Never Give Up! 

Luke 18:1-8 

October 16, 2016 

Mark S. Bollwinkel

            Jesus tells the parable of the widow and the unjust judge in order to teach his disciples about prayer.

            We may not like to hear what he has to say because in many ways we have become the ones with “itching ears”.

            Remember that in Paul’s second letter to his colleague Timothy he warns the early church that a time is coming when “people with itching ears” will accumulate teachers to suit their own likings.  They will turn away from the traditions of truth.  They will wander into myth. (II Timothy 3:14-4:5). We may be in just such a time, people with itching ears.

            The experts say we are in the era of the death of denominationalism.  Mainline Protestant denominations have lost millions of members in the last 20 years.

            What is the difference anymore between Methodists and Presbyterians, Congregationalists and American Baptists?  We compete for “market share” now-a-days, not “truth”.

            Most folk don’t care much about the history and doctrines of the churches they attend.  Rather, we chose the church that is closest to our homes, the one with good parking, and the one with the best music.  Comfort and convenience are the primary factors determining our church shopping.  We seek out a preacher who will tell us what we want to hear.

            Remember the story about the agnostic who fell off a cliff?  About halfway down he caught hold of a bush sticking out.  There he was hanging, momentarily spared, but still too far from the ground to let go.  There appears to be no way out.  In desperation, for one of the first times in his life he prays out loud, “Is anybody up there?”  Again he calls out, “Is anybody up there?”  A deep and reverberating voice answers, “Yes, this is the Lord”.  The man yells frantically, “Oh, God, help me!”  There is a moment of silence.  Then the Lord answers, “Let go of the bush and I will save you.”  There is another silence as the man looks down at the ground far below.  Finally, he yells, “Is there anybody else up there?”

            What do we do today when a preacher’s politics or lifestyle offends our own bias?  We change churches.  What happens when the preacher gets a little too personal or asks for too much?  We change the channel.

            There are the occasional exceptions to the decline of the main-line Protestant churches.  In North America they are sectarian, non-denominational congregations, often based around an articulate and charismatic personality.  He…it is almost always a man…will gather a group of like minded people around him and tell them exactly what they want to hear.  Simple and strong answers for people caught up in complex and confusing times.

            United Methodist tradition is to honor one’s personal experience and sense of reason as a source of God’s revelation in the world.   That often means we offer complex and diverse answers to complex and puzzling problems.    We encourage questions and individual soul searching.  We reject rock rigid conformity.  We celebrate the diversity of ways to understand and worship the eternal God who by nature is beyond any human definition, even our own. 

United Methodists change ministers every five years or so because we believe a person joins the church not the preacher.  We know that each and every ordained United Methodist clergy offers a different set of skills and strengths that a local church needs.  So we move them around to help build up the whole.  Our itineration system is based on the belief that the clergy are to preach as God wills, not as the congregation wants.  In an age of entitlement and comfortable Christianity, no wonder we are losing members.

Let’s be honest.  We want God on our terms.  That is why Jesus’ message about prayer may be difficult for us to hear.           

The widow persists in demanding justice, even though she knows the judge cares little for anyone or for God.

She didn’t have an ounce of authority as a widow in her society.  Yet she did not accept her status quo.  With all of her might she acted to change her situation.  And ultimately she wins, merely because of her persistence.

Jesus says that is how we are to pray.

We are to pray, regardless of the odds.

During the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, our Clovis United Methodist church was hosting their annual Chicken Pie supper.  I, as their pastor. As I drove there the radio descriptions of the earthquake damage were horrible and urgent.  I wanted to do something, anything to respond.  The feeling of helplessness was overwhelming.  We were told not even to try phoning family members there because it would only make matters worse.

I rushed into the dinner and lead a prayer, such a seemingly impotent thing to do.  But only so because we do not, and cannot, fully comprehend the power of such a prayer.

Not a few of us have struggled with our faith since September 11^th 2001.   How could a just and loving God let such horror happen?  Why didn’t God answer our prayers as we watched those planes crash into the Twin Towers?

Some estimates suggest that up to 50,000 people could have been in those towers at the time of the attack.  Yet the buildings held their structure for over one hour, allowing thousands to escape, allowing hundreds of emergency personnel to get them out.  That 2,606 died is horrible beyond comprehension.   It could have been much, much worse.

