Judges and the law are a prominent theme in this week’s lectionary texts, with Jesus telling a parable in the gospel reading about a poor widow stubbornly seeking justice from an “unjust” judge, while the pericope from Psalm 119 displays a reverence for the wisdom of God’s law. We ostensibly have a deep respect in America for the rule of law... but in practice we tend to have a much more contentious attitude toward our legal system than the Psalmist had for God’s law -- as the product of inherently flawed human beings, we are all too aware of all the shortcomings of human laws. Yet as a society we accept the final say of the Supreme Court in civic matters. There may be a great deal of contentiousness over the wisdom of its rulings -- and, like the widow in Jesus’ parable, we may continually argue and petition before the court for redress to injustice (real or imagined)... something we are reminded of as the Court’s new term gets underway this month. Our greatest hope is that the Court will rule with compassion and understanding, and that the precedent it sets in landmark cases will grant justice -- like God -- to those “who cry to him.”
But as team member Mary Austin points out in this installment of The Immediate Word, there is a vast difference between secular human laws and God’s law. The new Supreme Court term may yield decisions that significantly alter legal precedent and affect our lives, God’s law is immutable and unchanging -- and unlike our legal system, where justice is often dependent on the quality of legal representation that we can afford, God’s law not only rewards faithfulness and patience but also welcomes in and applies to everyone... including the “least of these” (even poor widows).
Team member Dean Feldmeyer shares some additional thoughts on the Jeremiah text and its foretelling of the coming new covenant. This new covenant is to replace the old covenant that has become irretrievably broken due to the people’s faithlessness. Dean points out the parallels to our lives, in which it is often necessary to sweep out endlessly repeating patterns of behavior that have become too comfortable and dysfunctional. In order to clear a path for something new, we have to clearly and intentionally change the way things are done. And, Dean notes, this applies to almost every area of our lives... including our churches. If we are to create space for the new, we have to come to terms with the imperative to remove that which is no longer working... even if it forces us out of our comfort zones.
Oh, How I Love Your Law!
by Mary Austin
Psalm 119:97-104; Luke 18:1-8
The Supreme Court began its new term on October 7, and the cases on its docket in the coming months will look at campaign finance limits, prayer at public meetings, fair housing, and the question of what exactly is a congressional recess. Even with much of the federal government still sidelined, the Court is considered essential and is hard at work hearing arguments.
The beginning of the session invites a look at the differences between human laws and God’s law, which is praised by the Psalmist. “Oh, how I love your law,” the Psalmist prays, honoring the divine law -- but we rarely feel that enthusiasm for human laws.
In the News
It’s easier to think about following God’s laws than our human ones.
We know our own blind spots, and our flawed ability to judge each other. We can’t help but notice that the same subjectivity creeps into our justice system. We see the influence of money on the making of our laws, and chafe at the injustice built into the justice system. In Congress and state legislatures, the influence of well-paid, skillful lobbyists means that business groups can shape laws favorable to their interests. As it is often said, “No one lobbies for the poor.” When the laws meet real life, people with access to attorneys fare much better in court than those with public defenders. Even the Supreme Court has been criticized for being partisan, and recent decisions like the one on campaign financing have diminished the prestige of the court. The 2010 Citizens United decision opened the way for unlimited campaign funding from corporations, without the requirement for disclosure in some circumstances.
This year’s court docket includes another case about campaign financing, among other things. As NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports, “The docket this year has nothing quite as riveting as last year’s same-sex marriage cases, or the challenge to President Obama’s health care overhaul from the term before. But once again, the court is facing hot-button social issues and questions of presidential and congressional power. Moreover, in a half-dozen cases the court’s current conservative majority could well overturn long-established legal precedents.” Affirmative action is again on the docket, as are restrictions on abortion and a question about public prayer.
Looking at long-established law, this past summer Attorney General Eric Holder proposed a large-scale overhaul in sentences for drug-related crimes. With the overcrowding of federal prisons, many of them filled with people convicted of lower-level drug crimes, the government is seeking to reduce the stress on the prisons’ overtaxed capacity by diverting many of those low-level non-violent offenders to other programs rather than just warehousing them with more hardened, violent criminals. As the Washington Times reports, “Federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent above capacity and hold more than 219,000 inmates -- with almost half of them serving time for drug-related crimes and many of them with substance use disorders. In addition, 9 million to 10 million prisoners go through local jails each year.” The different sentences handed out for crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine have long been decried as racist, and Holder proposed changes in how low-level drug offenders not connected with any organized group are treated. He cited the efforts of 17 states, which are reallocating money from prisons to drug treatment programs and community-based rehabilitation. His proposal raises the interesting question of if the law is served better when we follow the intention of it -- deterrence and rehabilitation -- instead of following it to the letter.
