “that we can add Christ to our lives, but not subtract sin.” We think we can change what we believe without changing what we do. We want revival without reformation, we want rebirth without repentance. 

To repent means more than to regret. Originally a nautical term, it meant to change course, to go in a new direction. Repentance means to change, to be different. That’s the real reason why people are supposed to “give up something” for Lent. How often do we give up something trivial, like desserts or going to movies? It’s no repentance to give up something that we can easily do without and then, once Lent is over, resume. It’s no repentance to pretend we are turning away from actions instead of sins. Repentance is to pull out our deepest sins by the roots, and that will hurt! 

Fasting for Lent means to repent, not merely to do without food for part or all of a day. Fasting means to be focused on repentance so intently that we give up the ungodliness that pervades our lives. It is to be a holy man or holy woman for forty days. We express that turn toward holiness by symbolically wearing ashes to signify our awareness of our mortality, and to turn to ashes the parts of our lives, the parts of our character, that separate us from fullness of grace. 

Yet there is a danger in Lent as well as opportunity. Repentance is necessary, but repentance does not save us. We are saved by what God has done in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Repentance springs from understanding that we have no hope apart from Christ. The danger in Lent is that we will emphasize repentance of our sins to the exclusion of their cure. Our works are part of our faith, but we are justified before God by our works in faith not because of what we do but because of what God has already done. From the ashes of repentance, in grace, God can build anew. 

Peter Perry, a pastor in Texas, told of the time his neighbor’s house burned to the ground. “The trees all around were scorched,” he wrote. “The grass was brown."

A few blackened timbers stood near the back of the house, and the remains of the cast iron plumbing system rose out of the ashes. The day after the fire, as I walked to school with a friend, we saw the woman who had lived there, standing in the midst of what had once been her home, weeping and wondering aloud what would become of her and her family. As she gazed at the ruins of her life, she despaired. But her husband was comforting her. “We can rebuild,” he said. And they did. One year later, a beautiful new home graced that lot. And the home they built was built around the old home’s massive, stone fireplace. But I wonder . . . Did the woman and her husband and their children sit around that fireplace on winter nights, look at the dancing flames on the logs they were burning, and remember the ashes?

We do remember the ashes of our past, do we not? Old hurts, ancient wrongs. Writer Hazel Farris told of her childhood’s fiery temper. 

One day, after an argument had sent one of my playmates home in tears, my father told me that for each thoughtless, mean thing I did he would drive a nail into our gatepost. Each time I did a kindness or a good deed, one nail would be withdrawn. Months passed. Each time I entered our gate, I was reminded of the reasons for those ever‑increasing nails, until finally, getting them out became a challenge. At last the long‑awaited day arrived – only one more nail! As my father withdrew it I danced around proudly exclaiming, ‘See, Daddy, the nails are all gone.’ Father gazed intently at the post as he thoughtfully replied, ‘Yes, the nails are gone—but the scars remain.’

Scars do remain, and we wear them. We’ve made them, too. Sometimes we count our scars and relive the hurt and anger and pain of each one. Sometimes we love to inflame the passions of righteous indignation. But God does not do that. God forgives our sins and God forgets those sins. God does not carry grudges. In our repentance and humility before God, we can see that God’s ways are not our ways. God forgives, God forgets. Our sins were nailed to a cross on Calvary. In Christ’s triumph over the powers of sin and death, our sins have become like ashes, blown away in the wind. 

So, the call to repent must not be ignored. We must respond to God’s initiative. “If there are a thousand steps between us and God,” said Max Lucado, “God will take all but one. God will leave the final one for us. The choice is ours.” 

We are dust and to dust we shall return. The urgency of Lent is that we turn to God now, for later may never come. Dr. George Sweeting told of a visit to Niagara Falls. 

It was spring, and ice was rushing down the river,” he wrote. “As I viewed the large blocks of ice flowing toward the falls, I could see dead fish embedded in the ice. Gulls by the score were riding the ice down the river, feeding on the fish. As they neared the falls, their wings would go out, and they would escape from the falls.

