Psalm 119:97-104 I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word.
Psalm 119:8 I will observe your statutes; do not utterly forsake me.
Jeremiah 31:27-34 I will watch over them…a new covenant.
Luke 18:1-8 Pray always…do not lose heart.
Introduction
Where is God? Why don’t we see God and feel God? Our intellectual God is no longer enough to see us through this life. We yearn for experience with the God of Jesus, up close and personal. Such concerns come to most of us from time to time. The annual consumer parade of the Thanksgiving-Christmas period can raise the God-questions all the more. If we can’t satisfy our soul-longings by purchasing more clothing and food and that wide-screen television, then what will satisfy our thirst for God? Can this season open a doorway though which we can actually see and experience God’s presence and love for us?
I.
A woman phoned me last week asking if there was any way our church could provide her family with a Thanksgiving turkey basket. She has no funds for fancy food, nor for anything else beyond bare necessities. She shops for her family at Goodwill and the Salvation Army. The rent is past due and the utilities may be shut off. Yet this young woman is working full time as a housekeeper in an area retirement complex. As she has called me before, I have checked with woman’s work place supervisor and other sources to learn that she is a hard working employ and honest in her statements about need. She is part of the working poor.
Thanksgiving season, with its colorful newspaper ads for sumptuous turkeys with all the trimmings, opposite news stories of dinner programs and food banks for the poor, cries out for our reflection on lifestyles here and around the world. There are the opulent lifestyles of the rich and famous- and, as today’s Washington Post regretfully reports, of some prominent religious leaders. There are the lifestyles of folks like us, far less extreme, but still extremely wealthy by global standards.
And, we dare not forget the impoverishment of millions on all continents embodied in those who sleep on the heat grates in front of Washington’s grand facades, or the campesinos of Colombia’s barrios- composed of some 2-3 million displaced Afro-Colombians who have experienced rape, maiming and the death and disappearing of loved ones; or the suffering impoverished of devastated AIDS communities in Africa; or the countless human shadows who live among the tombs in Cairo’s ancient cemetery, dubbed the City of the Dead.
Finally, there is the life of that tiny servant of Christ, Mother Mary Teresa, who yearned to be a missionary to the poor since the age of 12. As we know, her passion for Christ’s neediest eventually led her to Calcutta where she was dubbed, the “Saint of the Gutter.” Her sacrifice was sacramental; her story, universally known. For years, we marveled at news accounts of Teresa’s absolute dedication to the wretched poor of the world’s largest slum. Shedding worldly goods, she depended upon the charity of strangers. Other sisters joined her and financial support began pouring in for their “Missionaries of Charity,” which
had grown from a one woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon
of self-abnegating care. (“Time,” 9-3-07)
Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa said,
It is not enough for us to say, “I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,”
since in dying on the Cross, God “made himself the hungry one- the naked
one- the homeless one.” Jesus’ hunger is “what you and I must find” and
alleviate.
Before Christmas, that same year she said,
(that the upcoming holiday should remind the world) “that radiating joy is
real” because Christ is everywhere- “Christ in our hearts, Christ in the
poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive.”
Visitors to Mother Teresa reported that she appeared to be happy, always smiling as she changed stinking bandages or conversed with the filthiest of beggars. Those who witnessed her in prayer spoke of Teresa’s serenity. Everyone assumed that her faith was absolute and that her lifestyle of selfless service sang of her gratitude to God for the gift of Christ.
So we were shocked by what she wrote in 66 years of private letters to her confessors, recently published in a volume titled, Come Be My Light (Doubleday). For example, less that three months before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, in a letter to the Rev. Michael van der Peet, she wrote
“Jesus has a very special love for you”… “but as for me, the silence and the
emptiness are so great, that I look and do not see, …listen but do not hear…
Her personal writings reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever, neither in her heart or in the eucharist. Writes Teresa,
Where is my faith- deep down there is nothing, but emptiness and
darkness. My God, how painful is this unknown pain. I have no Faith.
I dare not utter the words and thoughts that crowd in my heart, and make
me suffer untold agony. So many unanswered questions live within me I am
afraid to uncover them because of the blasphemy. If there be God, please
forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting
emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very
soul.
I am told God loves me, and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and
emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. (To Jesus, she asks, )
Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
-Addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated
II.