The fickle nature of our human laws is evident in different sentencing guidelines for similar crimes, and also in how sentences are actually handed out. The Wall Street Journal wrote earlier this year about disparities in prison sentences given to convicted criminals, with large differences between sentences given to white men and men of color. As the Journal wrote: “Prison sentences of black men were nearly 20% longer than those of white men for similar crimes in recent years, an analysis by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found. That racial gap has widened since the Supreme Court restored judicial discretion in sentencing in 2005.... In its report, the commission recommended that federal judges give sentencing guidelines more weight, and that appeals courts more closely scrutinize sentences that fall beyond them.” The report stopped short of finding racism in the courts, but it did find substantial differences in how different citizens are treated. The frailty of our human ability to dispense justice is always on display.
In the Scriptures
In contrast, God’s law has a perfection that we can only hope for in our own quest for order and justice.
Psalm 119 is famous for its length -- 176 verses -- and its structure, with each of the 22 stanzas beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, in order. Fittingly for a Psalm about the law, it’s one of the most orderly of the Psalms in its structure. As Howard Wallace writes, “The alphabetic acrostic structure could indicate either that this psalm provides the A-Z of torah or that torah is complete and wholly adequate for the life of the faithful.” Either way, the Psalm finds a fullness in God’s law that we find missing in laws made by human beings.
For the Psalmist, the law of God is a daily companion: “Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long” (v. 97). The Psalm reminds us that the law of God is the guide for all of life, living deeply in us as we move toward God. It has a fullness beyond a list of things to do or not do. Human laws are meant to rein us in, but God’s law is designed to bring us into harmony with the Creator who gave us life. As Nancy deClaissé-Walford writes for Working Preacher, “the instruction of Yahweh is not presented as a strict set of rules and regulations, but a way of life or approach to being that brings one closer to God. The psalmist repeatedly implores God to ‘cause me to live’ (vv. 25, 37, 40, 77, 88, 107, 144, 149, 154, 156, 159) because of the torah, that is the instruction, the decree, the precept, the ordinance, the words, the promise, the statute, the commandment -- because of all of the teachings of God for the good of humankind.”
Like human law, God’s law gives order to life, but it’s an order than comes from within instead of being imposed on us.
In the Sermon
We all choose all the time which laws to follow, and which to break. We remember the big laws, and try not to kill each other or steal... other than the occasional post-it note from the office, perhaps. Many of us regularly ignore the speed limit (myself included!) and choose to drive at the speed of the other traffic. I was a little shocked recently to be pulled over in Detroit, where I work. I was driving too fast, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the police officers had better things to do -- the law I broke seemed so much less important than the laws other people were breaking right at that very minute.
If we're selective with human laws, do we pick and choose with God’s laws too? The Psalm invites us to wonder what laws of God’s we follow, and which ones we choose to break. How do we decide? And how can we see the law of God as a means of grace, a tool to live with greater integrity and faithfulness?
Is it “the law” of God? Is it one seamless whole, giving us a single path for living? Or are there many laws, composing a law book of the Lord as it were, which is updated from time to time? We no longer follow many of the rules and regulations of the Hebrew scriptures -- have we lost a deeper connection with God that comes from having those boundaries around our everyday life, and from having to think about God as we cook, enter the house, and observe the Sabbath? Or have we been set free from a burdensome list of outdated rules? And if so, what have we done with our freedom?
Politicians regularly urge that public buildings display the Ten Commandments, hoping that the posted reminder will inspire us all to behave better. The sermon might consider whether this would be helpful or not. Is this the law of God, or is there more to it if we want to live as faithful Christians? What do we make of Jesus saying that he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it? How is his instruction alive in us, or not?
SECOND THOUGHTS
Deep Changes and Necessary Endings
by Dean Feldmeyer
Jeremiah 31:27-34
I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors?
-- Jeremiah 31:31b-32a
I didn’t really quit smoking. I was delivered from it by a really bad case of bronchitis.
I coughed and coughed and moaned and groaned -- and after two weeks, when I finally stopped coughing, I had lost my taste for tobacco. I just didn’t feel like smoking any more.
