LESSONS IN LIVING “Persistence” A St. Andrew’s Sermon Delivered by Daniel Williams June 7, 2020 Scripture Readings: 2 Timothy 3:14-17; 4:1-5; Luke 18:1-8 (The Inclusive Bible) 2 Timothy 3:14-17 You, for your part, must remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know who your teachers were. Likewise, from your infancy you have known the sacred scriptures, the source of wisdom which through faith in Christ Jesus leads to salvation. All scripture is inspired of God, and is useful for teaching — for reprimanding, correcting, and training in justice — so that the people of God may be fully competent and equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 4:1-5 In the presence of God and of Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of the appearance and reign of Christ, I charge you to preach the word; to be prepared in season and out of season; to correct, reprimand and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. For the time is coming when people won’t put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers who say what their fickle ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations; endure hardship, perform your work as an evangelist and fulfill your ministry. Luke 18:1-8 Jesus told the disciples a parable on the necessity of praying always and not losing heart: “Once there was a judge in a certain city who feared no one — not even God. A woman in that city who had been widowed kept coming to the judge and saying, ‘Give me legal protection from my opponent.’ For a time the judge refused, but finally the judge thought, ‘I care little for God or people, but this woman won’t leave me alone. I’d better give her the protection she seeks, or she’ll keep coming and wear me out!’” Jesus said, “Listen to what this corrupt judge is saying. Won’ t God then do justice to the chosen who call out day and night? Will God delay long over them? I tell you, God will give them swift justice. “But when the Promised One comes, will faith be found anywhere on earth?” Sermon Parables are tricky things. I think sometimes we get parables confused with fables. Wikipedia, normally an all-knowing oracle of truth, suggests that the main difference between a parable and a fable is that parables don’t feature plants or animals or forces of nature that have assumed human characteristics such as speech. No offense to Wikipedia, but I disagree. Theologians and scholars of the New Testament tend to view parables, or at least the parables of Jesus, with a bit more nuance. Whereas fables tend to have a clear moral, a definite lesson that is often stated at the end of the story, the meanings of parables are trickier to tease out. Take for example a story about the bear and the frog that I grew up hearing. It’s told, as I know it, by Joe Hayes, a storyteller in Santa Fe who tells stories largely inspired by indigenous and Hispanic folklore of the Southwest. I don’t have nearly the storytelling skill that Joe Hayes has, so you should look up the video of him telling this story, which I think you can find on YouTube.com. Anyway, it’s a story about the time, way, way back at the beginning of the world, when the length of day and night had not yet been fixed. There might be eight long years of nighttime, followed by only a few short days of light. And that was hard for the first animals. The animals who came out at night loved the long periods of darkness but didn’t know what to do during the days. And the animals who preferred the light didn’t like it any better - they needed the light to find food and explore, and the long unpredictable nights made it hard for them to take care of their families. So one day Eagle flew up to tell the Sun--remember, this is a folklore fable--that a lot of the animals were unhappy and wanted more daylight. The Sun wanted all the animals to be happy, so it told Eagle to gather all them all together in one place and to come to an agreement. At first, every animal had their own idea about how much day and how much night there should be, but eventually the animals came together around two ideas. The nighttime animals were represented by Bear, who roared, “Ten years of darkness, one day!” And the daytime animals were represented by Frog, who croaked, “One day, one night.” The daytime animals and the nighttime animals just couldn’t agree. So Eagle went back to the Sun and told it that there were two competing ideas. The Sun decided that the nighttime animals and the daytime animals should have a competition to see which idea was best. Each group would select one representative and whichever animal could say how they wanted things to be longest without stopping would get things their way. Right away, Bear volunteered to speak for his side. He was big and loud and was sure he could win! And Frog volunteered to speak for her side. Both animals got ready for the contest to begin, and before Eagle even gave the signal, Bear started bellowing, “Ten years of darkness! One day!” He was so loud and confident; he doubted the other animals would even be able to hear Frog! But when Eagle gave the signal, Frog started determinedly croaking, “One day, one night.” 2 Well, this went on for a little while and some of the animals were starting to think that Bear had been right - he was so loud and powerful, there was no way he would lose! But, pretty soon, the Bear’s throat started to hurt. He wasn’t able to roar quite as loudly as he had been before. In fact, soon he couldn’t roar at all! He quickly bent down to drink some water out of the stream, and roared one more time, “Ten years of darkness, one day!” But that was it! He had lost his voice. Meanwhile, little Frog was still croaking away - “One day, one night.” In fact, even to this day, if you knew the frogs’ language, you’d know what they’re saying when they croak - “one day, one night.” So all the animals, even Bear, agreed that the daytime animals had won the competition. So now we always have one day, followed by one night. It’s a cute little story and all the animal voices that Joe Hayes does were very fun to listen to as a kid. As an adult, I remember it as an etiology, or explanation story, for the cycle of day and night, but I had forgotten until I listened to it again the other day that he also adds a moral onto it: “The story explains why it is, among all the animals, but especially among the people, it’s still not the one who’s the biggest and loudest and strongest who gets things their way. The one who gets things their way is the one who has a good idea and says it over and over and over and won’t stop saying it for anything. And that’s how you can get things your way too.” I don’t know why, maybe it was a stroke of divine inspiration, but the morning after Jim called me to tell me he wasn’t feeling well and asked if I could preach this week, I woke up hearing Bear chanting “Ten years of darkness! One day!” from deep within my memory. So I listened to a recording of Joe Hayes telling the story, and when he got to that moral at the end, it was like lightning had struck! I knew what scripture I would preach on! This little fable was just like Jesus’ Parable of the Persistent Widow! Well - not quite. Because while the story about Bear and Frog wraps everything up in a neat little bow with a clear moral, the Parable of the Persistent Widow provokes at least as many questions as it answers. In Godly Play, in the religious education model we use here at St. Andrew’s – alongside Sacred Stories, Liturgical Actions, and Silence—Parables are one of the four genres of religious language that we use. If you’ve heard me preach before or if you’ve been exposed to Godly Play, you might have heard the “wondering questions” we use to prompt children to reflect and make meaning when we tell them sacred stories. We use similar, but different, wondering questions when we reflect on the parables with the kids. The fundamental wondering question about parables is always: “I wonder what this could really be?” This question implies that there is more to the story, more to what’s real, than what we immediately perceive. That’s why we use flat, two-dimensional images to tell the parables, rather than the three-dimensional figures we use for sacred stories. The parables are a canvas for us to project our imaginations onto, that’s why Jesus was usually so reticent to explain the parables to his disciples. 3 One of the questions we often ask the kids about parables is, “I wonder what this person’s name is?” It helps them build a bridge of meaning between their lived experience and the story we are playing with.