More than a Sunday Drive
Luke 18: 1-8
Dr. Charles J. Tomlin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
October 17, 2010, Proper 24C
A couple of years ago, a woman was driving her Nissan Altima down Interstate 96 in Michigan. Reaching for a pack of gum in her pocket, she took her eyes from the road for a couple of seconds. All of a sudden, a voice, speaking with urgency, said, "Not, Not, Not." Yanking her attention back to the road, the woman realized that her car had started to drift across the solid white line to the right. She quickly corrected and went safely on her way.
That woman was grateful for the warning, but there was nobody in the car to thank. The alert had been generated by a device she was field-testing. The gadget was designed to warn drivers about road departures and lane shifting. Right now, the Lane Departure Warning System called AutoVue, may soon become a standard safety feature on cars, just as the seat beat or the air bag. Not only can your car warn you about drifting, but it can also warn you about entering curves that are too fast, or about following too close.
Developing more sophisticated warning systems is good, but it is also likely that some drivers will ignore or disconnect these cautionary sounds just like many did with the first “seat-belt” warning systems. One MIT technology director commented, "We tend to be optimistic about the technology, but we know so little about the human element." (As quoted by Stan Purdam’s from the article by Al Karr, "Savvy Safety Systems Are Developed for Cars," The Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2004, D8.)
In this final “Fruit of the Spirit” called “Self-Control” (KJV “Temperance), we consider the most “human element” of our “earth-bound” spiritual lives. God has given us “the road” or “the way” to “steer” our lives to safety (or salvation). Through Jesus Christ God has engineered our spiritual lives, by giving us the initial fruit of love, joy, and peace in the forgiveness of our sins. Now, with Jesus as our example, we can follow him on this “new road” by staying the course that enables us to continue bearing the fruit of patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and humility. But now, as we come to the end of this discussion the question arises: How do we “stay on this very fruitful road”?
Thinking in terms of a driving analogy; traveling on any “road” means that we must keep from being distracted, keep from losing focus, and from losing control of the “wheel” of this new “car” (or life) we’ve been a licensed to drive. We can’t just keep crying out “Jesus to take the wheel” when God has just put the “steering wheel” into our own hands. We must learn to “drive” our own lives with God’s help and guidance. Biblically speaking, we must “work our own salvation in fear and trembling” so that we watch for the warnings signals and keep our eyes on the road with our hands firmly on the wheel. Today’s text from Luke 18, gives us a powerful example of a woman, who put her life in “drive”, stayed focused and arrived at her destination, even though the odds were definitely against her. This powerless widow gained the ability to shape her own future through her own persistence, through her continued focus and through her ability to stay the course until she reached her destination. She wasn’t driving a car, but you can’t miss the “drive” in her story that makes the main point: “If we keep stay on the “right” course, if we maintain control, our mere persistence will affect the final outcome.”
YOU MUST PUT YOUR LIFE IN “DRIVE”
Before we look at how this widow achieved her “outcome”, let’s consider her “impossible” situation as Jesus described it. Someone was mistreating her. We don’t know who or what, but what we do know t to know, is that this woman’s “situation” was out of her control. Her only recourse was to go to a judge, and here she found an even greater obstacle: the judge didn’t care about God, justice or anybody. Her situation appeared hopeless.
So many things in life are out of our control too. There is so much injustice, unfairness and negative energy in our world right now that growing any worthwhile spiritual fruit can seem hopeless. And not only do we have to face difficulties along the way of life, but we can become our own worst enemy. I heard Tony Dungy make this comment about one of the football games last weekend. He said, “Any NFL football team can win, if they don’t put themselves out of the game.”
Much life is about simply staying in the game and staying the course. To use our “driving” analogy, it’s not the curves in the road or our ability to navigate them that prevent us from reaching the destination, but the greatest cause of accidents will always be “the human element.” This “human element” in safe driving is determined by how well we keep ourselves focused and undistracted and keep our eyes on the road. In other words, the fault of most “accidents” is not road, but is the driver. What Jesus liked about this woman is that she does not let the situation determine her, but she is “driven” to determine the outcome of her situation. She stays focused, and she never stops moving ahead on the right road, driving the in the right direction. If we want to arrive alive; so should must we.