I watched one gull which seemed to delay and wondered when it would leave. It was engrossed in the carcass of a fish, and when it finally came to the brink of the falls, out went its powerful wings. The bird flapped and flapped and even lifted the ice out of the water, and I thought it would escape. But it had delayed too long so that its claws had frozen into the ice. The weight of the ice was too great, and the gull plunged into the abyss.

The moment to turn back to God is this moment.

When we receive the ashes on our foreheads, there first stroke usually is a vertical one with the ashes on our forehead. Think of it as an “I.” The “I” is the egoistic part of each one of us that is the sinful self, the rebellious self, the self that wants to walk alone instead of with God. But right after the “I” we receive a horizontal line, and the “I” will be crossed out. Crossed out. As Bass Mitchell explained,  “The ashes made in the form of a cross remind us of the cross of Christ by which our sins and the sins of the whole world are canceled out!” 

Ash Wednesday reminds us that we come from a world of death and sin, but that we do not have to stay there. “We are dust, and to dust we shall return. Let us repent and believe in the Gospel!”

Nag, nag, nag!

Luke 18.1-8

1 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4 For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ”

6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Now think of this situation. A powerful magistrate, insensitive to public opinion polls or the will of God, is pestered day and night by a widow who is evidently so poor she cannot hire an attorney even to get her case listed on the docket. She nags the judge day and night. He eats dinner, the phone rings, it’s her, nagging for justice. When he pulls up at a traffic light, she pulls up beside him, rolls down her window and yells for justice. When he goes to his kids’ soccer games and cheers for the team, she is there screaming for justice. He can’t sleep and gets the shakes. His hair is turning gray. Finally he grants her petition just to be rid of her.

Obviously, Jesus is not making a positive comparison between this judge and God. In the end, the judge is not redeemed. He grants her request purely from pragmatism, just to shut her up. That’s not justice. He never actually hears her case, apparently. He just goes in one morning and has the clerk of court draw up the paperwork finding in her favor. Note that the unnamed other party of the case never gets a voice.

And Jesus explains that if even a crummy judge finally grants petitions, then how much quicker will a wholly just God answer those who cry out to him? But when the Lord returns, will he find people of persistent faith?

There are some real difficulties in just accepting this parable at face value. Probably almost everyone here has prayed in earnest for something that God did not grant. We pray for sick people to become healed, but they aren’t, not always. We pray for marriages to be saved but some fail anyway. Cathy and I knew a couple in our church in Virginia who had one child. They wanted another one or two. But the doctors had told the mother that there was some problem and that the odds of her having another baby were small to the point of vanishing. 

So they prayed and prayed and prayed and tried and tried and tried. The doctors prescribed fertility drugs to no avail. They were as persistent and faithful as the widow in the story. The doctors could give them no medical hope, so they turned to God. Nothing is impossible with God, right? And what could possibly be wrong with asking God for another child? The God of Jesus loves children, clearly. Finally, it sunk in that they were never going to be blessed by either science or religion with a second baby. And I think it killed their faith in both.

So when this passage in Luke seems to indicate that God will quickly grant our petitions, it is easy to be skeptical. People of faith know that it simply is not true that anything we ask for in Christ’s name will be granted. We know that Joan Baez's song, "Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?” misses the point; in fact, missing the point was the point of the song. God is not a cosmic vending machine for which prayers are the currency. No one of minimally mature faith really thinks that God is anxiously waiting to be our personal genie in the lamp, always prepared and able to grant us wishes. Anyway, wishes usually are trivial in nature. It's the life-shattering things that can show the fragility of faith. Over time devout Christians discover that loved ones die young despite prayers, careers are shattered, or jobs lost despite prayers, children do drugs, marriages break down, what have you, even though the most heart-wrenching prayers are offered in true faith.

