Resources»

Sermon Archive

Sunday, August 15, 2010

It’s A Jungle Out There

Luke 12:49-56; Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Reverend Richard E. Allen, Jr.

Maybe last week you saw Ed Stafford featured on ABC’s World News Tonight.  Sitting beside the Amazon River somewhere in Brazil, Stafford reflected on his completion of his journey down the full length of that river.  Stafford’s trip ended on Monday, as we all watched him romp in the Atlantic Ocean, completing his 4,000-mile hike. His foray into the waters of the Atlantic marked the completion journey begun 859 days earlier – two and a half years.  Stafford, 34 years old and a former British army captain, explained his calling reminiscent of words used before:  “I am simply doing it because no one has done it before.” Still, his is quite a story, of course: a story about endurance in the face of meat-eating piranhas, scores of snakes, including the anaconda, disease, rain, incessant insects, and even Amerindians who nearly killed him for his trespass into their land.  But he kept going, though even he was tempted on most of those 859 days. “It’s very easy to go into the jungle for two days – and great fun.  For a week, it’s a bit more of an ordeal; for two years, it’s ridiculous.”^[i]  Stafford is correct:  few of us are willing to sign on for such a demanding journey.

Listing to Stafford last Monday, I reflected that ministry is a trek, too, and I realized that it has had its disasters and its doldrums, too, a bit like that walk from the headwaters to the mouth of the Amazon.  For a few days, even a few weeks, months at the time, it has been fun.  But at times it felt like both and ordeal and a ridiculous undertaking.  Looking back over my career recently, I realized that this is the eighth church where I’ve served as pastor.  Sometimes, I wonder what difference these years have made.  I wonder if it is worth it.  I’ve watched colleagues both enter and leave the ministry.  My friend Rick and I began our ministries as neighbors years ago.  He retired this year, and last week he posted these statistics on his “Facebook” page; his numbers remind me of a piece I read recently in The NY Times:^[ii] Here’s how my friend, now retired, describes us pastors: “‎48% of [pastors] think their work is hazardous to their family’s well being. Another 45.5% will experience burnout or depression that will make them leave their jobs. And 70% say their self-esteem is lower now than when they started their position. They have the second highest divorce rate among professions.”  He’s right, of course.  I know he is. We pastors all know: It’s a jungle out here.

And not just for pastors.   The Christian life is often a treacherous journey. Begun by each of us at our baptisms, a life-long process of growing in grace and maintaining faith in Christ is a journey of endurance.  It is a way marked by boredom, fatigue, and occasional desperation.  It’s a lifelong commitment, and finishing faithfully isn’t necessarily easy.  For over thirty years as a pastor, I’ve been honored to watch some members cross the finish line as truly committed disciples.  And I’ve seen others start the race only to give up along the way.  Daily life just chips away at faith’s core, sapping strength and joy: frustrations, daily annoyances, and just plain boredom all take their toll.  People start with the best of intentions, but then they get to the first bend in the trail, and…  I never see them again.  I wonder just how many explorers begin with touched with a passion like Stafford, begin journey into a jungle “because it’s there!” and then, just give up, go home, and spend days watching The Discovery Channel? This much I know from pastoral experience:  it happens in the church.

Maybe the writer of the letter to the Hebrews was a pastor, too.  If not, he knew life, and he knew people.  And he knew that faith took a deep commitment, because it is a long, dangerous journey.  So, in today’s lesson we hear him conclude of recitation of what faith meant to our forebears.  He notes the Exodus, first:  “By faith the people [led by Moses out of Egypt] passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land…  By faith the walls of Jericho fell…”^[iii] Then this author moves quickly to the dangerous time in which they lived together under the Roman persecution:  “Others were tortured…”^[iv]  Was he thinking, I wonder, of the young mother, Perpetua, who chose death over renouncing Christ?  And it continues:  “Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about … destitute, persecuted, tormented.”^[v]  He piles up image after image of the difficulties of remaining faithful.

You see, this writer reminds his listeners of the price of discipleship.  He doesn’t oversell the faith, but describes the difficulties of living with integrity.  But then he invites his readers to sustain their faith in spite of the difficulties.  He asks these people who have watched others give up and give in, to remain faithful in spite of hardships:  “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us….”^[vi]

That’s the message for the early church.  And it’s the same message for us.  Hang in there. Don’t give up, and don’t give in.  Don’t stop.  Keep walking with Christ and beside one another.  Love God, even when loving God seems foolish or dumb or even wrong.  Love your neighbor, even though no one else can get along with her.  Love your family, though they get on your nerves.  Love your enemy, even, because Christ tells us to do so, and because only by doing so will our world ever amount to anything at all.  Let us, with these early Jewish Christians, these we call “Hebrews” also “run with perseverance the race – the Christian life – that is set before us.”

I know, I know, doing so isn’t easy.  It may even be easier to walk the Amazon than to walk the faith.  But keep at it, for; finally, it’s keeping at this journey of faith that matters, anyway.  One day at the time.  Moving ahead.

Before closing, I briefly note that the gospel lesson for today implies a similar commitment in the face of the temptation to give up or drop out.  Luke also writes in this time of persecution that tested the early church.  He’s reminding his church, and us, that baptism into the faith may mean joy, but it can also mean conflict:  father against son, and daughter against mother, and all the rest.  Luke’s message, I think, matches that from Hebrews: Faithfulness in the journey, over the long arc of as life, is important.  It’s worth the cost, and the cost is significant.

Wrestling with Luke’s lesson through the week, I discovered, quite by accident, that Wendell Berry found it challenging, too.  Berry finally decides that here Luke shares a common gospel truth: life is both difficult and complex, or to use Berry’s word, life is about “mystery.” Here’s how Wendell Berry describes our difficult task of living the faith our scriptures describe:

“The Gospels, then, stand at the opening of a mystery in which our lives are deeply, dangerously, and inescapably involved.  This is a mystery that the Gospels can only partially reveal….  It is a mystery that we are condemned but also are highly privileged to live our way into, trusting properly that to our little knowledge greater knowledge may be revealed.  It is this privilege that should make us wary of any attempt to reduce faith to rigmarole of judgments and explanations, or to any sort of familiar talk about God.   …  Reality is large, and our minds are small.”^[vii]

“Living into” the mysterious life of faith described by the gospels is a challenge of a lifetime, because, as Berry says, our minds at their very best are barely able to keep up with the God who is so far beyond us. The Christian faith is a long, challenging journey, because the jungle is vast, because reality is large, and because life is long, tedious and quite often difficult. 

That being true, we may be thankful that we have each other.  We also have the gospels, which remind us that others have passed this way before.  And, together, we have God, without whom the journey would overwhelm, but with whom, well, we just might have a bit of hope, in spite of all we face along the way.

Let’s not lose heart, then.  But let us run, with perseverance, the race that is set before us.  Why? Because it’s there. And because we promised that we would.  And because Christ is beside us, all the way.

Amen.

Mamaroneck United Methodist, August 15, 2010.

Go to Top

© Copyright 2005 Mamaroneck United Methodist Church

546 East Boston Post Road, Mamaroneck,  New York 10543, (914) 698 4343