Live a New Life
21st Sunday after Pentecost (Commitment Sunday) – October 21, 2007
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5/Luke 18:1-8]

“Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always not to lose heart.”

Have you noticed the number of television programs that have the promise of a new life as their underlying premise? Think of all the various shows, and there are a ton of them: “Biggest Loser,” “Extreme Makeover,” “Extreme Makeover – Home Edition,” and the one on MTV, “I want a famous face.” That’s the one where people decide to make it in life they need to have plastic surgery so they look like someone famous. I understand that Kate Winslet cried when she learned someone wanted to have her face. I wonder what some of the people on the reality shows are thinking or praying as they go through their various ordeals? I wonder if finally getting something they want – like Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame – helps them at all on their way to a new life? I wonder if they ever give thought to the notion that, perhaps new life comes from the inside out? Rather than just making over the externals of our lives – whether our faces, our bodies or our homes – we make our lives new from the inside out and not the other way around.

I saw two films on Friday that addressed the hope of a new life – one I rented and the other I watched here. Both films dealt with coming to a renewed perspective on life and both, eventually, showed transformation comes from the inside out. The first movie was “Bruce Almighty.” I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not, but it certainly showcases the physical comedy skills of Jim Carrey. It also explores the “what if” world of many people who pray and pray thinking that they’re not heard. Just what would it be like if God did, indeed, give us exactly what we wanted, the ability to do just as we liked and what would the consequences be if God gave us that. What if God just said, “You’re in charge – at least of Buffalo. I’m on vacation.”? As God, played by Morgan Freeman – dressed in a white suit – does to Jim Carrey and he becomes “Bruce Almighty.” I have to confess, I laughed a great deal and the point is right out there. We’re not God and we certainly don’t always know what’s best for ourselves and less-so for the world around us.

The one I went to watch was “Evan Almighty,” which was shown here for the “drive-in movie” evening. (This, by the way, is a great time for all ages!) It’s a sequel to “Bruce” and shows news anchor turned Congressman Evan Baxter’s response to God’s answer to his reluctant prayer to “help me change the world.” Baxter, played by Steve Carrell (an equally fine physical comedian), encounters God again played by Morgan Freeman, and as he struggles with God he is slowly turned into a modern day Noah. His reaction, along with that of his family, his colleagues and the people around him is quite instructive. I can see, however, why it was panned by the critics. First, it’s entirely too wholesome and too value-centered. Second, it’s entirely too faith-friendly. Thirdly, it’s far more entertaining to see someone get to play God rather than see how difficult it can be when we, no matter how reluctantly, choose to follow what God is asking us to do. How sad.

As I thought about, prayed about and worked on this sermon, I have wondered just how to link “live a new life” with the Sunday that we talk about commitment to our church’s ministry through stewardship. I will tell you that it’s been very hard. I’ve thought about saying many different things today, but I’m just going to try to open the scripture to you as best I can and open my heart as well, as we talk about what it means to live a new life as a follower of Jesus Christ in this covenant community called First Congregational Church.

To my mind, it means that we first have to become people of prayer. I’ve talked about prayer before, but am going to be persistent in talking about it. One of the classic definitions of prayer is, “the raising of the mind and heart to God.” My favorite, which some of you should be able to quote by heart now, is from Theophane the Recluse, the Russian Bishop-saint of the nineteenth century. He defined prayer as “the placing of the mind in the heart before God and resting there.” Our Puritan ancestors had much to say about prayer, because they were people much given to heart religion – they knew how to pray. Thomas Watson said, “Prayer is the soul’s breathing itself into the bosom of its heavenly Father.” However, I think William Gurnall’s description even more aptly captures the relationship nature of prayer. “Praying,” he writes, “is the same to the new spiritual creature as crying is to the natural. The child is not learned by art or example to cry, but instructed by nature; it comes into the world crying. Praying is not a lesson got by forms and rules of art, but flowing from principles of new life itself.”

Prayer, then, is the natural thing for a Christian to do. As it is natural for us to talk to one another, to seek to relate our thoughts, our needs, our desires, and our love, so it is natural to pray. Prayer is our cry. Prayer is our speech. Which is why we shouldn’t worry about how we pray, but we should just get on with praying. When we pray it is just our hearts responding to God’s heart, to God’s expression of love and care for us. God says, “I will be with you.” When we pray, when we work to practice God’s presence in our daily lives by remembering the promise of presence, we’re saying to God, “I know you are with me…and I am with you.”

Luke’s gospel gives us the point of the parable right up front: “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” One storyteller says that this is normally not good practice, but that in this case it’s a plus and not a minus. Why? Because it lets us know what is most important without giving away the story. We know that the parable is about persistence in prayer. That said we have to remember that a parable is not an allegory. The woman seeking justice isn’t us and the unjust judge isn’t God. What this story does do is to invite us to apply its point to our lives. We’re to persevere, to be persistent in the face of indifference or, sometimes, even outright hostility, knowing that God is with us. If we want a new life we have to be persistent in doing what it takes to achieve it. And, we have to remember, as Soren Kierkegaard so wisely said, “Prayer doesn’t change God, it changes the one who prays.”