I have to say I don’t have magic Methodist foo-foo dust to sprinkle on that problem. The best I can offer people wrestling with that is where I come out on it. First, as Paul wrote in Romans chapter 8, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, although the full flower of God’s love is not necessarily going to be realized by us in this here and now. As a matter of faith, I keep on trying to serve God because I believe another thing Paul wrote, that our present sufferings do not compare with the glory God has in store for us (Rom 8:18). That is the best I can do.

Jesus was no dummy. He surely knew ordinary people of genuine faith who did not have the benefit of being the son of God like he did. Those folks endured and were confounded by prayers that were apparently unanswered by a just God. So I think Jesus structured this parable pretty carefully.

Widows were specially mentioned in Jewish law. There were numerous commands in the Law of Moses to care for widows. Judges were under special admonition by religious law to be scrupulously fair, especially when dealing with matters relating to person-to-person cases. 

 Once Jesus has explained that God’s compassionate nature is the opposite of the unjust judge’s, Jesus’ plea to pray without losing lose heart takes on a different tone. The God to whom we pray is compassionate, ready to respond to the needs of the powerless and oppressed. But we should not pray selfish prayers, “concerned with petty issues, or irrelevant to God’s redemptive purposes” (NIB). We should pray first of all to be agents of God’s redemptive work in the world.

Like any parable, this one invites the hearers to find God inside the story and to place themselves inside the story somehow. The central figure is God, and the central lesson is the call for justice. But where do we find God in the parable? God can’t be found in the part of the judge; Jesus own explanation of the parable does not permit that. 

What if we consider the widow as the God figure? The prophet Micah wrote “what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). This is exactly the requirement that the widow is making of the judge – to act justly and to love mercy within the law. By doing so the judge will learn to fear God and walk humbly with him.

This reversal of roles isn’t so far-fetched. If God is willing to become one conceived as human, born in a barn, and endure the shame of dying on the cross, then I don’t think a Scriptural portrayal of God as a powerless widow is beneath the holy dignity. 

This characterization moves the focus of the story away from prayer and its potential to be answered or unanswered by God. Instead, we see the persistence of God’s demands for human beings to act justly and love mercy, and we see the human tendency to do anything but that. How long will we scoff at God and set God aside before God wears us down?

We have in so many ways “the power to relieve the distress of the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.” If we think of God as a powerless widow – one of the “least of these” whom Christ said represent his presence in history – then “the call to pray night and day is a command to let the priorities of God’s compassion reorder” the priorities of our lives (NIB).

So we are called to re-examine our faith. Faith isn’t just believing beliefs, but also doing the work of Christ in the world where and when we can. If we do not believe, in faith, that God has turned a deaf ear to us when we call, then integrity demands we not turn a deaf ear to God when he nags us to work for justice in the world. We must not be deaf to those who cry out in need to their fellow men and women.

When the Lord returns in power, will he find us faithfully acting justly and loving mercy? That is the question. The question is not, "Will I be cured?" The question is not, "Will I find a new job?" These are all important questions to be sure and more than deserving of prayer. But they are not the questions Jesus addresses in this parable. This parable is about persisting in prayerful work for justice, not in competition with an unjust Lord, but in cooperation with a just and loving God. 

So another way of looking at the parable is that of the widow was able to achieve justice by persisting against an unjust judge, then how much more quickly will our God of ultimate and perfect justice respond to our persistence in conforming to God's will? It will be difficult; we will suffer setbacks. But God will never brush us off and will always persist with us. 

How long will it take for God's justice to be established? From now to the Second Coming, according to the parable. How long should we persist in demanding justice and working for it? From now until the Second Coming, according to the parable. This time frame shows that the persistence and work called for here is not only for individuals, but for the Church in all its history. The Church itself, in its institution as well as its membership, must be persistent in discipleship and dogged in seeking justice. 

Will Willimon was serving as dean of the Duke University chapel until he was elected bishop in 2007 and assigned to the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. He once told a story about this passage that goes like this:

A person I know works for the telephone company, in the area of customer complaints. She has a tough job because she must represent the demands of the company, and at the same time, she must try to be open and caring about customers. She told me about a person who called her, complaining about some grave problem with her telephone service. My friend said, while this was a bad problem, it did not come under company guidelines. In other words, it was the customer’s problem, and not hers. 

