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SERMONS

Proper 24C
October 21, 2007

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

Luke 18.1-8

Sung by the preacher:

I was looking for love in all the wrong places . . .

Looking for love in too many faces . . .

Searching your eyes, looking for traces . . .

Of what, I’m dreaming of . . .

As sung by Johnny Lee and Waylon Jennings - neither of whom were theologians.

Every now and then country music is able to get it more right than anyone else. What philosopher or theologian could have said so well? "Looking for love in all the wrong places." It should be the title of a great doctoral dissertation on the human condition.

Isn’t it true that in our lives we spend countless moments looking for love; and countless moments looking for it in all of the wrong places. Our hearts are sometimes like some hungry animal waking from hibernation in the spring, roaming about, turning over logs and stones, digging about in things we possess, or would like to possess, looking for love. Rooting around in our popularity, or lack of popularity, our own best illusions, hoping to find some scrap of real love that will satisfy a hungry heart. Looking for some scrap of food for our hungry souls.

What our hearts desire is a connection, a hearing, an audience. We want some attention paid to that part of ourselves that cries out for more than what the world can give to us; that cries out for love, acceptance, and peace. Unable to conjure up that kind of love for ourselves, we begin our search, we begin to look for love, and sometimes in all of the wrong places.

St. Paul is writing a letter to young Timothy about this search. Paul is describing what happens to people who begin to look for love in all the wrong places. These are people who will not put up with sound doctrine. They have itching ears and itching hearts. They accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, who turn away from truth, who tell folks what they want to hear. These are people who begin to wander into mythologies of their own choosing. In a sense, Paul is describing individuals who choose their own illusions over that which is real; folks who fill themselves with empty calories rather than food that is real. As Paul tells Timothy, we must be persistent, we must endure, if we would find true food for our souls, because the path to reality, the path to God, requires more than what is convenient to our desires. Paul is encouraging Timothy to look for loved in all the right places; to look for love in what Timothy has learned of Jesus, to look for that love in the Scriptures.

The reformer Martin Luther once said that his prayer was the "sweat of his soul."

Prayer is the sweat that we must give if we are to find that food which feeds the hungry heart. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is constantly showing his friends what it means to sweat in this way, what it means to pray, and to gather spiritual food. In the Gospels, Jesus is like the ocean. Jesus is like the tides which ebb and flow. In one moment Jesus is totally and completely immersed in the cares and concerns of a broken humanity. He is immersed in people and their needs. And then like the tide that withdraws, Jesus goes to be alone, to sweat in his soul, and to pray in solitude to God. Through this ebb and flow Jesus is teaching his friends to pray. Jesus is showing his friends where to find food for the journey of faith; a journey that no human being will be able to escape. It is a journey that can be difficult. It is a journey on which we will be tempted to look for love in all the wrong places.

On this journey of faith we will be faced with the temptation of itching ears and itching hearts, of listening only to those voices that tell us of what we what to hear. It is a journey where we will be tempted to spend our time roaming in the spiritual candy store of sentimentality and illusion, snacking on empty calories, rather than gathering real food for a real journey of faith that lies before us. It is persistence and determination upon the one thing that is needful that will sustain us.

In this story about a poor widow and an unjust judge, Jesus is reassuring us that God means for us to find him when our hearts begin to wander. This is essentially what Jesus is saying . . . "If this poor widow, a helpless outcast within her own culture, can squeeze justice from this self-centered and mediocre excuse of a judge, then how much more will God hear the cries of those who truly seek him."

This widow has nothing left in this life but the weapon of her own persistence. It is her persistence that opens the doors. It is her persistence, focused upon the one thing that is needful, that turns the tide for her. The widow’s single-mindedness, her determination, is like that ancient confrontation between the stream of water and the rock. The stream will always win; not through strength, but by perseverance.

Jesus is telling his followers to be done with wandering, and to apply themselves to the one place that is needful, the one place where real food for the journey can be found: Prayer.

If such single-mindedness were easy, or our first inclination, then Jesus would have no reason to encourage us to choose wisely. Our savior knows us; he knows us so well. He knows that our itching ears and hearts are often scratch by what we gather in the world. And rather than simply join in the chorus of scratching, Jesus would like to heal us of this irritation. Jesus would like to deliver us from wandering and roaming for scraps, giving us a seat at the table where real food is given and received.

Jesus would like for us to look for love in all of the right places. In fact, he desires this so much, that he became our food. He gave us himself, his own flesh and blood to make it possible for us to have real food in this life; for us to have one place, at least one place, where we might look for love in all the right places.