But I missed the rituals of the pipe smoker. I missed the feel of the pipe in my teeth. I missed fiddling with it as I filled it and packed it just right so it wasn’t too tight or too loose. I missed that contented feeling that smoking gave me. And I missed not having something to do in those times when I customarily smoked my pipe.
Eventually, it occurred to me that if I was going to remain a non-smoker I was going to have to give up more than smoking. I was going to have to eschew those habits and activities and behavior patterns that were part of my smoking ritual.
Unless I did that, I would not be a non-smoker. I’d just be a smoker who wasn’t smoking, and it would only be a matter of time before I started down that self-destructive path again.
***
The Washington budget battles have become like a familiar (if awkward) old dance.
Everyone knows the steps. The patterns of behavior have been established. The rituals have become as ingrained as those of a heavy smoker, a hopeless alcoholic, or a degenerate gambler.
Proposals are met with derision and rejections, which are met with insults and threats.
One side blames the other, which reflects the blame back again. Everyone watches the polls to see who is gaining and who is losing. Everyone, that is, except those few who don’t care about anything except keeping their narrow constituency happy so they can get re-elected. They have convinced themselves that they are Samson among the Philistines, ready to bring the house down upon themselves if they must.
One cannot help being reminded of that terribly ironic anonymous sentence that became emblematic of the Vietnam War: “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” It would seem that there those who are willing to say the same of our country.
***
In our churches we hang on to programs and events that have long since lost their meaning, the purpose of which none of us can recall. We perform rituals that divide us more than unite us, we do what is comfortable and familiar instead of what is effective, and we prize convenience more than authenticity.
Destructive behavior patterns are ignored or, worse, enabled, for fear of offending a bully or hurting the feelings of the most dysfunctional members of the church. Unless churches can become capable of deep change and necessary endings, we are in danger of simply repeating the behaviors that have threatened to undo us, and of becoming as ineffective and feckless as Congress.
***
Self-destructive, dysfunctional behavior patterns do not just go away. They must be changed. They must be intentionally and definitively ended.
In Jeremiah’s account of the fall of Judah to the Babylonian army of Nebuchadnezzar and the subsequent Babylonian captivity of the Hebrew people, the people are filled with despair as they sit by the rivers of Babylon, singing sad songs of their lost and beloved Zion.
But when they dwelled in Judah they were not able to break out of their self-destructive behavior patterns. The dance was established and seemingly unending. God reaches out to the people. The people accept God’s offer of a special covenant. The people break the covenant and suffer the consequences. Then God forgives them and the dance starts all over again.
But now God has seen the futility of this dance. It’s time for a change. Not a small or incremental change, but deep change. It’s time not for an adjustment, but for an ending so that there can be a new beginning.
It’s time for a new covenant.
***
Two books written primarily for readers in the business community may be helpful in considering these types of deep changes and necessary endings in our careers, our personal lives, and in our churches.
In Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within(Jossey-Bass, 1996), Robert E. Quinn talks about our reluctance to admit that sometimes deep, profound, immediate change is necessary for the survival of an organization, be it a business, a personal relationship, or a church. Gradual or incremental change can often be just another name for slow death, but our fear of change, our lack of vision or energy, keep us from making deep changes that, while they may be temporarily painful, are vitally necessary.
In Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships that All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward(HarperBusiness, 2010), Dr. Henry Cloud reminds his readers that every new beginning requires an ending, and if we are too afraid or otherwise unable to face endings, we are likely to find ourselves stuck in dysfunctional and ineffective behavior patterns.
This is as true in our churches and our personal relationships as it is in our businesses and careers. In order to progress and grow, we may from time to time come upon situations or relationships that we must end. As Cloud puts it:
Whether we like it or not, endings are a part of life. They are woven into the fabric of life itself, both when it goes well, and also when it doesn’t. On the good side of life, for us to ever get to a new level, a new tomorrow, or the next step, something has to end. Life has seasons, stages, and phases. For there to be anything new, old things always have to end, and we have to let go of them. Infancy gives rise to toddlerhood, and must be forever shunned in order to get to the independence that allows a child to thrive. Later, childhood itself must be given up for people to become the adults that they were designed to be.
Getting to the next level always requires ending something, leaving it behind, and moving on. Growth itself demands that we move on. Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them. (p. 6)
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Ron Love:
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Henry Bushkin, Johnny Carson’s personal friend and attorney for nearly two decades, recently wrote a biography of the one-time king of late night television. Bushkin wrote this about Carson’s on-stage audience appeal: “He was not confessional, he was never mean, and he almost never made his audiences uncomfortable.” But when Carson was not before the camera, according to Bushkin, he was “remote, moody, petulant... ultimately a spoiled little boy who used his talent and increasingly enormous wealth to have his way in just about every circumstance.”