The customer, a widow, living alone by herself on a fixed income, persisted. My friend said, “During the conversation, she at last said something that really got through to me. She said, I’ve always loved and respected the telephone company. Since I was a young child, coming home alone, my mother always told me, if you have any problem, just call the telephone operator and she will help. I trust the phone company to do what is right.”

My friend said that a light went on in her brain and she realized that this was not merely a complaint about bad service. It was a discussion about the character of the phone company. Was this a company that cared, a company that valued its long term relationship with a customer, a company that could be trusted? My friend reached out and solved the woman’s problem. 

In the same way Jesus's parable calls us to ponder what we really believe about God. Is God someone who can be trusted even when our prayers seem futile? Jesus says yes but tells the parable in a way that also calls us to examine ourselves. The discussion is about the character not only of God but of each one of us and of the Church itself. God can always be trusted. But can God trust us? That is the chief question the parable presents, and the one we must answer affirmatively. 

Why does prayer work?

1 John 5:14

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

James 5:16

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Several years ago, Christian writer Cory Copeland wrote of the death at 55 years of age of his father’s best friend, stricken by a heart attack standing on his own driveway.

   Over the next few days as the news of the event spread, I began to see Facebook posts and tweets asking for prayers of comfort and healing for the family. As a close‑knit Church often does, our congregation was rallying around this crestfallen clan and asking everyone to seek God’s love and mercy so that He might prop them up in grace throughout their difficult time. Yet, as I read the numerous statuses and 140‑character messages of caring devotion, one question began to run rampant through my still‑reeling mind: Why?

   It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the grieving family this great man had left behind. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I hurt for them and with them, and I shared in their sudden and brutal loss.

   No, I was haunted by this question because I wondered what good it might do to ask God to comfort this family. After all, He’s a benevolent God, and there was no doubt He was already surrounding these hurting people with His love and grace and mercy without my instructing or requesting Him to do so. He didn’t need me pointing Him in their direction. ... 

Prayer is a paradox. We take it for granted that God already knows the things we are praying about, and that God knows whether those things are good or bad. God’s knowledge and goodness are a given. People mostly pray to get God to do something, to get God to exercise divine power.

We do believe God has the power to intervene in human affairs. If we thought God could not act in our lives, we would not ask God to do so. But we don’t take God’s power for granted: The very fact that we ask God to act means we are uncertain he will. Prayer sometimes seems like a roll of the dice. We can find ourselves praying with no real expectation that it will accomplish anything. Yet, says James, “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

It’s baseball season. A player stands at the plate. He raises the bat. The umpire calls out, “Play ball!” The catcher signals the pitcher for a fast ball. The pitcher winds up and throws. The hitter sees the ball and predicts where it will go. He has to decide whether to swing. Just think how many happenings are all coming together into the one single moment at which the ball passes over the plate. So many happenings are related together to make that moment that we couldn’t name them all if we tried. Before the players even arrived, the grounds crew mowed the grass and raked the infield. The custodial staff cleaned the locker rooms. A bank approved a new loan to keep the stadium afloat for another year. The visiting team traveled into town. We could go on like this all the way back to Abner Doubleday, who invented baseball in the first place.

All these prior events come together in the first pitch, coming in waist high over the plate. The batter doesn’t swing. “Strike!” yells the umpire. Many things had to work to make this one moment, but the batter was free to swing or not. No swing.

In every moment there are countless prior events, some good and some bad. But in every event, no matter how enormous or small it seems to us, there is the will of God toward the good. We call it grace. The grace of God is everywhere, in all times, in all places, and in all circumstances. In the dedication of a church building, there is grace. In the birth of a child, there is grace, in the vote of the U.S. Senate there is grace. There is grace even in the veins of a heroin addict, grace all the way down to where his blood cells rub together. God’s grace is everywhere, even in the most desperate times and places, even when it is not apparent or much perceivable. God’s grace is custom-fitted for each situation, nestling within all the other events that make up every moment.

