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Persistence: only Possible with a Vision

Luke 18:1-8

October 17, 2004

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

I once knew a woman who was a nurse on a pediatric oncology ward of a major metropolitan hospital.  She would care for and see to the physical and practical needs of child after child that suffered from cancer.  She would have success stories to tell of young people who overcome leukemia or some other childhood cancer, but the most awful stories she would tell were of those of children who didn’t make it. 

Her husband would tell us, “She’s home recovering.  A nine year old who’d been on and off her floor for a year died yesterday and she had to take the rest of the day off.”  How did she do it?  So many of us wondered.  How could she keep coming?  How could she keep going to that hospital for that difficult work?

Kim used to work with autistic children.  Autistic children are kids who develop normally until the age of two or three years old, then suddenly begin to regress.  A child who reacted so energetically when daddy walked into the room, who would bounce up and down in his high chair calling out for daddy to pick him up who suddenly didn’t even pick up his head from studying his fingers and forgot who daddy was is usually diagnosed Autistic.  Or a child that had begun to make funny noises that sound like his own style of speech or her own language and even learned a few adult words, who then stops trying to talk and interact with parents or others at all.  Autism is a devastating, troubling and sad disease, and yet Kim kept coming, kept working for a long time with such children.  Many of her friends wondered how she could possibly do it?  “Isn’t it sad to see children in that state?” they would ask her.

I’ve often been asked myself, how I can visit at the bedsides of people whom I and the family know are very close to death, or how I can be with people when they’ve lost someone, planning a funeral or sitting with them in their sadness and pain.  “How do you do it?  I could never do this,” say people to me even as we stand in the halls at the hospital.

The way we do it, the way we in such vocations keep coming, persisting, enduring and keep carrying on in difficult and stressful situations, is through hope in a vision that we may have.

The woman who works with children suffering from cancer believes that she will see a day when medicine is so advanced that children will go home after cancer treatments as hopeful and relieved as if they were returning from having their tonsils out.  She works with individual children in that difficult state because she looks forward to the day when that child will stand up and walk home under her own power.

She endures the fears and sorrows of losing patients too young, because she has a vision of a day when that doesn’t happen.

Kim did the work she did for as long as she did because she had a hope and a vision that her therapy with them would result in a child finding their language again, remembering who mommy and daddy were again and playing and running and being happy with other children in the typical way of a child again.

She actually stopped doing that work when Alex was born.  When it was time to return to work, she didn’t return to the field of therapy of children with Autism not because she couldn’t bear to work with the difficult children, but because she could no longer find people would did the work with the same vision that she and her former colleagues had had for such children. 

When she went back to the field, she found that so many who did the work didn’t believe the children could recover and didn’t treat the children in such a way as to promote results, but simply kept the children safe and babysat them so mom and dad wouldn’t have to worry about their day to day, moment to moment welfare.  They didn’t push for the same results Kim and her original colleagues had been able to achieve.  They just maintained and managed the children’s lives so they could get through life just the way they are, as Autistic as ever. 

Such treatment plans have no hope and no vision for a recovering, mainlined and developing child.  Without that vision, Kim couldn’t keep coming.  Without that hope, Kim couldn’t persist and continue that work.

As for me, going to the bedside of a person about to die is a sad time, but I don’t go looking forward to that sadness.  I go with hope in my heart and a vision before me of the person in that bed restored, renewed somehow and in a better place, in our Fathers’ house in heaven.  I go with a vision of hope that somehow as we speak and as we read scripture and pray, that peace might come not only to the eyes of the person laying in that bed, but to the folks gathered around that bed.  That in remembering the dying person’s life and hopes and character and love for them, that they might also remember their joy for having been with that person and their thanksgiving to God for having had such a bond and so much to share with that person who is passing.   I have a hope for them, a vision of peace and consolation , of a tranquil and hopeful goodbye and a sense that even the worst passes and that God promises strength and care.

Without such hope, without visions of something better, without a deep and abiding assurance that something more meaningful and just and joyful on the horizon, the difficulties of today would always be unbearable and persistence would be impossible.

 “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming…”

This woman kept coming!  She came perhaps daily and bothered this judge, who had “neither feared God nor had respect for people.”  She did this improbable and impressive thing, not because she was nasty by nature and wanted simply to bug the judge and give him a hard time, but because she herself had a vision and a hope.  She voiced that hope and acted out on that vision.

