Persistence Pays Off – Luke 18:1-8

How often have we heard people say to us, you need to be persistent, never give up, if you hope to achieve the goals you have for your life?  It is certainly true that most things in life do not come naturally or easily. In fact many of the accomplishments of our lives have come after a long period of persistent effort.  I have spent years playing instruments, but I am a long way from being as accomplished as I would like to be. I know that only practice can help me get better. But there are some things that I am almost absolutely convinced will never improve no matter how persistent I am – one of them is golf.  Sports in general and sports that involve hitting, catching, or throwing objects just doesn’t seem to work for me. But that’s okay. I have a great time cross country skiing and snowshoeing in the winter and kayaking and canoeing in the summer.

Some things in life are like a path that never seems to end – no matter how persistent we may be. Every bend brings another bend and so on and so on.  Just over 40 years ago my wife and I visited the Isle of Iona in Scotland. We only had the day, so we visited most of the key sites that were easily reached. We then decided to go to see the seat of St. Columba. We knew where it was, and it wasn’t supposed to be far – or at least we thought so.  We walked up one hill and down and up another and so on and so on. We seemed to be getting closer and yet the hills never seemed to stop.  We looked at our time and had to admit that this would have to wait for another time.

Sometimes our relationship with God can seem like that trek on Iona. Every time we feel we are getting somewhere it can seem like we are no closer.  The problem is that we somehow have imagined that our relationship with God is something that achieve an end in this life.    But that is far from the truth.

When I remember the time that I made my first profession of faith in public and was recognized by the congregation in Montreal as a communicant member, I had the sense that I had arrived. I had grown up in the church, had participated in all the programs for my age group and had reached that age where I was expected to take the next step and declare my allegiance to the community.  I say allegiance because my profession of faith was a rite of passage. I had graduated from being a child to being an adult. I now was responsible to the community to uphold its traditions and take an active part in its worship of God.  I had arrived.  My profession of faith had made me an official and full member of the Presbyterian Church.  Now all I needed to do was to be faithful to attend church, take the Lord’s Supper when it was celebrated, give my tenth to the church’s work and participate in the life of the community with whatever talents I had.

Seemed simple enough but then I felt the hand of God and was set on a journey that led me to being ordained in the Presbyterian Church in Canada.  But more than that, it has set me on a journey through this life with God.

Over the years I have been led to many different places and many different experiences. I even stepped away from the ministry to which I was ordained to pursue other forms of ministry and even to a line of work that had nothing to do with the church.  But that step back or away from the institution gave me the time to learn once again how to be part of a community where the only leadership I exercised was as a choir member and the church cleaner. Today my journey with God has taken me here to Westport.

To say that I have learned everything there is to know about living the way of Christ would be a lie. To say that I seek for the Holy Spirit to ever guide me and lead my thoughts and actions – that is certainly my heart’s desire.  To ever learn from God, seek for God, and share with God – these are my fondest hopes.  I want nothing more and nothing less than to be persistent and consistent in my relationship with God, to be engaged with God.

And that engagement has nothing to do with the fact that I have been ordained as a leader in the community.  That persistent desire to be engaged with God is a personal decision; it is one that I made not because I am ordained but because I want to follow the pattern for life as revealed by God in Jesus Christ for myself.

You may know that I have spent much time over the years on silent retreats.  I have been drawn to spend those retreats with the Anglican order of nuns called the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine in Toronto. The convent and the guest house are places where I have gone and spent my days in quiet reading and contemplation of issues and concerns that were weighing on my spirit and mind. I had the opportunity to participate with them in worship, to walk the labyrinth, to visit the Stations of the Cross in the garden and to be nourished in body, mind, and spirit – even the sharing meals in silence except for the clanking of silverware on plates.  On one of those visits I read 5 books on compassion and justice and seeking for the heart of God. I find that I need to constantly come back to those topics and the time there provides me with a space to not only read but meditate and pray.

Talk about persistence – compassion has been something that I have struggled with over the years. Back in 1987 I attended a weekend event that I needed to rekindle my commitment and overcome my cynicism.  The words that ran through my head and heart on that Sunday morning were from Psalm 51: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”  I have never forgotten those words and I can’t imagine I ever will. They have become for me a personal mantra that I need to ever keep before me. At the end of the passage in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus speaks these words: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

The hope of Jesus is not that he will find faithful Presbyterians worshipping or singing or serving, but that he will find people who have persisted in their relationship with God and with one another. The hope of Jesus is that we will be persistent in our prayers and in our desire to follow his lead and build a life that reflects the heart of God for each one of us.

I would like to end this message with a prayer from the Abbot of Greve:

Lord, may I be wakeful at sunrise to begin a new day for you;

Cheerful at sunset for having done my work for you;

Thankful at moonrise and under starshine for the beauty of your universe;

And may I add what little may be in me to add to your great world.

AMEN