Mother Teresa is not the first to experience such soul agony while trying to live a grateful lifestyle. Jeremiah, the peasant prophet who declares God’s word to exiles some 500 years before Jesus, urges his fellow citizens of Israel to hold fast the faith. They have been defeated by Assyrians and Babylonians, their holy city laid in ruins, their exile, long. Where is God? We have acknowledged our sin and repented to the Almighty. Why are we sent home after so long to so only to find all that we built- our vary homes and city- in ruins?
But Jeremiah declares that they remain in God’s hands regardless of how things seem. The old covenant of Moses has been broken; the new covenant will continue because of an inward transformation of the human heart that will allow the people to know God intimately and to be obedient to the commandments. God will forgive and forget the people’s sins. (see NRSV, HarperCollins Study Bible). Their prayers have been answered.
The bazaar story of the unrighteous judge (Luke 18:1-8) also preaches this lesson. (It is doubtful that this story can be attributed to Jesus. Nevertheless, the lesson it teaches is important.) Though the judge is corrupt, he finally acquiesces to the woman’s petition for justice- just to get her off his case or, “so she won’t slap me or beat me,” in the words of an alternative translation. Pray always…do not lose heart, is the clear message of the story –Luke 18:1.
III.
Mother Teresa keeps on praying. Her prayers are honest and forthright. And by her praying, she acknowledges the existence of the very God she seeks! And, she discovers that, in praying the prayers of the poor (Why has God abandoned us?) she glimpses God. When she prays for her Missionaries of Charity, she feels joy. Once, in 1958, when Pope Pius XII died, and requiem Masses were celebrated around the Catholic world, Teresa prayed to the deceased Pope for a proof that God is pleased with the Society (Missionaries of Charity). She reported in her diary,
Then and there disappeared the long darkness…that strange suffering of 10 years.
We learn an important lesson from Teresa’s experience. When we pray for the success of God’s work, and not just for ourselves, God becomes vivid. And when we express our gratitude for all that God has done for us by living that gratitude, we are likely to experience God’s peace.
Grateful living is not about our legacy or our immortality- who will remember us and what great accomplishments we will leave behind. Grateful living is about giving of our time, talent and treasure in the service of God, as best we are able. It is about glimpsing God, knowing her face, feeling his wounds in the midst of serving God’s people. All of the stained glass cathedrals in the world do not, by themselves, reveal the Holy. If the Lord is revealed at all in such places, such revelation most commonly occurs when we are seeking to live gratefully.
When I was a boy, I sat in a sanctuary- that of my home church- filled with Tiffany glass and German wood carvings, and seating for 1500. I drempt of someday being a preacher in such a place of my own. I was enamored with the famous and challenging preachers who presented in our lofty pulpit, how all eyes were upon that preachers high and strong. He must be very important, I thought. And I want to be one too! in the words of the Sunday School hymn.
As it happens, I have not served a congregation of such grand scale. The sanctuaries I have regularly preached in have been decidedly more modest. I did decline a few opportunities to track toward such places. After research, such possibilities felt like false gods that would surely inflate my ego and kill my soul. The Holy One is most vivid in my life when I follow a Master other than my own ego. Blessedly gone is the small boy with those kind of large dreams.
Other dreams have taken their place. Such as the dream of giving financial resources to the Church that truly reflect my commitment to our God; such as the giving of skills and time without counting hours and missed days off; such as singing and praying with the children in those Colombia barriors- especially with the one who did cartwheels to express his delight that someone from America was visiting his family. In the City of the Dead, my dream of praying for justice for those despairing men and women and children came true. And the sun did shine on us all at that moment.
It seems that grateful living is less about seeking God than seeking God’s suffering children; less about working hard for a personal relationship with Jesus than about laboring for an open and affirming, just peace church. Seeing God’s face and knowing God’s presence seem to be the reward for faithful living, not the goal.
Living the faith leads us to God’s living face. Prayer and spirituality are means to an end, not ends in themselves. Faith is not about “me and Jesus” and “the good think we’ve got ‘goin.” Faith is about not losing heart when the heart seems empty; it’s about keeping a watch for God when tragedy destroys our cities and our families are scattered or destroyed. Faith is even about believing without always seeing Jesus’ face.
Grateful living not about us! It is about living each day in gratitude for God’s blessings as we express that thankfulness in acts kindness and justice, encouragement and companionship.
Grateful living is about giving generously of time, talent and treasure to minister to others, especially God’s suffering children.
It is in grateful living that God’s tender love for us is revealed.
Amen.