In every moment, God’s will is toward the good. Every moment is made up of many influences, and one of those influences is God’s grace pushing toward the good. But like Casey at the Bat who decided not to swing on a perfectly good pitch, God’s grace can be resisted. God’s grace is not coercive. Some level of self determination is built into creation. In human beings, we call it free will. God’s grace influences but does not crush our freedom.

Prayer is a grace multiplier and grace magnifier. Prayer is raw material for God’s grace. In prayer we connect through faith our weakness with God’s strength, and God connects our faith with the things or persons prayed for. By praying we participate in God’s work. In prayer we seek to influence events to conform to God’s good will. God receives our prayers and fits them into all the influences working within each moment.

Our prayers during worship services are mostly for medical-related reasons. I’ve heard it called it the organ recital  – Aunt Edna’s kidneys, Uncle Albert’s heart. Beginning in the 1980s, medical science began to pay attention to whether praying for the ill or injured actually does any good. Studies continue today, including by the National Institutes of Health, which beforehand refused even to publich an article that had the word “prayer” in it.

Studies at Duke, Dartmouth, and Yale universities show, for example:

• Hospitalized people who never attended church have an average stay of three times longer than people who attended regularly. 
• Heart patients were 14 times more likely to die following surgery if they did not participate in a religion.
• Elderly people who never or rarely attended church had a stroke rate double that of people who attended regularly.

A journal published by Harvard University in 1998 included this tidbit:

In a 1987 study, cardiologist Randolph Byrd at San Francisco General Hospital asked intercessory prayer groups from across the United States to pray for roughly half of the 393 individuals admitted to the coronary care unit with either heart attacks or severe chest pain. This was a scientific experiment in which none of the patients, physicians, or nurses knew which individuals were receiving prayer. Those who were prayed for showed dramatic improvement: fewer deaths, fewer complications, and fewer medical interventions.

To be fair, other studies have not shown a positive link between prayer and healing. So while the body of research is compelling, it is not necessarily convincing in a scientific sense. That’s okay. Science cannot provide every answer for every question. Persons pray from faith rather than research.

So why does prayer work? Methodist theologian Marjorie Suchocki put it this way:

Prayer changes the world. God works with what is, in order to lead the world toward what can be. To pray is to change the way the world is by adding that prayer to the reality of the world.

Prayer changes what is possible for the future. There is a future possible with prayer that is not possible without it. There are “redemptive possibilities” for the world that are not reached without prayer.

Not every prayer is useful to God. James wrote that if we pray selfishly, God does not respond (James 4:3). God’s will is only for the good. If we pray for something not good, then that prayer is useless to God for influencing events. It’s like handing a lawnmower to a brick mason. A brick mason can’t use a lawnmower to build a wall, and God does not use prayers for bad to accomplish his will for good.

Isaiah said that sin separates us from God and makes God ignore our prayers. “Your iniquities have separated you from your God,” Isaiah wrote, “your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear” (Isa 59:2). Since we all have sin in our lives, how will God hear our prayers?

Jesus said that we should try to have faith at least the size of a mustard seed. Just the tiny amount of faith that leads us to say, “Thy will be done” – and mean it – is enough to break through our sin in prayer. Faith enough to begin is faith enough for God to hear.

Prayer is intimate communication with God. As we continue to pray we open ourselves to God’s grace. We give God permission to change us in our deepest places. God leads us to renounce the reign of sin in our lives. As we grow in faith we become more godly. We gain greater understanding of God’s will. We grow in compassion for other people. As our own character becomes more like God’s, our prayers become more powerful. Righteous people pray powerful prayers.

