“Help on the Other Side of the Door”
A Sermon for the 21st Sunday After Pentecost
October 21, 2007
Psalm 121, 2 Timothy 3:4-14, Luke 18:1-8
Rev. Larry Lange
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Congregation
Green Bay, Wisconsin
The question Jesus leaves us with in today’s Gospel lesson is one of those questions Jesus just dumped on people and didn’t bother to answer at all. It’s a question that pushes us to ask questions about ourselves, a question that pushes us to probe the deepest, darkest secrets of our psyches and souls, a question like, “are you sure orange and purple go together?”
Now some of you have already forgotten what the last question in the Gospel lesson is. And so maybe you’ve been trying figure out a way to open your bulletin to steal a peek at the Gospel lesson so that your spouse or your children or your fellow Christians won’t discover that you really weren’t listening that closely to the Gospel lesson, because you were thinking about other questions like, “Did I remember to turn the oven on?” or “Did I turn the oven and leave the pork roast on the counter?”
Life drives our minds to generate millions of questions, some of which seem sort of silly on the surface, but then lead us to ask more disconcerting questions, questions like,“Did I turn the oven on and leave the pork roast on the counter like Pastor Larry did this past Tuesday, did I do that, because it’s a sign of early onset Alzheimers? These kinds of questions beget even more questions like, “What’s it like to have alzheimers? Or a stroke? Or to be ninety something and have lost your sight and hearing?” Just over the last few years right here in these pews your brothers and sisters in Christ have had to struggle with the answers they have been discovering to these kinds of questions.
So questions are important; questions should never be dismissed, because the questions we ask reveal a lot about ourselves. Try keeping track of all the questions you ask in a day. If you ask what time it is a lot, it may indicate that you need to buy a watch or it may indicate that you’re constantly up against the clock, because you’re a procrastinator.
Or if you ask questions like, “Why do young people wear those pants that droop so low their underwear shows?” it probably doesn’t really mean you’re interested in fashion, but it does mean your next question might be “and why isn’t there a law against it?”
That is an important question: it’s a question that people in many cities across the nation are asking these days; it’s a question that indicates many people think making more laws will solve our nation’s problems; to me it’s a question that indicates not enough people have asked themselves the question why Bernice bobbed her hair or why people rolled cigarette packs up their t-shirt sleeves or why people thought they looked good wearing plaid bell bottom pants.
Usually continuing to ask questions gets you closer to the truth than asking none at all. If you asked no questions in a day, it means you think you know all the answers or that you don’t care what anyone else thinks.
There are some questions not really worth asking. If you asked more than once in a day, “Will the Packers come back after the bye with a running game?” you need to get a life.
The question Jesus asked at the end of the Gospel lesson puts these kinds of questions in their place. At the end of the gospel lesson, Jesus asked, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Jesus just drops that baby out there without bothering to answer it at all. Jesus is hoping that this question bothers the heck out of you, because this question follows that story about the ornery old woman who Jesus says is his model of what it means to have faith on earth. Jesus wants us to be a nagging, carping, whining, irritating, annoying, persistent, obnoxious, obstinate, obdurate, obstreperous questioner of God. That’s the kind of faith he’s going to be looking for when he returns. Jesus wants you to be asking God in that way for help, for justice every day.
Faith, then, is not having all the easy answers.
Faith, instead, is asking God all our hard questions.
Again: the questions you ask reveal a lot about yourself. If you were to start modeling your life after that woman in Jesus’ story and start pestering God for help, for justice, number one, it would indicate you actually think there is a God, and number two, it would indicate that you think God, like the unjust judge, will eventually answer you, and number three, it would indicate that you think God is the best place to get answers: not your horoscope, not your favorite blogger, not Dr. Phil, not Bart Simpson, not even Sponge Bob Square Pants.
The Apostle Paul warned his young friend Timothy in the second lesson today that a time would come when people would get itchy ears and would accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, teachers who would tell them just what they want to hear, teachers with all the easy answers.
