Oct 20, 2019 - Struggling with your Faith

Genesis 32:22-31, Luke 18:1-8

Anybody here struggling with their faith? Or ever struggled in the past? (It’s okay, I don’t actually expect anyone to put their hands up. And good for you for putting your hands up, if you did.) It’s an unfortunate reality that we don’t talk enough in church about when we’re struggling with God. We seem to think of it as something shameful, as an indication that we’re losing our faith, or we look at it as a kind of disobedience. How dare we question what God is doing? Isn’t that impertinent, or rebellious? We hide when we’re wrestling with our faith, we worry that others will find out and judge us, or worse, that God will.

And then along come our readings for today––Jacob struggling in the middle of the night by the river in Genesis, and the widow persisting in her struggle for justice from the judge in Luke. We tend not to lift these two up as role models of our faith, since they don’t seem to trust God enough to just let things unfold as they should. Their interactions with God fly against what we’ve been taught is the proper response to God, which is reverence, humility, and acceptance. The widow, for one, doesn’t quite seem to accept her place. You’d think that one refusal from the judge would enough. The judge is, after all, educated in the law, appointed by the leaders, and the ultimate decision-maker. The widow is, well, a widow. She’s not nearly as educated as the judge, she clearly has no powerful people in her family, she’s on the bottom rung of the social ladder. The judge, who sets himself up as God, could cast her out or have her ostracized, or even sentence her to stoning for disrespecting him. She should trust and accept his judgement, but instead she returns, not once, not twice, but over and over again, to plead her case, wasting her time, and his, risking his wrath.

And then there’s Jacob. It’s pretty much a given that Jacob was not struggling with an actual “man.” It’s the middle of the night, he’s all alone, camped by a river whose very name is synonymous with the word “struggle,” and this “man” appears out of nowhere and starts wrestling with Jacob? It can only be God or God’s representative. And what does Jacob do? Does he give in and say, “okay, you win!”? Nope, he keeps wrestling. He does not demonstrate any degree of reverence, humility, or acceptance in the face of God. God could strike him dead, right there and then, and yet Jacob grabs hold of this divine being and refuses to let go!

And what is God’s response? How does God react to this persistent struggling and refusal to accept what would appear to be the will of God?

God steps forward into the struggle with Jacob, and God blesses Jacob. And in that encounter, Jacob’s life is changed. Jacob’s name is changed from one which means supplanting, as Jacob did to his brother Esau, to Israel, which actually means “struggles with God,” and was given as the name for all of the descendants of Jacob, the people of Israel. God not only lets Jacob live, God blesses Jacob and his descendants because he has struggled with God.

How weird is that? When we wrestle and struggle with our faith, when we argue with God and get mad at God and question God, far from punishing us, or calling us disobedient or rebellious or impertinent, God responds to us with a blessing. This is what Jesus says in his parable about the widow - while the unjust judge finally gives the widow what she is persistently struggling for, the supreme judge, our very just God, is so much more willing, when we persistently struggle in our relationship with the divine, to bless us.

Which means that we should not be ashamed when we struggle with our faith. We shouldn’t hide when we’re wrestling with some deep, personal, theological questions, like why does God let people die from cancer, or why does God allow suffering or abuse or violence, or why does God allow systems of injustice to carry on instead of sweeping in and getting rid of all evil? Because these are important questions, and they belong to a tradition that is thousands of years old of faithful people trying to make sense of God and the world. Instead of hiding these questions, we can engage in our struggles openly, in broad daylight, in public, trusting that at the end of our struggles, God has a blessing waiting for us.