The Apostle John tells us to be confident that God hears us when we pray according to his will. We can and should pray for specific things. After all, on the night Jesus was arrested, Jesus prayed very specifically about what he wanted. But at the end, Jesus said that what he wanted most of all was what God wanted. That’s the place to end up in our prayers: turning our own desires, as heartfelt as they may be, over to God.

The world consists of events, of things that happen and affect other things. Prayer is something that we make happen that God uses to affect other things.  We count on God to hear and respond when we pray. God counts on us to pray. Our prayers become tools in God’s hands to shape the world for the Kingdom of God. We’re all in this world together, you and I and God. God uses our prayers to work his grace fully. So prayer is not empty speech. Prayer is as fundamental to the makeup of the universe as atoms. Our prayers help God bring the full potential of grace into each moment.

John Wesley put it this way:

   God's command to "pray without ceasing" is founded on the necessity we have of his grace to preserve the life of God in the soul, which can no more subsist one moment without it, than the body can without air.

   Whether we think of, or speak to, God, whether we act or suffer for him, all is prayer, when we have no other object than his love, and the desire of pleasing him.

   All that a Christian does, even in eating and sleeping, is prayer, when it is done in simplicity, according to the order of God, without either adding to or diminishing from it by his own choice.

   Prayer continues in the desire of the heart, though the understanding be employed on outward things.

   In souls filled with love, the desire to please God is a continual prayer.

   As the furious hate which the devil bears us is termed the roaring of a lion, so our vehement love may be termed crying after God.

   God only requires of his adult children, that their hearts be truly purified, and that they offer him continually the wishes and vows that naturally spring from perfect love. For these desires, being the genuine fruits of love, are the most perfect prayers that can spring from it.

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

Mary's Perfume - A reflection for Monday of Holy Week

Prayer

Life-giving Lord, you make all things new.

You have redeemed our lives from perishing.

Make us holy today with your presence.

Implant within our hearts your living Word.

May we be fruitful in acts of love and mercy. 

Reveal to us the things that you want us to see.

Show us what it is you would have us do.

Strengthen us as we walk as pilgrims through this world. 

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

Jesus had been in Jerusalem where he had enraged a crowd by claiming that he was the giver of eternal life and then said, "The Father and I are one." The crowd picked up stones to kill him for blasphemy, but Jesus escaped and with his disciples and fled to a different jurisdiction on the other side of the Jordan river, near where he had begun his ministry by being baptized by John the Baptist.

There Jesus got word that his friend Lazarus was very ill. Jesus may have seen in Lazarus's illness an opportunity to render a teaching moment to those who had tried to kill him for claiming equality with God, so he stayed across the Jordan for two more days. Then, over the objections of his disciples, he went to Bethany.

We pick up at John 11, verse 17:

17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.

20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 

23Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 

24Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 

25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 

27She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

Now, none of Martha's words ring true. Compare how she acts toward Jesus with her sister Mary, who will approach Jesus shortly. Martha seems merely to be reciting something she's heard others say and she may even sorta, kinda believe it but it strikes me as a pro-forma confession, sort of like a churchgoer who has never actually embraced the Apostles Creed and just says on Sunday:

"IbelieveinGodtheFatherAlmightyMakerofHeavenandEarthandinJesusChristHisOnlySonOurLord..."

Then Martha went to get Mary, telling her, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”

Then Mary got up, trailed by a number of visitors, and went to Jesus, who was still standing where Martha has left him.

32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus told them to take him to Lazarus’ tomb. When they got there,

39Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41So they took away the stone.

Jesus briefly prayed and then cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

When news that Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead reached the Jewish high council, its members were aghast. Jesus was extremely popular with the people, drawing large crowds at every appearance. The council feared that Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect, or military commander, would crush the swelling Jesus movement with horrifying force. Pilate already had a well-deserved record of brutality; he had once ordered thousands of Jews killed whom he thought improperly subservient to Roman rule. (In fact, Pilate was ultimately fired and banished by the governor of Syria for being too violent, which says a lot about him.) Caiaphas, the high priest, insisted that another bloody disaster must not befall the country. He told the others that it would be better for Jesus to die than to have the whole nation destroyed. "So," says John, "from that day on they planned to put [Jesus] to death."