That God doesn’t necessarily answer prayer on our terms doesn’t mean that our prayers are ineffective.  Prayer is relationship with a God whose reality is beyond human comprehension.

The widow didn’t stand a chance fighting a judge but that did not dissuade her.  World hunger, racial violence, global poverty may seem beyond our reach.  It may seem pointless to pray about your marriage getting back together or your kid getting off drugs but that is not to stop us.  We are to pray, regardless of the odds.

We are to pray with actions as well with words.

The widow did not accept the injustice that victimized her life.  She took on “City Hall” and won.

Prayer is not only those words formally recited in a sanctuary or those said in the silence of meditation.  Prayer is a way of living, articulating praise and thanksgiving and confession and petition by what we do!

When we bring a donation of clean socks for the men’s homeless program at First UMC Salinas or donations of non-perishable food items for the Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church down the street, as we do so it is a prayer.  It is a prayer for an unknown family to have a healthy meal.  It is a prayer that a stranger’s feet might be warm and healthy.

Our prayers for the victims of injustice or tragedy are mute if we do not act within our means to assist them.  Prayer is to propel us out into the world as well as give us a haven for a moment from it.  We are to pray with actions as wells as with words.

We are to pray, regardless of the outcome.

We have become a culture of instant gratification.  Food comes fast, cash comes automatically and pleasure is the just reward for labor, “This Bud’s for You!”’

How odd it must be for us to hear our Lord urge us to pray with no guarantees that we will get what we want.

The gospel writer Luke is writing to his church in very difficult times.  The result of their faith has brought them division in their families and persecution from their society. They remember Jesus’ promise to them that He would return during their lifetime.  Yet the waiting was hard and becoming longer.

We still wait.

Luke writes to his church, “When the Son of Man returns will he find faith on earth?”  Faith is an acceptance to let God be God.  God’s promised future will come but in God’s time, not necessarily our own.  We sophisticated, well-educated folk have an extraordinary degree of entitlement.  We expect the best for ourselves and our loved ones, and right now!  We may not want to hear Jesus teach that we are to pray regardless of the outcome.  We may not want to hear that God answers prayer, but sometimes with a “no”.

An associate of mine decided it was time to shed some excess pounds.  He took his new diet seriously, even changing his driving route to avoid his favorite bakery.  One morning, however, he arrived at a clergy meeting carrying a gigantic coffeecake.

“This is a very special coffeecake,” he said.  “I accidentally drove by the bakery this morning and there in the window were a host of goodies.  I felt this was no accident, so I prayed, ‘Lord, if you want me to have one of these delicious coffeecakes, let me have a parking place directly in front of the bakery.’  And sure enough the eighth time around the block, there it was! God answered my prayer!”

Jesus tells us to pray regardless of the odds, with actions as well as words, regardless of the outcome.

We may not like that.

Those of us Christians who are obsessed with convenience and control may resent Jesus’ call to faith.  Some people pray and are healed, while others we love fail, hurt and die regardless of how hard we pray.  Why some folks’ prayers are answered and others’ are not, we are not to know.

But we can know this.

In the face of popular and convenient religious gimmicks and myths, never give up on prayer.

As frustrating and mysterious and awkward it may seem at times, never give up on prayer.

If the unjust judge will vindicate the persistent widow, how much more will our loving God answer our prayers?

Even if you don’t feel like it, even if you doubt if any God is listening, even if your heart is broken and you can’t utter another word, never give up on prayer.

Amen.

A Low Carb Sermon

Genesis 25:29-34

October 9, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

            This is a low carb sermon.

            “Carbohydrates” are a technical name for sugars; high energy bursts of calories, often sweet in taste.    Most foods have some level of carbohydrates.  Our modern, processed foods contain extraordinary levels of highly refined carbohydrates.   They are found in white breads, pastries, soft drinks, or white flour pastas, and hidden within many of our processed comfort foods such as breakfast cereals, fruit juices or fast foods.   In refined white sugar or flour products these carbohydrates are broken down very quickly by the body elevating blood sugar levels which at first give us a sense of well-being.  Then as the blood sugar levels drop we develop a depressed craving for more.   The Atkin’s or South Beach diets have become popular explaining how these sugars are digested directly into fat storage, so that when folks abstain from foods containing white sugar or white flour carbohydrates they will lose weight. 