This woman had a vision for justice, “Grant me justice against my opponent,” she cried out to that judge, and that judge did not, could not refuse her!

Jesus tells this parable as a lesson in prayer, as a lesson of how to keep coming to God and cry to him day and night.  But I also take from it a lesson in having hope and a vision.  Without that hope, without that vision for some particular potential reality that may exist out in the future, how can one keep coming back?  How can one keep crying out to God?  How can one have persistence?

It started like so many evenings. Mom and Dad at home and Jimmy playing after dinner. Mom and Dad were absorbed with jobs and did not notice the time. It was a full moon and some of the light seeped through the windows. Then Mom glanced at the clock. "Jimmy, it's time to go to bed. Go up now and I'll come and settle you later." Unlike usual, Jimmy went straight upstairs to his room.  An hour or so later his mother came up to check if all was well, and to her astonishment found that her son was staring quietly out of his window at the moonlit scenery. "What are you doing, Jimmy?" "I'm looking at the moon, Mommy." "Well, it's time to go to bed now." As one reluctant boy settled down, he said, "Mommy, you know one day I'm going to walk on the moon." Who could have known that the boy in whom the dream was planted that night would survive a near fatal motorbike crash which broke almost every bone in his body, and would bring to fruition this dream 32 years later when James Irwin stepped on the moon's surface, just one of the 12 representatives of the human race to have done so?[1]  

One look out the window, one spectacular vision of the stars and moon on a clear beautiful night and this young man was hooked.  He had his life’s work mapped out for him, he had the vision take shape in his mind and heart that would shape his entire future.

What is our vision for the future of this church?  Is it of a church with pews packed every Sunday?  Is it of worship that shakes and rattles the windows with new styles of singing and methods of praising God?  Is it an active and vibrant youth group that equips and energizes young people to serve God and provide leadership for this church for years to come.  Is it a balanced budget for our church so discussions about its financial future at monthly or annual meetings would never have to be anxious or nervous or contentious again?  Is it about finding amazing new ways to reach out into the community surrounding our church to bring the good news of God’s love and caring to new people in exciting ways that make their lives better, that helps ease their suffering and prompts them to praise God and themselves respond to God’s call to them to join us or another church of Christ to reach out to in effort s to continue to build the heavenly kingdom here in this realm.

These are visions and hopes that I have for this church.  Perhaps sometimes if feels as if we may never achieve any of these.  Perhaps each and every one of these visions are right there, almost withing our grasp and our visions are about to be fulfilled very soon.  Regardless of which of these statements are true, I know that not a single one of these visions is likely to become reality without the persistence and steady and daily return to God with a cry for help, for God’s guidance and God’s strength, then not one of these visions will become realized.  I also know that without these visions, without hope in something like each of these visions, we won’t have the energy to be persistent.

The following quote was repeated in the Readers’ Digest, 

“I look at a stone cutter hammering away at a rock a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the 101st blow it splits in two. I know it was not the one blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

We can hammer away at the same stone for hours and days, even months and years, we can pound the same rock 100 times, but if we don’t strike the 101^st  blow, we may not achieve our goal.[2]

Today during our Annual Congregational Meeting, we’ll speak of issues, plans for projects that will be adopted, of hopes for future goals and reports on how things have gone.  Regardless of what we hear and what we come to know about how things have been going and what has occurred in the past. There will be things to celebrate and things we will want to commit to changing.  Yet we can’t expect anything to be different if we haven’t turned to God and we don’t continue to do so.  We can’t make change if we don’t have the vision and the persistence to bring our hopes to reality.

Winston Churchill during one of his radio messages during World War II said to his nation, his people being beset by attacking plains by exploding bombs and crumbling buildings, “Never, never, never, never give up.”[3]

Jesus too encouraged faith and hope asking after he told this parable of persistence and prayer, saying, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

I pray that we too might have the persistence that comes from a steady vision and a burning, yearning hope for a vibrant church, a servant church, a growing church, an active church that energetically praises God.

I hope that today, as we plan for the future, we might return to God in prayer, crying out for our visions and our hopes and that prayer would not be just this moment’s impulse but a daily persistent, discipline of turning to God with faith that he will grand us our visions for his church and strengthen our resolve and our efforts to bring our visions to life.   Amen.