Telephone

 Scripture Reading

Luke 18:1-8 

The Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge 

18 Then Jesus[a] 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 accuser.’ 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.’ ”[b] 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?” 
 

Sermon

Telephone 

 

I have a close friend who struggled with her belief in God. It was a painful time for her, and still is. She wanted so badly to feel something, and she was so envious of those who did. People who felt some kind of connection to the Holy, who felt like when they tried to talk to God, someone or something was there, and listening. She said this time in her life was like using an old school telephone, like the ye olde rotary dial thing that I put on the cover of the bulletin. Every time she picked up the receiver, she didn’t hear a voice, or even a dial tone. It felt like the darn thing wasn’t even plugged into the wall. 

That feeling is incredibly painful. And also something most believers, in any higher power, have to deal with in a life of faith. I don’t know anyone who was always certain of the voice on the other end of the line. I count myself among those who have felt like we’ve picked up the receiver, and dialed God’s number over and over, and gotten a busy signal for years. Sidebar—what is God’s phone number? I’ll bet it’s 867-5309. It would explain why we have so much trouble reaching our Creator, when all our crank calls to that number have busied up the line. Who knows, maybe God’s secret nickname really is “Jenny”.  

But all joking aside, I’ve been a baptized believer for 36 years, and I spent the last 14 of those years—or 5, 110 days for those keeping count—listening to a very specific call, one to ordination, that didn’t finally get connected to the right person on the switchboard until last Saturday (woohoo!). Nearly half my life. Now, there’s LOTS of reasons why it took that long from the moment I first heard the phone ringing to the moment the operator connected the line (or stole), and a lot of those reasons had to do with my own life choices, and some of them had to do with the institutional Church. But 14 years is more than enough time to start to wonder if anyone ever picks up that phone at all. 

It’s not just me. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, canonized by the Roman Catholic Church and renowned for her ministry to the poor and orphaned, professed in her later years that she had one brilliantly clear moment at a very young age where she was certain God was talking to her and telling her exactly what to do with her life, followed by many years of deep depression where she, no different from my friend, wondered if God even existed. 

A 16th Century Spanish friar known to history as St. John of the Cross was so intimately familiar with that disconnected phone line that he wrote an entire poem about it titled The Dark Night of the Soul. In that work he crafted his understanding of humanity’s longing for oneness with the Divine. It was birthed, of course, by his tremendous faith, as well as his deep mysticism. But much more so, St. John of the Cross composed The Dark Night of the Soul because he lived one. Seeking reform within both the Roman Catholic Church and his order, the carmelites, after the death of the Pope who protected him, John’s antagonists grew angry and powerful enough to attack. He was arrested, found guilty of disobedience by a court of friars, and spent the next eight months in a 10 by 6 foot dark cell on a diet of water and bread crusts. After he escaped and his closest friends nursed him back to health, he started writing. 

This phenomenon, of feeling like the line between you and God has been severed, is so common that Jesus felt the need to address it in the form of a parable in this morning’s Gospel passage. In these verses of Luke, Jesus makes up a story about a widow “seeking justice against an accuser” and a judge who has a reputation for being a total jerk. Some of you might hear some important words jumping right off the page at you, but in case you didn’t, Jesus didn’t decide to tell a story about a widow just because the mood struck him. A widow who also had no living sons—likely the case for this made up lady—had no one to represent her in public. She couldn’t own property or land, earn money, or even speak in court after being summoned there by this “accuser”. We have nothing but that one word about the plaintiff in this lawsuit, but given both how Jesus’ society worked, and the injustices that Jesus fought the fiercest, that background would absolutely lead you to assume the accuser was a man with connections and wealth. Whatever the accusation is, the outcome for the widow can’t be good unless the judge decides to do the just thing. Without the judge’s help, the widow has no way of defending herself in court and will lose whatever little she has.  

And here Jesus reminds us of another weak-sounding phone connection between humans and God, one that has troubled believers for all of time. If God is really there, if God knows all, is good, and loves us, then why does God allow this world of ours to rotate around the sun year after year plagued by evil? If God is also all powerful, then can’t God snap the Divine fingers and fix everything? When will the injustice end? 

I honestly don’t have a great answer for that very painful question. I don’t know that one even exists. I have my own experiences of God, the words of the psalmist who says there may be pain in the night but joy comes in the morning, and my sincere faith that at some point the sun will rise again. 

I also have Jesus’ advice in this Gospel which is simple and succinct, but also enough—keep talking to God. If you call 100 times and you think you aren’t getting through, make that 101st call. Or, maybe more fitting for what a real life of faith looks like, pray that 101st prayer. Beyond that, if you want to hear from the Holy, learn how to talk to God. A lot of us grew up learning the head-bowed-eyes-closed-hands-folded school of prayer, and there’s nothing wrong with that if it works for you. But that’s one of ten million ways to pray, and God never required us to be perfectly composed and silent in prayer. Ironically, for all this talk of calling God my favorite way to pray is by writing letters in my prayer journal. I also adore playing my guitar to reach the Sacred. 

I can’t tell you what it looks or sounds like when you do hear from God. And I know some will hear that and feel frustrated, disappointed, or even mad. Maybe faith would be easier if it were cut and dry. If the voice of God was something I could play a recording of, if the face of God was something I could draw, or if the hand of God was a feeling I could recreate. But none of those things are true. Instead all I can do is reinterpret Jesus’ parable for a modern audience, based on my own recent experience. There once was a busy mom who had to call the IRS to ask a tax question. She stayed on hold and listened to the Electric Slide for an hour and twenty minutes until a live representative finally picked up. If the most notoriously annoying organization in all of human history will respond to your question in time, then how much more will your loving Creator do for you? Keep calling. 

 

Amen.