Not to Lose Heart

Sermon for Proper 24 C RCL 10/17/2010, offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119:97-104; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8

In our Gospel reading today, the Lord tells a parable to his disciples so that they would learn to pray always and not to lose heart. There are only 3 parables on prayer in all of the gospels, and all 3 of these prayer parables are found only here in Luke. We heard the first earlier in the summer, and next Sunday we will hear the 3rd of these. But today we are given this brief little parable for our meditation. And what is more, we are even told before hand what the lesson of this parable is meant to be!

“Jesus told the disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

What does it mean to lose heart? It’s an unusual Greek word that is used here and it means something like becoming weary or tired, losing heart, beginning to despair.

What a fitting word given to us today, I believe. I know that there are many among us here who are feeling weary and tired; many who are tired of carrying such a heavy load in the church all alone.

Well, if you are in that category, then listen well to this message of hope that the Lord brings to you today. The persistent widow who finally receives justice from the wicked judge because of her patience and perseverance is a lesson for all of us who labor in the Lord’s work but see little fruit for our efforts.

I spoke with you a few weeks ago about prayer, particularly about the woman who was praying a novena to St. Joseph. And I suggested that she was misguided in her prayers because she did not, first and foremost, seek after the will of God above all things. (10/3 Sermon - Life that really is life)

But there is, of course, a place for pleading to God for those things which are on our hearts. We call that the work of petition and intercession.

Let’s take a minute to get our understanding of prayer straight before we go any further. Please turn to the Catechism in the Prayer Book on Page 856. Let us look together at how the church has defined prayer, and particularly this discipline of asking God for help and relief.

Prayer and Worship (the first question)

Q. What is prayer?
A. Prayer is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.

All that we can ever do in prayer is to respond. God always initiates; we are always in the position of reacting and responding to what God has done.

Q. What are the principle kinds of prayer? (at the bottom of the page)

A. The principle kinds of prayer are adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession, and petition.

There, at the end, are the forms of prayer that we are considering today: intercession and petition.

(on to the next page, about in the middle – the 6th question down)

Q. What are intercession and petition?
A. Intercession brings before God the needs of others; in petition, we present our own needs, that God's will may be done.

This work of prayer is nothing other than the work of love. If we love others, and if we love God, then it is natural and completely expected that we would bring to God the needs of those who love, and our own needs as well.

But this is not intended to be simply an individual effort. When we get down to it, the work of the church is prayer. Remember that the Lord’s concern when he entered the temple and overturned the tables was that the temple is to be “a house of prayer for all nations.” Our relationship with God – on an individual level – is our life of prayer. But this is true on a community level as well. Our collective connection with God begins and ends with prayer. It is our task to fulfill the vision of Jesus and to become a house of prayer for all people.


In his classic book called Prayer, Richard Foster shares the remarkable story of a prayer movement among churches in South Korea. Over the last 50 years, the church in Korea has absolutely exploded with exponential growth and, at least in terms of people who identify themselves as Christians when asked, South Korea today ranks as one of the most Christian nations on earth. One of the keys to this growth has been their commitment to prayer. Foster tells the story of Myong-Song Presbyterian Church in Seoul. Koreans are known for their early-morning prayer meetings, but this church has taken this to a new level. Back in the 1980’s, about 40 members of the church gathered together early in the morning to pray. By the mid-90’s, around 12,ooo people were coming out each morning simply to pray, and that’s all. They began at 4 AM. Once the church was completely full, they closed the doors and a large crowd waited outside until 5 AM when the doors opened and the next group was allowed inside. Another group entered at 6 AM. Even during cold winter mornings, with the temperature well below freezing, these crowds continue to gather each morning.

And why do they do this? Simply for the ability, and the privilege, to pray together.

By the way: isn’t it remarkable how quick we are to complain when things aren’t precisely as we would want them? And yet, here are thousands of Christians who are so eager to pray with their fellow believers, that they will wait up to 2 hours in the dark, in the cold, on the street, solely for the sake of that privilege of praying together?

This work of ongoing and unceasing prayer is what the church is all about. Thomas Merton wrote this about the ever-present call to prayer that we experience: “The ever-changing reality in the midst of which we live should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God.”

Because change is the one constant in our human experience, this change offers us an opportunity to bring everything we experience before God in reverence and expectation, patiently waiting for the Spirit to move.

This is something that we are not particularly good at. Patiently waiting for God. I know that I am not very good at it. I’m a fix-it kind of guy. If something is broken, then let’s get to work and fix it. That’s how I think. That’s how I operate.

But, when things are broken within ourselves, or within our church, what kind of response does God teach us to take? Stop and pray and wait.



Right now, we have challenges in our congregations that keep us from being able to effectively bear witness to the gospel in our communities. What is the answer? What is the solution to our challenges? It is prayer. I can’t explain to you why or how this works. But prayer is why we are here, and prayer is the unique offering that we give to the world around us.

Prayer is our task. Both individually and collectively, to come before the presence of the living God with trust and to present our needs with hopeful expectation. This is not the easy path to take, but it is the faithful path, the one that leads to joy and abundance in our life together in Christ. Amen.

One New Humanity

Sermon for Proper 11 B (RCL), Offered by Nathan Ferrell at HS, Bellmawr & St. Luke’s, Westville

Texts: 2 Sam 7:1-14; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

“Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the
blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into
one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us”
(Ephesians 2:14).