____________________________

Now we pick up the story at John 12, verses 1 – 8:

1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)

7 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

 By the time Jesus reached Lazarus' house, Jesus was nearing the end of his life. Whether Mary suspected this or not, Jesus did. Whatever Mary's motives in anointing Jesus with perfume, Jesus used her gesture to prepare for his coming death.

The perfume Mary used was expensive stuff. Today, the famous Chanel No. 5 sells for more than $52 per ounce. If that’s too proletariat for you, there is Clive Christian No. 1, of which a 1.7-ounce bottle sells for $750. Mary's perfume was measured by weight, not volume, but consider that the pound of perfume she used was worth three hundred denarii, about a year's wage for a typical working man in those days. Now just imagine someone dousing a house guest with well over a quart of Clive Christian No. 1.

Mary's gesture was breathtakingly extravagant. Why so much?

An ancient historian told of a day a beggar by the roadside asked for alms from Alexander the Great as he passed by. The man was poor and wretched. He had no claim upon the ruler, no right even to lift a solicitous hand. Yet the Emperor threw him a bag of gold coins. Alexander's aide was astonished at this extravagance and exclaimed, "Sir, copper coins would adequately meet a beggar's need. Why give him gold?" Alexander responded, "Copper coins would suit the beggar's need to receive, but gold coins suit Alexander's need to give."

I think that Mary's extravagance filled Jesus' need to receive an anointment less than her need to give it. Of course, she was immensely grateful to Jesus for returning her brother to life, but her giving went well beyond simply thankfulness. It could have been impelled only from love.

Mary was a single woman, but her love for Jesus wasn't the love of romantic attraction. We know about that love, and the love we have for friends and the love we have for family. The love Mary had for her Lord was like those in some ways, but don't you think there was something different about it? Her love was self-giving, in fact sacrificial, just as Jesus' love for her and you and me was supremely self-giving and sacrificial.

Writer Dave Simmons described a trip to a mall with his two children, Helen (eight years old) and Brandon, five. "As we drove up," he wrote, "we spotted a Peterbilt eighteen‑wheeler parked with a big sign on it that said, "Petting Zoo."

The kids jumped up in a rush and asked, "Daddy, Daddy. Can we go? Please. Please. Can we go?"

"Sure," I said, flipping them both a quarter before walking into Sears. They bolted away, and I felt free to take my time looking for a power saw. A few minutes later, I turned around and saw Helen walking along behind me. I was surprised to see she preferred the hardware department to the petting zoo. I bent down and asked her what was wrong.

She looked up at me said sadly, "Well, Daddy, it cost fifty cents. So I gave Brandon my quarter."

As soon as I finished my errands, I took Helen to the petting zoo, but not for the reason you might think. We stood by the fence and watched Brandon go crazy petting and feeding the animals. Helen stood with her hands and chin resting on the fence and watched her brother have the most wonderful time petting the animals. I had fifty cents burning a hole in my pocket; I never offered it to Helen, and she never asked for it. Love always pays a price. Love always costs something. Love is expensive. When you love, benefits accrue to someone else. Love is for you, not for me. Love gives; it doesn't grab.

"On the whole," said C. S. Lewis, "God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him." For it is not enough merely to love. We must love the right things, the love worthy. Yet of all the things or people we can find a reason not to love, our Lord often ranks pretty near the top.

That's what's going on with Judas in this story. He protests that Mary is using all that perfume to anoint Jesus' feet. It could have been sold and the money given to the poor. John makes sure we know of Judas' ulterior motives: he was Jesus' treasurer and had sticky fingers. But before we stick only Judas with a bad rap, consider that in Matthew's telling of this story, it was the disciples generally, not just Judas, who protested Mary's extravagance, and in Mark it was some of the other people there.

It's not that the poor don't matter. It is that Judas missed the point. Alternative uses of the perfume were not the issue. The issue was Mary's worship of and love for her Lord.

