St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost (June 22, 2008)
Liturgical Color: Green
Reverend Doctor Lyle E. McKee
Staying Focused
Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
In the Christian life, trouble comes. That statement will surprise no one, least of all the early disciples.
In this morning's gospel, Jesus speaks of many ways that this trouble comes. Maligning. Fear. The sword. Family strife. Life, secular or Christian, is not a bowl of cherries.
The gospel, as always, speaks the truth without sugar-coating. And it always yields a word of grace. "Despite all of these troubles," Jesus tells us, "do not lose heart." We need not fear those who may harm the body but cannot touch the soul. The hairs of our heads are numbered; God knows and God cares. We acknowledge and honor God; God acknowledges and honors us. We place our lives in God's hands, as did Jesus, and in that place we come to know life in all its fullness.
One might summarize today's hard word from our Lord in Matthew with a simple sentence. Stay focused. Do not get distracted from what really matters, and do not let troubles cause you to become impatient or to lose hope.
Another set of pithy summaries comes from an historic figure in the Church. First the words:
Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing make you afraid,
All things are passing,
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Nothing is lacking to the one who has God—
God alone is enough.
This is a meditation entitled "St. Teresa's Bookmark." It is a fine summary of the gospel—and, in fact, all of today's scripture readings. They all speak to us about the gift of patience and endurance. Patience is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit; but for those of us who encounter regularly the need for this gift, it often feels less like a gift and more like a burden. Whether we find that our work and ministry in daily life does not develop as quickly as we hope or people we encounter mistake kindness for weakness, patience is a gift of the spirit that we often wish upon others, nor our selves. We become frustrated and we feel like door mats. But, as is often the case, the gospel calls us to look beyond the surface. There is a deeper message that our Lord is trying to get through to us.
History is filled with examples of truly great people who have been "walked on" in this way. St. Teresa, known as Teresa of Avila, was one such person. She is, of course, the author of that meditation I read a moment ago. She was also a theologian, a reformer of the Carmelite Order, and a spiritual advisor to the great medieval Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross. But Teresa's ministry was not well received in the community that she loved.
Her sisters had grown lax in faith and practice, and Teresa called for reform. Their response was to throw her out of convents that she herself had established. On one occasion, she was turned out at night in the middle of a rainstorm. Dressed from head to toe in her coarse wool habit, she got into her donkey cart and was riding along when the wheel of the cart hit a ditch and it turned over, dumping Teresa into the mud. She sat there, in mud- and water-soaked wool, looked up to heaven, and said, "Lord, if this is the way you treat your friends, it's no wonder that you don't have many." Teresa's patience was being tried. Even so, she didn't lose her focus or her patience.
Frustrated though she was, Teresa clung to God. Her writings lead us to suspect that she got a response from God while sitting in that muddy ditch. One of her meditations on the "Disciplines of the Holy Spirit" talks about how we should not be deceived by the appearance that evil triumphs over good, for sometimes, as she wrote, "God uses the Devil as a sharpening-stone for Christians." Perhaps she had that wretched event in the rain on her mind as she wrote.
Teresa not only taught this lesson, she lived by it. She didn't give up on God, even when her sisters fought her every step of the way, going to priests and bishops to make trouble for her. She kept right on teaching what she knew to be true. And eventually, she was heard. Her desire was not to be right but to be faithful, and her efforts were productive. Today, that woman who was treated so cruelly is known as a saint and an exemplary teacher and spiritual thinker. Her Carmelite convents continue to outnumber those of the unreformed group.
Teresa understood what the prophet Jeremiah was talking about and what Jesus teaches in today's gospel. It's a lesson that can be put in very simple words. Stay focused. Don't let the passing troubles of this life take your eye off of your Lord. Persist, trust, and rest in the grasp of the God who cares enough to know and to care about the smallest detail of your life.
Teresa lived that way, and provides both model and message to help us. Let me read the "Bookmark" again.
Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing make you afraid,
All things are passing,
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Nothing is lacking to the one who has God—
God alone is enough.
Those words and Teresa's life reflect the life of Jesus. He endured persecution wordlessly and embodied the triumph of God over evil with patience, perseverance, and trust.
Note that the call here is not to sit back and do nothing. What is asked of us is not passive submission; it is active, patient trusting, grounded in ultimate faith in the righteousness of God. Neither is it surrender to the belief that nothing can be done about the wrong; it is understanding that, in the end, it is God who makes things right.
When you do everything you know to be right and then, regardless of results or circumstances, watch for signs of God's work in the world, you imitate the long-suffering God who has been there all along, watching patiently and mercifully. When you do all you can and then keep your focus on Christ, you will come to recognize that God is doing something new. If scripture teaches anything, it is that when God is at work, all sorts of new things happen.
So, yes, we need to be patient and endure when things don't go as we wish, because the God we serve is patient. The interplay of events and God's activity is a mystery. We never know how God will lead us or what the result might be. We often don't see with any clarity until long after events have passed and we begin to understand with the assistance of hind-sight.
What we can always know with assurance is that God is always there. There is no reason to become fearful or impatient or anxious. There is no reason to lose sight of or trust in our steadfast and gracious God.
Scripture is filled with stories that bring us hope and assurance that the path of God is worth following to the end:
An old, wandering nomad, through faithful response to God's call, becomes a father and a grand-father with a fertile land to enjoy.
A parade of persecuted refugees walks to safety on dry land in the middle of a sea; and though they wander for a generation, God's promises are fulfilled.
A woman in labor away from home, with no place to bear her child, is given warmth and shelter in a rocky cave; and wise men are sent to protect the child's life from a man who would kill it.
The One who is killed for speaking God's truth is raised from the dead and goes on to prepare others to witness to God's triumph.
The God of the bible is a God of the unexpected. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught that "right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant" and the whole world continues to benefit from his legacy of patient, active, focused faith.
I think of the old picture of the stork swallowing a frog. Only the feet of the frog are visible just outside the beak of the stork—and the hands just barely slip out of the sides of the open jaws. They're wrapped around the neck of the bird, choking it. "Never give up" is the caption. It's a standoff.
That's not exactly what our Lord has in mind as he cautions the disciples not to lose heart—to stay focused. But it's close. When the storms come, it is important not to let the waves sweep us away. It is essential that we remain aware of our stable moorings, of the identity of the anchor that holds us fast.
We don't strike back in the darkness of our trouble in anger and impatience and arrogance. We don't take the problem into our own hands, tempting God by second-guessing God with our contrived solutions. Instead, we turn to God with the truth in our hearts, in the spirit of the Psalmist. And God will bear us up, while dealing with the wrong in God's own way and time.
We've all seen it happen—folks banding together to run somebody out of a job end up losing their own. School children, banding together in a lie to get another child in trouble, end up suspended themselves. Folks in clubs and societies, banding together to harass and mistreat new people, end up with their own organization disbanded. Indeed, what goes around, comes around. What we sow, we reap. No matter what anyone may choose to do to us, we are all called to love justice, do mercy, and walk humbly with our God (adapted from Thea Joy Browne "Worship that Works").
As it is written, "weeping comes in the night, but joy comes in the morning." This is the good news of the gospel. This is the faith that keeps us focused and carries us through. And this is God's own response to evil and sin in this world.
So when troubles come, we are called to do what we know is right and pray for God's blessing. Then keep your focus. Watch and wait-patiently and actively-for signs of God's deliverance. Teresa's words are a message of ultimate triumph: "God alone is enough." As we come to the table of grace, may we come with spirits lifted and hearts grateful for the patience and providence of God, not losing our focus or our faith. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