My friends, it has been, and always will be, our Lord’s goal to build, to create, one new humanity out of the many tribes of the earth. Within his Body, the Church, He has always brought together people from every language, race and nation to worship together and to feast at the same Table.

This does not mean that it is God’s will for us to speak all the same language, or dress in the same manner, or eat the same foods. But it is God’s will that we learn to live together in a new and different way.

In the Gospel of Mark this morning, we are given a wonderfully clear and concise image of our Lord’s characteristic response to humanity: “As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34).

When our Lord sees us flailing about in life, trying to make decisions, his compassion compels him to TEACH us. Oh, he also healed a bunch of people there in the communities around the Sea of Galilee. But it was then, and it is now, the fact of the matter that what we need most is a Teacher who will show us how to live.

And what is it that he has taught us? How is Jesus teaching us to live in this world? With humility.

And so I wish to submit today that humility is in fact the practical tool that Christ the Lord is using to build this new humanity.

St. Augustine had this to say about humility: “Should you ask me: What is the first thing in religion? I should reply: The first, second and third thing therein is humility.”

Let’s think realistically for a minute about hostility and the role of humility.

In any argument, in any disagreement, the battle lines are clearly drawn and each side stands sure of the rightness of their cause. Think about those situations where dividing walls are most commonly built: within families, at work, between groups of people.

The natural man “in the flesh” easily becomes defensive and is quick to play the victim. It is always someone else’s fault.

But the spiritual man, the wise person guided by the Holy Spirit, knows that there are 2 sides to every story, that none of us is ever blameless.

Abbot Pastor, one of the desert fathers, said that “[a person] must breathe humility and the fear of God just as ceaselessly as he inhales and exhales the air.”

Humility is a way of life. It is living with the continual awareness of our faults without being consumed by them, and without thinking of the faults of others. Someone suggested that a new version of the famous Serenity Prayer should go like this:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the PEOPLE I cannot change, the courage to
change the people I can, and the wisdom to know that the only one I can change
is me.”

We must understand humility as active strength, and not passive meekness. To be humble in Christ is not to be weak and timid. It is in fact to be brutally honest with ourselves and with others; to speak the truth in love. To be humble in Christ means that the Holy Spirit gives us the strength to take the first step in every area of conflict, even when that leaves us exposed and vulnerable.

One of the elders in the Egyptian desert was asked to describe humility and he said this: “If you forgive a brother who has injured you before he himself asks [for] pardon” (The Wisdom of the Desert, Thomas Merton, p.53.)

Remember that our Lord taught us that before we offer our gift at the altar, we must get up and go to the one estranged from us and be reconciled (Matthew 5:23). It is active humility that seeks harmony, because that can only occur if we do not go seeking to win the argument, but rather seeking to make peace.

Humility allows us to know that mixed in with every one of our good ideas is a few bad ones, and that we can never know the whole truth in any situation. Humility is our Lord’s tool for making peace and creating one new humanity.

It started of course with the division between Jews and Gentiles. That is the context for St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. But there is no reason at all to think that our Lord’s work was ended there. He is still at work today seeking to bring peace in all of the divisions that beset humankind.

The problem is that human pride is so insidious and deceptive. Even those who think that they are pursuing goodness are easily trapped by own pride. Just the other day on an estimate, a customer was telling me about their parish priest. They attend St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church in Merchantville, and their priest is attempting to bring back the Latin mass and the old Roman ways. He boldly declares to his congregation that he thinks the Second Vatican Council was a mistake and that it led the Church in the wrong direction. She confessed that she finds it a bit odd and feels that the Latin makes it impossible for her to participate.

So I asked her, Mrs. Fischer, the customer, doesn’t your priest teach the importance of obeying the voice of the Church? “Oh yes, he teaches that all the time.” But then, I suggested, isn’t his attitude precisely the very problem he is trying to correct? Did not the Church gather at the second Vatican Council and set forth certain clear guidelines? Isn’t he bound to follow these? And isn’t it the height of hubris for him to think that he knows better than Pope John XXIII and all the cardinals and bishop who gathered at the Council?

This happens all the time in our own church as well, of course. Folks will change the Prayer Book liturgies, adding little things here and there that they think were missed or left out when it was created. But, I ask, isn’t that antithetical to the very nature of the Book of Common Prayer? That is, the liturgy is not my invention, it is the careful creation of the Church gathered together in prayer and worship, and founded upon the most ancient liturgies of the few centuries of the Church. And most of all, who am I to change this, because I think my ideas are better?

This reminds me of the declaration of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indian tribe in the 1870s when his people were dealing with the new settlers from the East:

“We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God, as the
Catholics and Protestants do. We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with
men sometimes about things on this earth. But we never quarrel about God. We do
not want to learn that” (Native American Wisdom, ed. Kent Nerburn, p.42).

May God have mercy upon us for our foolishness, pride and arrogance. In his compassion, may the Lord teach us all how to live as fellow members of the household of God, standing firm upon the sure foundation of love and humility in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

The Church of the Presidents

It'amazing that our Episcopal Church, so statistically small, is so influential because of the course of history. This morning, before Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th President, he and his family joined in worship using the Book of Common Prayer, at St. John's Church in Lafayette Square. That's amazing! We have a great tradition to uphold, thanks be to God.