            “Low carb” diets, food lines and entire stores now appear everywhere!    Ignoring the role of fat and calories to weight gain, pizza parlors offer “30% reduced carb” pizzas by rolling their dough thinner.    Drive through fast food restaurants offer “low carb burgers” wrapped in lettuce instead of white bread.   Even Kentucky Fried Chicken tried to offer their products as “diet food”, “low in carbs”, until they were turned down by the Federal Trade Commission.

            Well, in a blatant attempt to cash in on this low carb craze, I am proud to assert that this is a low carb sermon; not a lot of sugar and it takes a while to digest.

            Hopefully, it will contain a healthy level of protein; grams of the muscle building element essential for growth.   When the preacher quotes a hero or shares the story of a saint or offers rich biblical insight it builds up the Body of Christ.  

            Hopefully this sermon will contain just the right level of healthy fat.   Our bodies need an appropriate level of unsaturated, non-hydrogenated fat such as olive or fish oils.  So do our spiritual ears need to hear a corny joke or two and a dash of hyperbole to get the meat of a sermon.

            And don’t forget the fiber.   Fiber is that insoluble, indigestible “stuff” found naturally in many foods.  When added to other foods, fiber aids the intestines and cleans out the colon as it passes through the body.   Hopefully the casual mention of certain professional sport activities or the warm and winsome butchering of the English language by this preacher will help flush out our spiritual digestive tract as well.

            In fact, one could correctly argue that our Biblical tradition offers a variety of examples of “low carb” nutrition.   

When Moses promises bread and meat to feed the Israelites in their desert wandering (Ex. 16:1-36, Num. 11:4-9), God sends “manna” in the morning for them to make their bread.  According to scholars this manna may have been the “honeydew secretion of two kinds of scale insects feeding on the sap of the tamarisk tree” (Bodenheimer, Harper’s Bible Dictionary, 1985) in the Sinai desert; completely organic and high in fiber.   The “meat” God sends in the evening is quail, whose wonderful flesh is low in fat and rich in protein.   

When Jesus feeds the 5,000 in the gospels with five loaves and two fish (Mt. 14:13-21, Mk. 6:32-44, Lk. 9:10-17, John 6:1-15), the bread is made from barley flour, an excellent flour very low on the glycemic index.  The fish is high in protein and healthy fats.

Dr. Jordan S. Ruben asserts in his book, The Maker’s Diet (Siloam, New Mary, FL, 2004) that a diet based on the Biblical era’s dependency on unprocessed fruits and vegetables, unrefined sugars and flours, grass fed meats and lots of exercise could save us from the dangers of our contemporary Northern American diet.  A Biblical diet could help us live longer and enjoy life more along the way.

But let’s admit that that sounds pretty silly for most of us, certainly impractical.   Who has the time to cook our meals at home anymore let alone expend the energy to plan out a healthy diet?   Many of us gulp down a coffee and bagel on the way out the door, do business over lunch, dash off to the next event and pick up something along the way.  We don’t have the time to argue with the kids about what is nutritious.  It is so much easier to just “drive thru”.   

Frazzled and harried at the end of busy days we are “starving”.  We just want somebody else to feed us for a while.  By 2012, 43.1% of American meals were purchased and eaten away from home (USDeptAg).

Doesn’t that sound just like Esau in our Old Testament lesson this morning?   After a tiring day hunting in the field he sells his birthright to his younger brother Jacob for a pot of stew.

Jacob and Esau are the twins of Isaac and Rebekah.   Their saga (Genesis 25:19-33:20) describes the primal struggle between agrarian and migratory cultures, between two nations in the ancient Near East and the struggle within families for a future.   Their story also describes the power of food.

Esau wants some of Jacob’s “red stuff”, possibly a blood soup (Von Rad) popular among hunters like Esau.   As the older brother, Esau is entitled to the larger share of Isaac’s estate upon his death, the inheritance being his right at birth (Deut. 21:15-17).   The younger brother Jacob seizes the opportunity of Esau’s hunger and careless impatience to trade not blood soup but a lentil stew and some bread for his brother’s birthright.   Esau agrees and falls for the deception.