Kierkegaard’s point goes to the new life – prayer changes us from the inside out and our lives begin to reflect more and more God’s life in our world. So, how do we do this? Well, Christians have been trying to learn how to pray and to live authentically for centuries. It has been distilled into many books on prayer and Christian practice or living (often referred to as discipleship) as people have shared their experiences. What being a disciple means is seeking to live as a follower of Jesus Christ – which is who we say we are when we owned the covenant of this church or, for that matter, call ourselves “a Christian.”

The second letter to Timothy points out what is necessary to be authentic in that task – remember a good definition of authenticity is that you are what you claim to be. Paul says to Timothy, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” What we’re being told here is that we’re to be persistent in studying the Scripture (grow in the knowledge and expression of our faith) and then have it show in the way we live (reach out with compassion to those in need, treat each other with love and understanding, and return to God a portion of God’s gifts). If we believe what the Scripture teaches, then we should value it and if we value it, then it should show in how we support the work that goes on through the community of faith – the church.

I was reminded of prayer, value and commitment to new life while leading the recent Congregational Heritage Study-Tour to Britain. Visiting the places where our forebears lived and worshiped reminded me of the value they placed on being people of prayer, people of the Bible, free to worship God and to love the Lord Jesus with a passion unhindered by limitations imposed by the state church or the crown. It moved me, again, to stand at Fishtoft on “the Wash,” not far from Boston, where the Pilgrims first tried to leave for Holland four hundred years ago last month. They had walked miles, carrying everything they owned. Instead of a ship to take them to Holland, they found the “catchpoles,” the police, to take them to jail. Why? Because their desire to believe and to practice their faith freely violated the law and they broke the law gladly, rather than violate their commitment to that faith. I am reminded, too, of John Greenwood, John Penry and Henry Barrow who went to prison and eventually were executed and for what? For wanting to worship according to the Spirit’s leading and their consciences, rather than the dictate of the state; that’s our heritage. It is a heritage of persistence that bore fruit in the development of the American democratic experiment and in the Congregational Way. It was worth something to those people, they valued it so much they were willing to pay for it with their lives and now I wonder just what it is worth to us? What do we value now?

Over nine hundred people say that they “belong” to this church. I can tell you that there are many of them I’ve never laid eyes on in my tenure here. Some do show up from time-to-time for a baptism or a wedding. Some send along a pledge card or a contribution (one lady told me she did so she’d have a place to be buried from) and others, many others, give nothing to the support of this church. Many just expect that this church will just continue to be here when they need it, but, truth be told, we can’t count on that. I think many of you would be surprised at how few people give five thousand or more dollars a year to this church (a contribution of not quite a $100 per week, by the way). I will tell you – not to boast, but to lead by example – that my wife and I are in that number, but that we need more people to join us. And I will tell you that one or two deaths could drastically affect the financial health of this church. If we say that we are a part of this church, if we have owned the covenant, then we need to give serious attention to the financial support of the church, showing by our actions that we value what we say we believe.

To live a new life means being persistent in attuning ourselves to God’s life. It is time, dear friends, for us to strive to be faithful as the Lord’s free people and to worry less about being successful in terms of the consumer-driven culture around us. If we really believe, as followers of Jesus Christ, that what the Scripture teaches is true, that it is able to give new life and to transform us from the inside out then we best live like it. Our task is to be grounded, committed and persistent in the faith that has been passed on to us, one that was bought at a price. New life and commitment comes down to a question of authenticity. If we’re followers of Jesus Christ, if we’re living in covenant relationship does it show in how we live and does it make a difference in the world around us? If we’re not answering “yes,” then we need to be doing some serious soul-searching.

We live in a rapidly-changing and scarily challenging world, but that’s not new. I was reminded of this by an essay in Time that reflected on the launch of Sputnik and America’s entrance into the space race fifty years ago. I like what the author said, “There was no reason to make the bad guys badder; instead, we ought to make ourselves smarter.” The author talks about the emphasis on math and science that was then pushed in our schools and universities – those of us who grew up then should remember it vividly. He then says: “It’s impossible to resist comparing the America of 1957 with the America of 2007 – and finding the modern version wanting. There was a clear-eyed quality to the U.S. commitment to space and a frank understanding of what it would take to get there. This wasn’t an effort built on tax credits for willing industries or bipartisan ear-marking. It wasn’t a program financed by cooked books or off-budget accounting. Most important, it was sustained by appealing not to what scared us but rather to what elevated us. There’s no need to invoke WMD when you’ve got MIT.” (He’s referring to President Eisenhower’s appointment of the president of MIT to raise our scientific readiness as a nation.) [Jeffrey Kluger, “Space Brains” in Time, October 8, 2007, p. 80]

We rose to the challenge because we rallied to what elevated us, to what made us great as a people and as a nation – among them persistence and creativity. I appeal to you today to live a new life based on the truth of what we proclaim each week from this pulpit – the love of God made real for us in the transforming presence of the Risen Lord, Jesus Christ. I appeal to you today to commit to the value of that new life in how you live, how you support this church and how we work together to make it grow, prosper and be what God is calling it to be. That new life comes from the inside out; it’s different than anything else going on around us in popular culture and it doesn’t come from encountering Morgan Freeman is a white suite. The new life comes only when we are persistent in seeking God. I appeal to you, I challenge you – as I challenge myself -- to live a new life and in so doing be who you say you are, “a follower of Jesus Christ.” Living the new life will make a difference for you and for the world – it has and it can again.