We mustn't think of our love of Christ in mercantile terms. Love doesn't work that way, although Madison Avenue wants us to think it should. Years ago, the diamond industry’s advertising used to tell us that an engagement ring should cost the man three months of his salary. Why? Because they knew men wouldn’t go into hock for six months’ or a year’s worth, that's why. They reduced one of the most special moments a couple can have to an entry on their ledger form.

Judas thought the issue was money when the issue really was Mary's love and worship of her Lord. While we recognize that Jesus' ethics – helping the poor being one example – are good and worthy, we are sustained in doing so because we love and worship Christ. Loving Christ and obeying Christ are intimately related. "Love the Lord you God with all your heart, soul and strength," Jesus said, "and love your neighbor as yourself." There are always alternative uses of our resources. Our duty is to discern the best use at the time. On that day in Mary's home, the best use of her perfume was to love her Lord.

Why did she use so much? She anointed Jesus’ feet with a pound of nard, an ointment people used back then to refresh themselves, especially in crowded conditions because it smelled so sweet, and people didn’t bathe so often. But why use a pound for one man when a little dab’ll do ya?

Here is a true story: Some years ago a man in New York City was kidnaped. His kidnappers demanded a ransom of $100,000. His wife talked them down to $30,000.

The story had a happy ending: the man returned home unharmed, the money was recovered, and the kidnappers were caught and sent to prison. But don't you wonder what happened when the man got home and found that his wife got him back for a discount? 

Reporter Calvin Trillin imagined what the negotiations must have been like: "$100,000 for that old guy? You have got to be crazy. Just look at him! ... You want $100,000 for that? ...$30,000 is my top offer." Mark Trotter concluded his rendition of the story with this thoughtful comment: "I suppose there are some here this morning who can identify with the wife in that story, but for some reason I find myself identifying with the husband. I'd like to think if I were in a similar situation, there would be people who would spare no expense to get me back. They wouldn't haggle over the price. They wouldn't say, 'Well, let me think about it.' I like to think that they would say, 'We'll do anything for you.'"

In my mind’s eye, I don’t think Mary started off intending to use the whole pound. I think that once she started, she just couldn’t stop – her love for Jesus and gratitude for his salvation just overwhelmed her and she scooped the nard out right down to the bottom. Perhaps if she had had more, she would have used it, too, for she recognized that Jesus was God’s supreme gift to humankind and he was, as events at Lazarus’ tomb had proven, the source of life itself. How can you cut short your gratitude for that? How can you bargain down your love for One who has given you everything worth having?

The book of Ecclesiastes points out that there is a right time to do everything, a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to laugh, a time to mourn. That's what Jesus is getting at in his answer to Judas's criticism: "You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me." There is a time when nothing is more urgent than worshiping the Lord and loving him, no matter what else is going on.

The book of Revelation prophesies Jesus's letters to some churches. To the church in Ephesus Jesus said, "I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance. ... I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have forgotten your first love."

The church’s first love must always be Christ. If we ever become so task-oriented or program-centered that we don't time enough to love the Lord we will be pitiful people, indeed. Because implicit in Judas' words is a dangerous compulsion to be so busy doing the Lord's work that we forget to sit at the Lord's feet and simply take some time to be with him. Task compulsiveness squeezes out love and before long only the tasks remain. But to what end?

"You do not always have me," Jesus told Mary and his disciples, but that's not really our problem today, for Christ has risen and is always here with us. Our problem is not whether we have Jesus, but whether he has us, because we twenty-first century Americans have squeezed time out like a husk in the search for efficiency and in so doing we have squeezed out time enough for love. We might do well to remember what Henry David Thoreau said, that we cannot kill time without injuring eternity. Perhaps such a thought led Martin Luther to exclaim one morning, "I have so much to do today that I cannot not spend less than three hours in prayer." Luther knew that no task list should supplant taking time to love the Lord. There must always be time enough for love.