Application: To have the law written on one’s heart is to have it seen at all times and in all places, not just when it is personally advantageous.
*****
Jeremiah 31:27-34
An 11-year-old boy from Colville, Washington, was recently convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. The fifth grader said that a 10-year-old female classmate was “really annoying” him, so he brought a knife and .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol to Fort Colville Elementary School, and hatched a plan to murder her in class. The boy has yet to be sentenced. Judge Allen Nielsen called the trial “the most serious of my career.” The prosecutor, Tim Rasmussen, said, “There is no joy in this conviction.”
Application: There was no joy in the heart of God when He had to first pronounce judgment on Israel.
*****
Luke 18:1-8
Whether he likes it or not, Donald E. Miller Jr. of Fostoria, Ohio, is legally dead. Donald, now 61, disappeared in 1986, walking away from the mother of his children in order to keep from paying child support. During those missing years, he worked in Georgia and Florida. But also during those years of absenteeism, his ex-wife Robin Miller had Donald declared dead in 1994 so that she could collect Social Security. Deciding to return to and reside in Ohio, Donald needed to reactivate his Social Security number in order to get a driver’s license. But to his chagrin, Miller discovered that Ohio law does not allow the declaration of death to be reversed. Judge Allan Davis told Miller, “I don’t know where that leaves you, but you’re still deceased as far as the law is concerned.”
Application: We are to be persistent, but persistence must be refined to those things that are just and proper.
*****
2 Timothy 3:14--4:5
Carol Middleton is a martial arts expert and the director of the Washington, D.C., Self Defense Karate Association. Recently she had her pursed snatched. When she filed her police report, the officers kept asking Middleton why she didn’t use her acquired skills to defend herself. She responded that she knew nothing about the man and his background, and that she did not attempt to stop him because she did not want to get killed. An investigation subsequently revealed that the perpetrator who accosted Middleton shoots and kills anyone who resists him. In a Washington Post article, the message that Middleton stressed is that “Everyone is vulnerable. It’s important that everybody gets that. Nobody is invulnerable, and, therefore, trust your instincts.”
*****
2 Timothy 3:14--4:5
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made headlines when in an interview with New York magazine he told interviewer Jennifer Senior that “I even believe in the Devil.” When Senior countered with disbelief, the Justice went on to say, “You’re looking at me as though I’m weird.... It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil!”
Application: We need to continue to hold forth the message of the Scriptures.
***************
From team member Leah Lonsbury:
Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119:97-104
In war-torn Afghanistan, jobs can be hard to come by. So can meals. That’s why Afghani Sayed Gul has taken up the business of buying and selling voter cards. It’s a “thriving industry” according to Hamid Shalizi of Reuters. Gul told Shalizi that he is able to buy voter cards from villagers for 200 Pakistani rupees (about $1.89 in American dollars) and sell them to campaign managers for 500 rupees (approximately $4.73). Those managers are then able to use the cards to cast “legal” votes, because they are in cohorts with polling officials.
Gul’s profit ($2.84) is enough to provide him with a hearty meal, like kebabs with rice. He might even be able to afford a soda to top things off.
With the presidential election still months away, questions are already being asked about how legitimate an election made up of this kind of trade can possibly be. These questions are followed by more questions about how a fraudulent election process could play into the hands of the Taliban, risking a government breakdown as international troops pull out of war-torn Afghanistan.
“When people buy and sell voter cards for the cost of lunch, it means that Afghan democracy is for sale,” said Azizullah Ludin, who was the chairman of the Afghan election watchdog in 2009 and is now himself running for president.
How does this kind of disregard for human law show up in our own culture? How is it apparent in our systems of government and with our elected officials? How different it is from the law the Psalmist sings so lovingly about and that which God covenants to write on the people’s hearts? How do we account for the difference? How and when do we treat God’s law like the sale of a voter card? If not kebabs and rice, what’s our price?
*****
Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119:97-104
When considering the ending of the old, repeatedly broken covenant and the beginning a new, more organic (as in a natural part of who we are together and with God) covenant that is written on or woven throughout our hearts, Barbara Brown Taylor’s Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith (HarperOne, 2006) might provide some illumination:
All these years later, the way many of us are doing church is broken and we know it, even if we do not know what to do about it. We proclaim the priesthood of all believers while we continue living with hierarchical clergy, liturgy, and architecture. We follow a Lord who challenged the religious and political institutions of his time while we fund and defend our own. We speak and sing of divine transformation while we do everything in our power to maintain our equilibrium. If redeeming things continue to happen to us in spite of these deep contradictions in our life together, then I think that is because God is faithful even when we are not....
