The pastor was speaking about heaven, about eternal bliss and the joys that are awaiting each person on "the other side." He paused for effect and asked, "How many of you here want to go to heaven?" All hands were raised but for an eight-year old boy sitting in the front pew. The minister asked, "Don't you want to go to heaven, too, son?" The boy replied, "Yes, but I thought you were making up a load to go right now."
Yes, but….we can identify with that answer. Yes, but not now. Think of all the times and places in your life when you have said something like that. The many things that you will do…start the new diet, organize your closets, weed out the junk, go back to school…all the intentions and plans that you have…yet still you find yourself saying "yes, but." Sometimes the temptation is to wait for better, more settled times. Indeed, there are times when waiting is the prudent thing to do. It makes sense in those cases to put off an action such as buying a new car or taking a trip.
However, neither our tendency to put off what needs to be done, or to sort out what we need to wait for should preclude the faith-full responses we are called to make. Faith-full responses call us to action in spite of what is going on around us. It is what Jeremiah asked the people to do in last Sunday's lesson by telling them to plant gardens and have families. It is what got Noah cutting and hammering in the middle of dry land. It is what sent Abraham wandering far from home when such a journey seemed ludicrous. It is the instructions we hear in the epistle lesson this morning: "I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching."
Those words are appropriate for us as we face the upcoming stewardship campaign. We will be asking each other: "what is our faith-full response to God in terms of our financial offering?" It is tempting to say the time is not right to ask such questions because the economy is unsure, people are being laid off from work, fixed incomes are in doubt and so on. We live in a time full of uncertainty. Perhaps we should just tiptoe softly around the issue and be somewhat apologetic for even having to deal with stewardship in this time. Or as one church member in Texas asked: "We're still going to have our stewardship drive with all that's going on?" As if we have a choice-or as the pastor of that church was tempted to reply: "no, you're right-we're going to close down the church until we all feel more secure and until our faith comes back." Sometimes we are prone to inaction without considering the consequences of our inaction. And so we will have a stewardship campaign whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.
Those words of Timothy are also reflected in the gospel parable. The church has always been called to be like the persistent widow in the gospel text who wore the judge down with her cries for justice. Imagine if we waited until the world was ready to hear the subversive message of the cross of Jesus. We would be a very quiet people. I found myself tempted to be quiet yesterday and change part of a talk I was giving for fear it might offend. I resisted however, for it was something I felt was integral to the very reasons I was standing there. We see the persistence of the widow in the faces of children who haunt us in their cries for a better life. We see the persistence of the widow in those people who call us to look at the world and say all is not well. We see the persistence of the widow in those who remind us that faith is not a comfortable place in which we insulate ourselves from the pain of others. And like it or not, we are called to be the widow to the world, to be the ones who holler and pound until even the most unjust of institutions and rulers listen if only to get us off their backs.
All of this we do in the context of community. The exhortations that Paul gives to Timothy are meant to take place with the support of his church community. The power of community is sometimes what literally keeps us alive:
"Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent many years in the prison camps of Siberia. Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The intense suffering reduced him to a state of despair. On one particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much for him. He saw no reason to continue his struggle, no reason to keep on living. His life made no difference in the world. So he gave up. Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.
As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work. As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible. Solzhenitsyn slowly rose to his feet, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Outwardly, nothing had changed. Inside, he had received hope. [From Luke Veronis, "The Sign of the Cross"; Communion, issue 8, Pascha 1997.]
And so we are called as God's people, whether the times are favorable or unfavorable, called to go out with the persistence of the widow who dared to speak out for justice, for what was right. In the community of God's people we pray and we worship; we give and we work so that when the Son of Man returns he will find faith in us.