And that time is now.
Too many people either listen only to Rush Limbaugh or only watch Stephen Colbert.
I was horrified this week when a usually well balanced radio program on Wisconsin State News featured two people with exactly the same point of view. The proliferation of ideologically driven media widens the divide in our society by offering easy answers that suit our own desires rather than pushing us to question everything we hear. In times when people accumulate for themselves teachers with easy answers to suit their own desires the Apostle Paul commends the scriptures to his young friend Timothy.
Now we know even the scriptures can be twisted to suit our own desires. But this is why Martin Luther commends Jesus as the go-to guy with our questions about the scriptures. Jesus also warns us about accumulating teachers with easy answers that suit our own desires. Jesus calls us to deny ourselves and our own desires to pick up the cross and follow him and bring him our questions.
That’s a tough one.
We really don’t want to deny our selves and our desires and pick up the cross and follow Jesus. Nobody really wants to do that. That’s one of the most consistent messages throughout the whole bible: nobody really wants God. The very first story about people in the bible is not about two people who just totally love God. The very first story in the bible about people is about two people who want to be God. People don’t want to bother asking God questions about what they should be doing. People just want to go out and do whatever they want to do. It’s human nature. It’s who we are. We don’t want to be naggy old women begging God for answers and for help and for justice.
But that’s the model of faith that Jesus gives us today. It’s a model of faith that defines prayer. It’s a model of faith that will keep us from losing heart or giving up.
Last weekend the confirmation students stayed overnight in an old unheated house owned by St. Mary’s Hope Lutheran Church, our sister congregation in Chicago. There was one bathroom for the sixteen of us on the second floor of that old house, and the lock on its door was not particularly reliable. Several of us locked ourselves in the bathroom—including me. Once the door was locked, you could turn the little lock thing to the right or to the left and it didn’t seem to matter, and you could spin the door knob around and around, and that didn’t seem to help either.
Life is like that for a lot of people.
They try everything, but they can’t get out of a small locked room.
Life is like that for St. Mary’s Hope Lutheran Church. They’re surrounded by a whole neighborhood full of thousands of people, yet there was only a smattering of them of them worshiping together on Sunday morning. When the son of man comes will he find faith in that neighborhood? Their worship is led by one singer and a melody line plucked on an instrument like a guitar that was handmade by one of the members. They no longer have a pastor, but are planning with two other congregations in the neighborhood to strengthen their ministry by working together. We are one of their lifelines and their gratitude for our help was their kind hospitality and two wonderful homemade meals for us.
Now, I thought that I, with all my stunning intellectual and physical abilities, could easily figure out how to get out of a locked bathroom. I wasn’t about to go begging anyone for help. I just started whaling away on that stupid door til it opened. A bit later, another one of the confirmation students asked how to get out of the bathroom and he got a perfect and concise answer from one of the mechanical geniuses among our confirmands, and he followed those directions and was out in a second.
But me, oh no, I was above asking questions, above asking for help. And it turned out that I really didn’t need any help, or so I thought until I learned on Wednesday that the only reason I got out was that Pastor Jen was on the other side of the door pulling on the door the only way the lock was able to open.
Without that help on the other side of the door, I’d still be there in that bathroom today Probably with the door knob in my hand. If I had asked how to get out of the bathroom, I’d have been out in a jiffy. Yet even when I didn’t ask for help, God was gracious and forgiving and there was help unbeknownst to me on the other side of a locked door.
Though faith asks questions and asks God for help and guidance and justice and finds a way out, God does not abandon those who have no faith and fight their way out.
That’s the really good news.
If faith were just a matter of asking questions, faith too, would be a work anyone could easily do and earn their own salvation. No, true faith is faith in a God who helps us out of locked rooms even when we have no faith, even when we don’t ask, even when we rip the door knob off the door. For we believe in a God who “neither slumbers nor sleeps,” a God who will keep our going out and our coming in from this time on and forevermore.”
Amen.