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Enduring Words
“3For
the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having
itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own
desires, 4and will turn away from listening to the truth and
wander away to myths. 5As for you,
always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your
ministry fully.”
Can we consider St. Paul’s Words to Timothy prophetic where we
are today, how we struggle? I would say
so and I would Hope with Grace-filled persistence that others feel this way as
well and are called to a greater sense of urgency and agency beyond themselves
for the sake of others, for the Will of God!
A friend of mine on a similar path began seminary about seven
years ago not only answering God’s deep call to his heart but sensing deeply
that he cannot be idol. He was a glass
and metal sculptor originally, “yes, another artist,” who found himself
struggling. This was before his official
conversion experience some twelve years ago.
What we both had in common in the sense of struggle before we even knew
Christ in our lives was being bound, spiritually straight-jacketed to the art
object. We created messages of either
glass, metal, paper and wood that did NOT speak. No one heard it except for God. Before we even knew what prayer really would
be, mean in our lives, God heard our struggling. For Marshall McCluhan in many ways was
spiritually wrong about one thing… the medium is the message but it needed the
ego to have it heard. The ego serves no
purpose but to overly inflate our own world and purposes. It is an existential hell in the making of
fantastic proportions!
My friend and I recently met for lunch this past week in our
favorite north-side café, in the city of the “Old Nature” (in many ways),
Chicago. He recently had to transfer yet
a 3rd time to another seminary due to either politics or learning
problems. We’re about the same age and
learning the Biblical languages can be a daunting task! He shared with me that he feels a lot like a
gambler. As he put it, he’s got a
fantastic seven-year-old craps game going with several chips strategically
placed on this project, that opportunity or maneuvering his way around yet
another glass ceiling! He would say: “Yes,
those glass ceilings… I think God has a great sense of humor since I was a
glass sculptor—every time I clear one another one forms! Never thought going to seminary meant I had
to become a politician AND be good at it!”
Today’s Gospel examples a little old woman who’s faithful
persistence eventually shattered that glass ceiling of injustice being done
upon her, not with her bony fists shaking in the air at the indifferent and
unjust judge but with an endurance that was living faith in action—living prayer! She kept coming to him every day probably
looked at her sundial in the back yard of her home to make sure she would be
there exactly when this man got his chalice of wine & his papyruses of court
cases ready to review for his bureaucratic functions. She was unrelenting as I’m
sure she struggled with herself walking that fine-line tightrope between hope
and despair.
She probably sounded a lot like my friend when he began to “need”
to vent some of his pain-of-the-journey with me. One school he was at was all about ugly politics… little
to do with developing the pastoral self or faith and more to do with partisan
denominational, “chaplaincy to culture” issues.
He was Orthodox like me and unbeknownst to him, had a giant bull’s eye
invisibly painted upon him taking the cold and evil arrows from a
self-absorbed, power-seeking community of “future pastoral leaders…” He finally had enough of the toxicity of the
place and moved on to try to finish his MDiv at another school. He loves the school’s pastoral theology
classes but not necessarily their “Calvinist bent” (as he puts it) or their
languages which he has not been surviving!
He thought of going back as a supplicant to the former “seminary from
hell” as he put it… but I told him: “We never get to see what happened to
Albert Brooks and his wife in ‘Lost in America’ when they return to New York
and “eat S%&*” Does their tenacity
and drive help them to restore their lives?”
We looked at one another sipping a long since chilled cup of coffee and
realized it was the drive, motivation and life of faith that keeps us
going!
My friend is currently working on gathering a “faithful” bunch
of references he can once again pester, and is applying to a school out west. He feels most likely a complete change of
venue plus perseverance will help him see finishing his MDiv before the next
presidential election at least! I could
almost hear St. Paul’s beginning dialogue to Timothy in hearing my friend share
his new “craps table move” for the journey of being an evangelist and carrying
out his ministry fully: “1You must
understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. 2For
people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant,
abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates,
brutes, haters of good, 4treacherous,
reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5holding to the outward form of godliness but
denying its power. Avoid them! 6For
among them are those who make their way into households and captivate silly people,
overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires, 7who are always being instructed and can never
arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 14But as for you, continue in what you have learned
and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the
sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in
Christ Jesus. 16All scripture is inspired by God and is
useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in
righteousness, 17so that everyone who belongs to God may be
proficient, equipped for every good work.”
Being
equipped for every good work for both my friend and I, means not spinning one’s
wheels—it is actively pursuing answering God’s call no matter what obstacles
and injustice there may be on the road to ordination! One needs to deeply join the Psalmist’s Words
of praise and prayer—lifting their eyes over the great tasks at hand, knowing
the Lord is our spiritual strength and guide. The manifestations of GRACE are
our faith in action! Living into,
breathing in God’s Enduring Words is our motivation. Our efforts are our
GRACE-filled responses to God’s GRACE and presence in our lives!
The
purposes long since entombed within my friend & I as spiritual stones
seeking to break away from the existential hell of the art object are the
sources of struggling with the world and wrestling with God. Wrestling with God, not as an ungrateful
scoundrel (like Jacob) playing a “dirty game of craps” but as children of God
seeking to fulfill a consecrated New Nature purpose poured into our hearts by
the Holy Spirit. Answering as we all
must answer as being in the world, NOT of the world! I hope to be keeping in touch with my friend
to empower and encourage one another to stand firm and keep pressing
forward.
There
are many gifts all of us have to share with the world… God never limited our potential, we limit one
another. Leonardo Da Vinci will always
be someone to look up to for encouragement for me. It wasn’t about “pampering the ego” that he
was an artist, inventor, scientist, philosopher and enlightened individual… He felt encouraged to persevere and be all
that he could be just as we can BE, USE all of what God has granted us for the
Glory of God, love of neighbor and revealing of the Kingdom of God! Luther fits
to conclude here: “I cannot choose but adhere to the Word of God, which has
possession of my conscience…! Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me
God! Amen.”
AMEN
October 20th, 2013;
Year C; Lectionary 29; Proper 24; 22nd Sunday After Pentecost; SOLA
Lectionary
Psalm 121; Genesis 32: 22-30; 2
Timothy 3:24-4:5; Luke 18:1-8 Nicole
Collins
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