In fact, he will do so a second time when the aged and blind Isaac asks Esau to cook a savory stew of wild game in order to receive his father’s final blessing before he dies (Genesis 27:1-f).   Rebekah hears the agreement through the tent wall and prepares a savory lamb stew for Jacob to present before Esau returns in order that the younger brother might gain Isaac’s final blessing instead.   Jacob covers himself with the skin of a hairy animal and rubs his cloths in the dirt and sage of the outdoors in order to trick his blind father’s touch and smell, along with his taste buds, and rob his brother a second time of his inheritance.

And it all begins with a pot of stew.

What are we selling our birthright for?

God’s intention by the very structure of our biological lives is that we inherit health and wholeness to the degree we are given it at birth.    Our bodies are designed to touch and smell and taste the glory of God’s creation.  Within the limitations of mortality our bodies are designed to heal themselves when given the chance.   We discard that birthright when we fill our bodies and the bodies of our families with the empty calories of “stuff” because it’s easy and cheap.    We dismiss the joy of eating when we no longer sit together at a meal, take the time to actually taste our food and share it with conversation and concern.   We diminish the sacredness of food when we don’t pause for a moment before we eat and thank God in prayer that we are a few of the privileged who have enough.

We’re still selling our birthright for food.

We do it with drugs.    Ken Caminiti played baseball for San Jose State University and was the National League MVP in 1996.   Those who played with him loved him.   He died at the age of 41 to a drug overdose in New York City.   He had struggled with drug addiction for years.  He confessed using steroids to be a professional athlete.   Any of us sell our God given right to inherit health and wholeness when we seek the answers to our problems in a needle or a pill or a glass.

We do it for money.

There were two evil brothers. They were rich, and used their money to keep their secrets from the public eye. They even attended the same church.  They looked to be perfect Christians.  Then their pastor retired, and a new one was hired. Not only could she see right through the brothers' deception, but she also spoke well and true, and the church started to swell in numbers.  A fund raising campaign was started to build a new assembly hall. All of a sudden, one of the brothers died. The remaining brother sought out the new pastor the day before the funeral and handed her a check for the amount needed to finish paying for the new building.  “I have only one condition”, he said. “At his funeral, you must say my brother was a saint.”  The pastor gave her word, and deposited the check.   The next day, at the funeral, the pastor did not hold back.  “He was an evil man,” the pastor said.  “He cheated on his wife and abused his family.”  After going on in this vein for a small time, she concluded, “but compared to his brother, he was a saint.”

            Consider the pressure we put ourselves under, the tension that shapes our most intimate relationships and the cost to our health and happiness that comes from the hold that money has on our lives.    Of course we are called to provide for our families.   But on the day we gather to mark the death of a person, at a funeral or memorial service, the inheritance that will be celebrated has little to do with their money and everything to do with the love they shared with their family and the world.  In fact, it’s the only thing we take with us into the next world.

            We sell our birthright to God’s promise of health and wholeness when money becomes the primary focus in our lives.

God intends for us to inherit nothing less than the Kingdom of God.   We are to revel in the bounty of this earth, celebrate its flavors and share those blessings in community and in service.  God is at work in our lives even in our failings, even when we don’t recognize it.  All we are asked is to be faithful.

This is the “meat” of the scripture lesson today.

Jacob’s tricks will succeed but will also result in him fleeing for his life to exile in Haran where he will spend 14 years in servitude to his uncle Laban, marry Laban’s two daughters Rachel and Leah, and return to his homeland to encounter and reconcile with Esau.   On his return he wrestles with God and is re-named “Israel” = “he who struggles with God”.   His twelve sons will become the twelve tribes of Israel.  From their decedents a nation is born that will offer the world its savior Jesus of Nazareth 1,800 years later.

What is most nourishing about a low carb sermon such as this isn’t that it will keep us from gaining weight.  We’ll buy into all sorts of fads to chase the illusion that a number on the scale will make us happy.  

What feeds us the most is hearing how God can use even childish, petty people, like Esau and Jacob…like you and me…to do great things.

Amen.

Re-kindle the Gift of God

 2 Timothy 1:3-7

October 2, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

In the New Testament letters of the early church Timothy is described as the Apostle Paul’s representative, emissary and colleague.    He travels with Paul throughout his journeys, will spend time with him in prison and when Paul can’t get away to make a meeting he sends his trusted friend Timothy whom Paul calls “my true child in the faith” (I Tim 1:2).   Paul uses this phrase because Timothy was very young.    He may also have been bashful and lacking in self-confidence.   When Paul was in Ephesus and sent Timothy to Corinth to check on the church there, the Corinthians got mad that Paul hadn’t come himself and instead sent a “young whipper-snapper”.     Paul had to remind the Corinthians not to give Timothy any reason to fear, not to “despise him and to send him back in peace” (I Cor 16:10-11).