Now, I’ll admit, this is a different way of thinking about our faith journey. But it is biblical, and it can deepen our relationship with God. For one thing, to question God, to wrestle for answers, to demand answers even, is to exhibit a tremendous amount of faith in God. After all, we’re not just shouting questions into thin air. Wrestling with God can only be done if you believe that there is someone to wrestle with, someone who is going to stick around for the struggle. Because that’s what God does. After Jacob wrestles with the “man,” and after he is blessed by God, he renames the place he is in as Penuel, or Peniel, which means face-of-God. In Jacob’s wrestling, he came face-to-face with God. Overwhelming, yes, but isn’t that why we struggle in our faith? Because we want to know the truth, because we want a meaningful encounter with God, because we want to make sense of this relationship between the divine and us? We struggle in our faith because we have faith, because we have not yet quite given up hope, and in that wrestling, God comes to us, engages with us, and shows God’s own face to us.

But we have to persist. This kind of struggling can take months, or even years. It’s not always over in one night, like it was with Jacob. It’s more like the widow, going again and again and again to the judge, striving, wrestling, struggling to have a genuine encounter. (Part of my own struggle is why that struggle has to take so long.) But when we persist, once again, we are blessed. God shows God’s self to us. We come face-to-face with the one who made us and sustains us.

We might limp afterwards, to be sure. There is no way to come face-to-face with God and be unchanged. Maybe that’s why sometimes we shy away from the struggle. When we wrestle with God, when we struggle with our faith, things get out of joint. Often it’s our preconceived ideas of who God is, or who we are. But what is a limp compared to being blessed by God?

If you have never struggled with your faith, you will one day. And if you have already experienced that struggle, you probably will again. But when you do, remember that it’s okay (and that you can talk about it). God will meet you in that struggle, not to punish you, but to bless you. The struggle will probably take longer than you want, but keep at it, like the widow. Don’t let go until you have demanded a blessing, like Jacob. Because God will hear you, God will come to be with you and struggle with you, and God will bless you. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

Oct 9, 2019 - Would the Neighbourhood Miss Your Church If It Was Gone?

There is a question making the rounds in churches these days, particularly in churches that are focusing on church growth and outreach. The question is: would the neighbourhood miss your church if it was gone? It’s a good question - a church should never exist just for its own sake. It should never engage in endless navel-gazing. Our faith calls us to serve the world, not ourselves, and so this question is meant to get us thinking about whether or not a congregation is connected to the world around it, and existing with a mission to serve. Is the church making an impact in the world?

The tricky thing about the question, though, is how do we know? What are the metrics that tell us whether or not the church is making a difference? Whether or not its people have a strong faith? Is it the number of people who come to church? Or the number of people who come to church from the surrounding neighbourhood? If the numbers are high, presumably that means that the church is doing something right. Or maybe we measure church impact by the number of outreach events, or if not by the number of events, by the numbers of people those events reach. Certainly we look at congregations that have weekly dinners for the homeless or do clothing drives or march in Pride Parades and think, wow, those congregations are really making an impact in their communities. They are living out their faith in ways we can measure - numbers of people involved, numbers of people served. We envy their reports of increasing numbers, and if they shrink, we pity them and worry about what’s going wrong. 

Or, maybe we can know if the church is having an impact by the number of children in Sunday School, or in Confirmation, or the number of youth involved in the church. Surely these things point to the impact a church is having on the community around it. And so, in an attempt to answer the question, we study the numbers, we track them, record them, put them on a graph. We try to measure the effectiveness of our collective faith.

Except, of course, that we know that faith is not about what can be measured. The spiritual well-being of a congregation is not measured by the numbers of people in the pews, or the grandeur of the outreach program, or the number of children in Sunday School. We know this because in our Gospel reading, the disciples ask Jesus for more faith. They want bigger numbers to show their impact. And Jesus responds by saying that first of all, faith isn’t measurable - they ask for more, and Jesus says faith the size of a tiny seed is enough. Faith doesn’t need to be more or bigger to be effective. In fact, the strongest faith is easily missed. And then Jesus warns them not to be live out their faith for the reward of it, for being recognized or rewarded or even thanked. He cautions them that living a life of faith is a thankless task, with no recognition, and that it’s better to simply accept that from the outset than to think that we will know our faith is good because we will be recognized for it.