Reynolds Price, who is one of my favorite novelists, now writes from a wheelchair because of a rare spinal cancer that almost killed him twenty years ago. His compelling book about that experience is called A Whole New Life, in which he evokes the healing vision of Jesus that he believes saved his life. While Price survived both the cancer and its cure, he was not able to avoid death altogether. “When you undergo huge traumas in middle life, everybody is in league with us to deny that the old life is ended,” he said in an interview in the Oxford Review. “Everybody is trying to patch us up and get us back to who we were, when in fact what we need to be told is, You’re dead. Who are you going to be tomorrow?” (pgs. 220-221)
*****
Luke 18:1-8
Philadelphia Daily News columnist Helen Ubinas tells about a group of feisty ladies who plotted and carried out an ambush of sorts on Philadelphia’s mayor when he was in their neighborhood for the dedication of a new basketball court. After the ceremony, as the mayor walked to his car they gave him an earful about, and then an eyeful of, their neighborhood’s problems and their struggles to get anyone in city government to act to remedy the problems.
Within hours of their conversation, a busted-up house right next door to where a grandmother was raising her six grandchildren had a crew at it starting demolition.
Exactly a week later, residents awoke to the sound of trucks rolling in to fix the busted-up streets about which the ladies had bent the mayor’s ear.
Ubinas writes of one the ladies’ response to the long-awaited progress...
Joetta Johnson called me first thing that morning to let me know they were there.
“They’re fixing the street,” she said. “It’s a miracle.”
A miracle: It’s interesting how often residents who have to fight for basic services use that term when they finally break through the bureaucratic iron curtain that separates city residents and the agencies that are supposed to help them. Miracle, my foot....
As happy as I was for these women, I wondered why it so often takes shaming city officials or agencies to get things done around here. Some residents are lucky, or relentless, enough to get the mayor or a reporter’s ear. Many more are not. So, are they just out there in the wind waiting on their own miracle? In a city with increasing needs and decreasing resources, miracles are less about divine intervention and more about persistence and creativity... and persistence.
What if the miracles we’re waiting on require our persistence and creativity... and persistence? What if the justice we are waiting for God to grant (v. 7) requires our own miraculous cooperation in the form of persistence and creativity... and persistence? What can we learn from the widow about this kind of pestering-driven miracle?
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: Oh, how we love your law! It is our meditation all day long.
People: Your commandment makes us wise, for it is always with us.
Leader: We hold back our feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word.
People: We do not turn away from your ordinances, for you have taught me.
Leader: How sweet are your words to our taste, sweeter than honey to our mouths!
People: Through your precepts we get understanding; therefore we hate every false way.
OR
Leader: Come and give praise to our life-giving God.
People: We praise our God, who brings us life through the law.
Leader: Come and learn the way of grace found in God’s instructions.
People: We open our hearts to God’s gracious teaching.
Leader: Come and learn, that we might share God’s good news.
People: We have found life in God, and desire to share that life with others.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
“He Leadeth Me, O Blessed Thought”
found in:
UMH: 128
AAHH: 142
NNBH: 235
CH: 545
LBW: 501
W&P: 499
AMEC: 395
“Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”
found in:
UMH: 127
H82: 690
PH: 281
AAHH: 138, 139, 140
NNBH: 232
NCH: 18, 19
CH: 622
LBW: 343
ELA: 618
W&P: 501
AMEC: 52, 53, 65
“Word of God, Come Down on Earth”
found in:
UMH: 182
H82: 633
ELA: 510
“If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee”
found in:
UMH: 142
H82: 635
PH: 282
NCH: 410
LBW: 453
ELA: 769
W&P: 429
“Make Me a Captive, Lord”
found in:
UMH: 421
PH: 378
“Lead Me, Lord”
found in:
UMH: 473
AAHH: 145
NNBH: 341
CH: 593
Renew: 175
“Lead On, O King Eternal”
found in:
UMH: 580
PH: 447, 448
AAHH: 477
NNBH: 415
NCH: 573
CH: 632
LBW: 495
ELA: 805
W&P: 508
AMEC: 177
“Here, O My Lord, I See Thee”
found in:
UMH: 623
H82: 318
PH: 520
NCH: 336
CH: 416
LBW: 211
AMEC: 531
“Shine, Jesus, Shine”
found in:
CCB: 81
Renew: 247
“All I Need Is You”
found in:
CCB: 100
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African-American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who gives the Law as a way to life and salvation: Grant us the faith to heed your words of wisdom that we may know life in its fullness and the wholeness of salvation; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We have come to praise you, O God, and to listen to your Word. We dwell upon your Law, knowing it is given in love as a guide to life. Help us to hear it and to heed it. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins, and especially our desire to skirt the law, even God’s Law.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We look to our laws as obstacles to be sidestepped or just ignored. We want them around when they seem to be to our advantage, and we flaunt them when they hinder our pursuit of pleasure and wealth. We have used this attitude with God’s laws as well. We are happy to apply them to others. We are happy to sing the praises of those laws that don’t affect us or place any restraints on us. We are also happy to ignore or explain away those laws that we don’t want to follow. Forgive us our self-centeredness, and empower us with your Spirit to live fully into your reign as we obey your law. Amen.
