A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on July 29, 2007, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            I had only been a parish priest for about two years when I was appointed chair of the diocesan college work commission.  It was a big job.  The diocese in which I was then serving covered a third of New York State , had over 60 colleges, and no budget for college work.  I worked at this commission for three years trying to get struggling parishes to reach out to college students, but barely succeeded in getting the twelve volunteers who served as commission members to come to meetings.  When a new bishop was elected, I figured it was a good time to resign, so I called the bishop, went to see him in person and told him I wanted out.  He asked why, and I said was frustrated.  The job was too big, the resources were too small and the commitment and drive from the commission members wasn’t sufficient to get anything done.  The bishop’s response as he accepted my resignation was a smug comment on my frustration: “One of the things you’re going to learn in parish ministry is that nobody cares as much as you do.” Now, in fairness, I’ve got to say that the new bishop was probably pretty frustrated, too, and may have meant something like, “Ministry is inherently frustrating.” But what he said was this ominous, “You’ll learn that nobody cares as much as you do.”

            I’m happy to say that the bishop was wrong.  One thing I have learned in 27 years of parish ministry is that people care a great deal.  A lot of people resign from church jobs—some people stop going to church for a while—a lot of people get disillusioned—but not for lack of caring.  Just the reverse.  The parish ministry I know is peopled with those who care a lot, and a lot of us have a lot on our plates.  People deal with their own and loved ones’ health crises, are working with aging parents who need care, are wrestling with addictions, and are worried sick about their jobs, just to mention a few things people care about.  Along the way, I also see that the same people are passionately concerned about those who are hungry or homeless, are disgusted by never-ending warfare and deeply concerned about impending environmental crises—just to mention a few more things people care about.  The problem for most of is not that we don’t care as much as the next person.  The problem for most of us is that we do care, and we do care very deeply.  But from time to time we just plain get frustrated and tired.

            Jesus seems to have understood us very well.  When he taught his disciples to pray, he gave them a set prayer—the same one we still use so often you’d think we’d get tired of it—and it includes all the impossible situations that form the basis of our lives:

“Your kingdom come on earth,” even though it surely isn’t happening very fast; “Give us our daily bread,” even while millions go hungry; “Forgive us our sins,” even though forgiveness is a rare event.  Jesus gives his friends this set prayer for the things that seem impossible or unlikely and then he says that the important thing about praying for these things is that we keep at it, that we do it even if we don’t see immediate results.  Keep at it, he says, because that’s how the Holy Spirit worms her way into our hearts.

            Pastor and author Tom Long tells about a congregation learning this lesson of persistence.  Long served a church in Princeton that became inflamed with a desire to do something about the problem of hunger in nearby Trenton .  The congregation decided to keep their focus on hunger by singing a special offertory hymn each Sunday while people filed up to the altar with their special donations to be used to combat hunger.  Week after week they took up the collection and did what they could with the proceeds, but eventually the congregation was overwhelmed with the magnitude of the need and the inadequacy of their response.  As they were about to discontinue their efforts out of frustration there came the Sunday when one of Princeton’s few homeless bag ladies showed up for service.  When they got to the special offering for the homeless, the tattered woman left in her pew the plastic bags in which she carried all her possessions, and walked down the aisle to the platter that contained the offering for hunger.  About half expected that the woman would pocket some of the offering for her own needs, but nobody was expecting what actually happened.  The woman put nothing in the plate, but knelt before it and prayed.  Long says that the woman’s action became for him an eloquent parable of our lives as caring people. Our resources are often very meager.  Our results are often much slower than we can imagine.  We do what we can anyway.  We give what we can.  And then we pray.

            Tom Long’s parable and Jesus’ parable say the same thing to me:  our persistence changes things.  It is all too easy in the midst of our frustration to stop caring.  All too easy, as my former bishop seems to have, to believe the lie that nobody much seems to care.  The evidence of my eyes, the evidence of this congregation—and hundreds like it—is that our persistent belief changes things.  The Lord’s Prayer seems to describe what Verna Dozier calls “the dream of God:” the day when earth resembles heaven, all God’s children eat, and we all forgive each other.  Persistently praying the dream of God changes things.  It changes the world around us.  Little by little we help each other: feed each other and cease our warring ways.  But most of all, persistently praying the dream of God changes us, makes us more loving people.  That is how God imparts to each of us the gift of God’s Holy Spirit.

                                                                                                            AMEN