Which is actually one of the pillars of Lutheran theology, of our Lutheran faith. That we do not live striving for glory, as if success and numbers and programs is proof that God is with us. Because God does not seek to be revealed in the glorious, successful things of the world. Rather, God seeks to be revealed in the humble things of the world, things that we might call failures. God reveals God’s self in babies, in the poor, in God’s own death on a cross. Paradoxically, God’s own power is revealed to the world in God’s most powerless moment. God is seen in the mustard seed, not in the mulberry bush tree uprooted and planted in the sea.

And so this is why I am troubled when I hear the question, would the neighbourhood miss the church if it was gone. Because even though the question rightly points us to consider whether we are serving ourselves or the community, it can too easily lead us to worry that the answer is no. It can lead us to become concerned with whether or not we are doing enough, to a kind of church-works righteousness. And, in our fear that the answer is no, it can too easily lead us to pursue programs and events that bring us achievement, and recognition, that show off how much faith we have, sometimes at the cost of the humbler things we are doing elsewhere. To pursue glory, and forget that God has already accomplished all on the cross.

More than that, though, it is a misleading question because it implies that the church needs to be doing big things that make it noticeable in the neighbourhood. But that is not what the church is about, or at least, it’s not the only thing a church is about. A congregation is also about empowering individuals, empowering you to go out into the world and live your faith, not in grandiose ways, but in ordinary, everyday ways. The faith, or impact, of a congregation is not, in fact, primarily seen in the programs or events or numbers of people involved. The impact of a congregation is primarily seen in the small, daily, even mundane tasks that its members carry out in the course of their regular lives. 

We’re going to get a little bit of listener participation in here now. Could you please, if you will, take a piece of paper, those scribble pads in front of you will work fine, and write down the name of an organization or group that is not this church, that you have given to in this past year? A group you’ve given money to, even if it’s just a few quarters at the cash register for Tim Horton’s camps or a poppy in November, or that you’ve given your time to through volunteering, or that you’ve given food or second-hand clothes or old furniture to. As many as you can think of, and then any time you’ve helped an individual, write that down, too. If you gave a neighbour a ride somewhere, or shovelled their sidewalk, or called up a friend to check in on them. If you’ve given to someone who’s homeless, or given blood, make a note of that. I’ll give you a minute. And then if you can hand that piece of paper towards the centre aisle, and ushers if you can collect them and bring them forward, please.

So here’s some of what we have. [Some selections include: the Diabetes Association, the Mustard Seed, the Red Cross, Goodwill, PFLAG, the Conservative Party, the Green Party, Canadian Wildlife Society, MS Society, Girl Guides, the Humane Society, Heart and Stroke, the Food Bank, helping shovel snow for neighbours, phoning a widow, visiting families and friends, volunteering at the Hospice, baking for friends, visiting residents at seniors’ homes, donating things for refugees, Meals on Wheels, Boy Scouts, Veterans Food Bank, helping family with financial support, praying for people.] This is the impact of the faith of Advent on the world. Every time you give to an group or a person outside the walls of this church, that’s outreach. That’s living your faith. These small little acts, humble in and of themselves, are how God works in the world to achieve something tremendous. But these aren’t things that a neighbourhood can really see. They can’t be measured. We will miss seeing them if we’re looking for the big stuff, but God works through them all.

Would the neighbourhood notice if this church disappeared? Perhaps the question shouldn’t trouble us, because in God’s eyes, the answer is always yes, of course! If this church disappeared, all of these organizations would notice. The people in your lives that you’ve helped, friends and strangers, the people represented by these pieces of paper, these people would notice. The church is so much more than the events it hosts, or the programs it runs, or the numbers of children or youth. The church is you, living your life from day-to-day, and all the things you do in a day that help those around you. In these small things, the greatness of your faith is lived out, and the glory of God shines into the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.