            In our text this morning Paul opens his letter to Timothy trying to encourage his young friend’s faith and courage.   To do so he reminds him of his roots.  Specifically, Paul reminds him of the faith and courage of his grandmother Lois and mother Eunice.   These are the only two references of these women by name in the Bible. 

They were both converts to Christianity from Judaism.   Although Jewish they both had gentile names reflecting the cosmopolitan region of Galatia in which they lived.  That area was known for a diversity of people from a variety of cultures and religious backgrounds.   Since she married a gentile and did not have her son circumcised (Acts 16:1-3), both in violation of strong Jewish traditions, Eunice had to have been ambivalent about her religious heritage.

Nevertheless, something in Lois’ and Eunice’s experience of Jesus of Nazareth and conversion to his way of life so transforms their lives that a male writer in a time when women were considered second class citizens at best, mere property at worst, cites them by name as examples of courage and faith. Where their religion had once been passive and confused they acted with passion and purpose in their new faith.

To “rekindle the gift of God” within him, Paul reminds Timothy that he has been nurtured by such saints as Lois and Eunice.  Now it is up to him to live in the “spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline”.  

            The primary task of Church of the Wayfarer United Methodist church is to do everything in our power to foster personal spirituality and social responsibility; we call that mission “Reaching Up, Reaching In and Reaching Out”.    My job as a pastor is to challenge each one of us, and especially myself, to “rekindle the gift of God” within us.  To stretch our thinking, to engage our passion, to risk our comfort zones, to dare again to change and grow as individuals and as a church together.    In part that means to reach beyond the routine of our religious expectations and be open to God’s calling for our future and our world.   And then to act on it; not just pay it lip service.

            Personally that may mean an attempt to reconcile with that brother or sister you haven’t spoken to for years.   It may mean getting help for the marriage you dare not even speak about.   It may mean reconsidering that job you hate.   It may mean putting off college for a few years until you know what you want to do there besides fulfilling the pressures and expectations of your parents.  

As a church, it may mean offering worship experiences based on the needs of those who aren’t here.   It may mean moving beyond making donations to the poor and homeless on the Monterey Peninsula and asking why there are poor among us in the first place.

            Personal spirituality is an empty exercise in narcissism if there is no commitment to make it our way of living.   And social responsibility is empty self-righteousness if it does not come from the heart.   In the end true religion is not found in our dogma and ritual but in how we live.

            What actions can we take to “rekindle the gift of God” within us?    Like Timothy most of us probably aren’t even ready to answer such a question.   That is why Paul reminds him of Lois and Eunice.

What they did to gain such acclaim is left mostly to our imagination but in one little verse we may get a hint.   Lois and Eunice were the ones who taught Timothy to read the scriptures of the Old Testament which would lay the foundation for his own faith in Jesus (II Tim 3:15).    These two women were not strangers to the Bible.  They had the passion to teach others about what they found in God.

If we would like to do more than ‘go through the motions’ of religious life and tap into the “spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline” we need get to know the Bible as a spiritual resource for our lives.  We can discover that in prayer and meditations we can encounter God’s dream for our lives.  We can take some time to nurture our own dreams for our lives and this wonderful church.

            Today we join with Protestant churches around the world on World Communion Sunday.   As we do so we remember that we are part of the global Body of Christ, God’s hands and feet in the world.  We strive to live inspired by the words of St. Francis, to be a people “where there is hatred, sowing love…where there is misery, God’s pardon…where there is doubt, true faith in the One God…”    We remember his compassion for all of God’s living things, even animals and birds of the air.   As our pets so often offer us their unconditional love, Christians strive to be agents of God’s unconditional love for the world.

As we take Holy Communion this morning together, remember those who have shaped your faith.  Did you have a “Lois” or “Eunice” to show you the way?  Name in your hearts those whose courage and grace inspire you even today.     

 And pause for a moment to consider how many are counting on you and me.   Will they remember our names long after we are gone because we “Reached Up, Reached In and Reached Out”?

Amen.