Jeremiah 31:27-34 | Luke 18:1-8
Jeremy Richards
Audio recording: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/10-20-19-dont-lose-heart-jeremy-richards/id1479727299?i=1000454244538
As many of you know, I was in Switzerland only a few short weeks ago with my parents. We travelled all over the country and saw a number of beautiful cities and even spent two nights in a cabin in the Alps. But the longest single trip we went on was a day trip to Zermatt in the far southern part of Switzerland, almost to Italy. Zermatt is the small town that sits at the at the base of the iconic Matterhorn mountain. When we boarded the train to Zermatt early in the morning, we were nervous because the forecast for Zermatt and the surrounding area was cloudy. Were we going to take a 4 hour train ride, one way, and never get to see the Matterhorn?
When we got there, the weather was overcast and cold. We looked up and the Matterhorn was nowhere to be seen. In fact, we couldn’t see any mountains. The town was socked in. But we didn’t despair. We had most of the day, and the weather in the Alps can change at the drop of a hat. So we were hopeful that the clouds would break, the Sun would burst forth, and we would witness the Matterhorn in all its glory.
We grabbed some coffee and breakfast, then went to the visitor center and found out about a hike called the 5 Lakes Hike across the valley from the Matterhorn. If the weather did clear, we would get a stunning view of the Matterhorn from there. We took a rail car then a gondola up the mountain opposite the Matterhorn. When we go the starting point of the hike, we looked across the valley and we could just see the massive base of the Matterhorn, but the majority of the mountain was still covered in clouds.
As we continued our hike, traveling from one lake to the next, which took a few hours, the weather continued to improve. Slowly more and more of the mountain became visible, though clouds would occasionally blow in and obscure it again. At the end of the hike, almost all of the mountain was visible, except the very top, which is, of course, the most iconic part – a dramatic, pyramid-like peak of sheer rock.
Still, just seeing most of the mountain was impressive. My phone is still full of pictures, almost all of them identical, of most of the mountain, just not the top. I kept saying, “I don’t think we’re ever going to see all of it, we should just be happy with what we can see” and my mom kept telling me to stop being such a pessimist, she was sure it would come out. I used the classic “I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist” line.
When we got back down to Zermatt, all of one side of the top was visible, though the other side was still covered in clouds. It looked like a chimney with clouds billowing off to one side like smoke. Finally, just before it was time to leave, the clouds dissipated, and we did, indeed, see the Matterhorn in all its glory, towering above us in the sunlight.
In our readings this morning, God’s justice, God’s deliverance, perhaps God’s very Self is, like the Matterhorn when we arrived in Zermatt: totally covered in clouds, invisible, it’s very existence suspect. The exiled Jews and the mistreated widow may have heard that God’s presence, God’s justice, God’s redemption existed, but they couldn’t see it for themselves. They didn’t even know what direction to look in. All they could see were dark clouds.
The Jews, as we talked about last Sunday, were exiled in Babylon. Their exile made them question if God would ever forgive them. Or maybe God was too weak to save them. Perhaps the gods of the Babylonians were stronger. Or even worse, maybe the God of Israel didn’t really exist. Maybe all those years they had just been petitioning an empty sky. Maybe there was no mountain behind the thick clouds. Maybe the clouds were, in truth, the only reality.
The widow in Jesus’ parable is the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. No one cares about her, especially this cruel judge, who doesn’t care about God and doesn’t care about other people. He repeatedly denies the widow her plea for justice. But she keeps coming back, again and again and again. Finally, out of utter annoyance, the judge grants the widow’s request.
I don’t think of myself as a cynic. In fact I have no patience for cynics…most of the time. But as I read this parable from Jesus I must admit that I found myself very much playing the role of cynic. I read these words from Jesus: “And will not God grant justice to God’s chosen ones who cry to God day and night? Will God delay long in helping them? I tell you, God will quickly grant justice to them.” I couldn’t resist the cynicism that welled up within me when I read these words. Yeah right.
I thought of Botham Jean eating ice cream and watching TV in his living room when Amber Guyger walked in, mistaking his apartment for his own, and shot him thinking he was an intruder. It doesn’t matter if Guyger got 10 years or a lifetime in prison, Botham isn’t coming back. Where is the justice for Botham?
I thought of Atatiana Jefferson shot by a police officer while playing video games with her nephew in her home. Where is the justice for Atatiana?
I thought of the immigrant stories we’ve been reading in our book study – biblical immigrants and modern day immigrants – and I wonder with everyone else in the group, where is the justice?
This is where my mind went, when I read these words of Jesus’. Maybe your mind goes somewhere else, to other injustices you see that seem to go unchecked, to issues that are close to your heart, issues that break your heart, and yet are repeated again and again.
In times like these, it seems that there is no mighty mountain behind the clouds. There are only empty skies.
But as I prayed over this passage over the course of this last week, I realized that to read this passage and think only of the injustices I see “out there” is to be, in the words of James, like someone who looks in a mirror then walks away and instantly forgets what they look like. It’s to ignore the blatant examples of God’s justice and God’s deliverance that I have witnessed not just over the course of my life, but even in the last couple of weeks.
And so, after reflecting on this passage, and reflecting on this church, I am here to tell you that there is a mountain looming behind the clouds, larger than we can comprehend, more majestic than we can imagine, and as real as the Matterhorn. I have seen it – not all of it, but glimpses. Let me tell you where I’ve seen these glimpses, where the justice and deliverance of God has broken forth.