Leader: God gives us the Law to guide us into life. God welcomes us with love, grace, and forgiveness so that we may find abundant joy.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord’s Prayer)
We come in awe into your presence, O God, knowing that you have given us your Law as a guide to life. In love and compassion you have set out the way to wholeness and joy.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We look to our laws as obstacles to be sidestepped or just ignored. We want them around when they seem to be to our advantage, and we flaunt them when they hinder our pursuit of pleasure and wealth. We have used this attitude with God’s laws as well. We are happy to apply them to others. We are happy to sing the praises of those laws that don’t affect us or place any restraints on us. We are also happy to ignore or explain away those laws that we don’t want to follow. Forgive us our self-centeredness, and empower us with your Spirit to live fully into your reign as we obey your law.
We give you thanks for the ways in which you have guided us and directed us into the way of abundant life. We thank you for those faithful ones who have shared your way with us and who have opened their lives to us so that we could learn more of your loving law.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for your children in their need. We pray for those, including ourselves, who have strayed from your path and have ignored your law. We pray for those who cannot seem to find their way back to you. We pray that our love, our care, and our lives may all be used as means of helping them be found again by you.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father . . . Amen.
(or if the Lord’s Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
Play a game with the children that they know... but don’t follow the rules. When the children call you on it or show signs of frustration, ask them what is wrong. Talk about how laws are made so that we can all get along. God’s laws not only help us get along but help us find true joy. God’s laws aren’t mean but are loving ways in which God cares for us... in some ways like the rules our parents have about not running out into the street.
CHILDREN’S SERMON
Keep on Asking
Luke 18:1-8
Object: candy (have it hidden but accessible)
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus tells us a story about a mean judge who wouldn’t give a poor widow what she deserved. This woman kept asking and asking the judge until finally he got tired of listening to her and gave her what she wanted. Jesus told this story to show us that we should never get tired of asking God for what we need. After all, if a mean judge would finally give in to this woman, shouldn’t we expect God who loves us and wants the best for us to give us what we need? (Let the children answer.)
It is important to remember that God will always give us what we need and not necessarily what we want. For instance, we might pray for a new bike or something like that for years, and still not get it if God doesn’t think we need it. God knows better than we do what we need, and He does want us to have what we need. Jesus is telling us to keep praying to God as often as we can and don’t give up. God wants us to keep praying to show that we trust and believe in Him -- and when the time is right, He will answer our prayer in His own way.
Let’s see if we can show you how this might work. Suppose that candy is something that you need right now. We all know that you really don’t need candy, but would any of you like to have some? (Let them answer.) Okay, let’s just say that candy is something we need. We don’t really need it; we just want it. But we’ll pretend that it’s really something we need. Let’s all say a prayer that God will show us where to find some candy. (The prayers can be silent or spoken, depending on what you want. Just let the prayers go on long enough to make the point.)
Okay, that’s enough praying. We were persistent in our prayers, and I think God would like us to have some candy. __________, go to __________ and see what you find there (send one child to find the candy).
Well, here’s the candy. Most prayers aren’t answered that fast, and that’s what we need to remember. Keep on praying! God is listening, and He may want you to pray for a long time before He gives you His answer. Keep praying and don’t give up. Now, let’s say another prayer.
Prayer: Dear God: We thank You so much for answering our prayers. Forgive us when we are impatient, and help us to keep on praying. Amen.
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The Immediate Word, October 20, 2013, issue.
Copyright 2013 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