Last week, I shared with all of you that a family came to me looking for help. There were four of them, the father was still working but his hours had been cut back and cut back. They had an autistic son on 5 medications. And they had nowhere to go. I got them a hotel room for two nights and put gas in their car, but I felt like that was only a band aid, what’s two nights in a hotel? Their position seemed hopeless to me, unjust. And yet we prayed for them on Sunday.
In response to this story, Randy shared that we had received an unexpected donation from Lee Owen Stone – itself an unexpected gift from God – and that we should donate that money to our benevolence fund so that we could continue to help people, and I saw heads all around the room nod in agreement. This was, it seemed, obviously the right use of that donated money.
Almost as soon as I got to the office on Monday morning, I got a call from the family I had gotten a hotel room for. The father’s boss helped them secure a trailer to live in for the time being. He said he never thought his boss would do that kind of thing. This was, in and of itself, again, an answer to prayer. He said that the two days in the hotel that we were able to give him gave him time to talk to his boss instead of spending all his time looking for a place for his family to spend the night.
But, he said, his family froze during the night and they needed propane to heat the trailer. I felt free to offer more help because of the donation from Lee Owen Stone, so I got them propane, put more gas in their car, and got them a gift card to Albertsons for some particular food that their autistic son insisted on having. Someone from church reached out to different business owners they knew who might be hiring, and sent me some leads, which I passed on to the man.
All this happened in less than 24 hours of my sharing these needs with all of you last Sunday. That’s “a God thing.”
On Tuesday, I sat with a group of you and discussed a book on immigration, because we care about the vulnerable people who are entering our country, and we want to be obedient to God’s command to care for the foreigner among us. Through that study, I caught glimpses of God’s heart for immigrants, and your heart for immigrants.
Then, on Wednesday, I went to the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon’s Collin’s Summit, and sat with people of faith dedicated to the work of justice. There were 4 breakout sessions dedicated to immigrant justice, environmental justice, justice for the houseless, and transforming institutions for justice.
After my recent experiences with people needing places to sleep, I decided to attend the breakout session on houselessness, and learned about a coalition of churches dedicated to providing affordable housing. One church in particular gave up some of its valuable property to have affordable housing built on it. I sat with a lawyer who was doing legal work to fight houselessness and a social worker who worked with Beaverton School District’s houseless youth.
On Friday I went to a workshop on racism and the effects of racism within ourselves and our churches with a handful of other American Baptist pastors in our region
Then, just yesterday, I went to the Cupcake Girls’ Bowl for Justice event. Our church alone raised almost $5,000 and the Portland group raised around $75,000 to fight sex-trafficking and provide wholistic support for those working in the sex industry. With those funds they were able to take all their clients off their waitlist!
How could I have had the week I’ve had, and seen the things I’ve seen, and by cynical?! God is working. God is delivering. It’s easy to become disenchanted, to lose heart, in Luke’s words, because we can’t see the whole mountain, there are still places where God’s justice and deliverance seems absent, where all we see are thick clouds. But WE CANNOT ignore the glimpses that appear. The clouds do break, and sometimes we see large swaths of God’s goodness. Other times it’s just a flash, but it’s there all the same.
The truth is that we’ll never see the fullness of God’s justice, of God’s deliverance, until Christ comes again. Both Jeremiah’s prophecy and Jesus’ parable from today have an eschatological bent – they look ahead to God’s future.
Jesus’ parable of the widow and the judge comes at the end of his “little apocalypse” and ends with a reference to his second coming, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
While the point of Jesus’ parable of the widow and the judge is that God is eager to provide justice, it shouldn’t escape our notice that the widow doesn’t receive justice immediately, but must persist. Luke says clearly at the very beginning of the parable that Jesus told it so that we would understand the need for prayer, and so that we would not lose heart. He wouldn’t have told the parable if justice would always come immediately, if he didn’t know there would hard times, times of struggle when we’re tempted to lose hope.
Similarly, Jeremiah looks forward to a day when no one will have to say “Know the Lord,” because everyone will know the Lord, surely that won’t happen until the redemptive, reconciling work God began in Jesus Christ is complete. He looks forward to a day that will be but is not yet here.
So we do wait for the future. I’m sure many of us are aware that some Christians put too much hope in the future, and become lax in the work God has called us to in the present, but that shouldn’t cause the pendulum to swing too far the other way, to the point that we forget our hope ultimately lies not in our ability to achieve but in God’s divine deliverance. We are not God. God is God, and God will deliver.
And yet, even though we are not God, God works through us. Even as we wait for that future, it has begun to break into our present. Only a few verses before the parable of the widow and the judge, Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is among you.” It is here now, though only, again, in flashes, in glimpses.
All these examples of hope that I shared from the last week tell us that Jeremiah’s words are already coming true, God is writing God’s law on the hearts of God’s people, on your hearts. You are acting not out of obligation, but out of love. You’re internalizing God’s law.
Our scriptures point us to a day when God will be all in all, when all will be made right, when justice and compassion and forgiveness will somehow meet in a way that only God could orchestrate, a day when every enemy of God – that is, everything contrary to Goodness, to Wholeness, to Beauty, to Life, everything unjust – will be conquered by Christ, and the last enemy will be death. On that day the clouds will break, the sun will shine, and we will see the glory of God in all its majesty.
Jesus promises us that that day will come, but he knows it’s hard to wait for. He knows that we’ll be tempted to give up. So this morning he tells us a story, a story about God’s justice. He tells us to remain faithful, to pray and pray and pray, to never lose heart, because our hearts belong to God, and even now – right now – God holds them – your heart and mine – etching the law of love on each of them, engraving the very words of life.
Amen.