All of us can imagine people who have lost focus in life and crash. I don’t have to think long about some very visible examples, and the very gifted movie young star Lindsey Lohan comes to mind. She is a young woman has so much “star power” and “potential,” but now seems powerless to crash into her own addictions and vices. I could also think of Heath Ledger whose own wrong choices put his own very young, strong, body in such a weakened state that he could not even take cold medicine without it killing him. My mind immediately goes to the current scandal surrounding football legend, Brett Farve. Farve is the only “grandfather” playing football, but, if reports are true, he still struggles not to be a “child” of his own passions.
What we can see in these celebrities, in very visible ways, is the risk for any or all of us. In other words, you can’t just keep blaming your “outcome” in life on the way things are, on the business, on the territory, nor on the “moment” you’ve been placed in, but life finally comes down “taking control of yourself” even in the “uncontrollable” situations you must face. We all need to learn to keep our eyes on the road. We can’t run our lives in “neutral”, but we have to know how to put our lives in “drive” and to keep our focus.
YOU CAN’T ARRIVE WHERE YOU DON’T DRIVE
How do we describe this woman’s persistence and “drive” to “take” control when life was so out of control around her? How did she “make” this unjust judge hear her case?
I love how one Bible translation, (the McDonald Idiomatic translation) expresses this woman’s “persistence” and her “continual coming” and “worrying” this judge as “driving him up the wall”. When you “drive” someone up a wall, you are so focused, so unrelenting, so intent on not giving up, that you do the driving and you don’t let anyone or anything else drive you. In fact, the Greek word used for “continual” is she knew exactly where she was going---the word used here is telos, or Greek for reaching for the goal. The point is this: When you know where you want “arrive” in life, then you can put your life into “drive”, stay focused, and not stop until you get there. It might sound silly to say, but you definitely can’t arrive where you are not driving. How many people lose their way because they don’t really know where they are suppose to going in their lives? Instead of “driving” they start “drifting” and this is where the trouble starts.
Don’t miss this connection between “driving” and “knowing where you are going”. To have “self-control” is deciding in your heart, even before you take the road, where you need to go. You don’t decide in the moment, but you decide before you take the wheel that you will not take your focus off the road until arrive at your destination. Even if you “dogged-stubborn” persistence drives others crazy, like this woman did, you keep driving and you don’t drift and you don’t stop. You may not always get everywhere you want to go, but one thing for sure, you’ll never get anywhere until you know exactly where it is you should go.
Take this example from Captain “Chesley” Sullenberger who successfully landed that jet in the Hudson River. Pilot Sullenberger did not decide at the last moment how to correctly land that airplane on the water. He tells, in his recollection of the event, that when he realized what he had to do, he didn’t think about anything else other that what he was “trained” to do. When he was going through those procedures he had practiced over and over, he knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing as if it was “second nature”. You certainly don’t land a jetliner like he was flying by happenstance, by chance or by accident. You have to be well-trained and you have to know what you are going to do, even before you do it. When he made the commitment to land on the water, he knew there was no wavering, no turning back and there was no other option other than doing what he needed to do to land. He had to “drive” where his training told him he needed to “arrive.” He followed “steps” or “road” he was trained to take long before that fateful moment (Based upon NT Wright’s retelling in After You Believe, Why Character Matters. 2010).
Self-control is a virtue every great society has valued long before today. You can find the subject of self-control in the Hebrew Bible, where the writings of Proverbs says: “The person who can’t rule his own spirit (who lacks self-control) is like a city where the walls are broken down” (Prov. 25.28). This Old Testament image of a “walled city” is a powerful one, as ancient cities could only protect themselves by building up strong walls to keep the enemy out. When the walls broke, the enemy eventually won, no matter how strong your own army. Only the person who had built up “strong walls” within themselves long before the enemy invaded could protect themselves from all the threats.
The same kind of understanding can be found in the ancient Greek culture surrounding Plato’s writings, where the Greeks elevated the virtue of self-control as the way to personal victory and success. Both the Olympic athlete, and the average person, needed to gain mastery over their own desires before they could protect themselves from the all that would threaten their victory. Even before Paul was inspired to speak of Self-Control as the final fruit of the Spirit, Plato expressed that Love is the only spiritual passion strong enough to give us the ability of to master all other passions in our lives.
While the need for self-control has been around since humans could understand almost anything, the Christian understanding of self-control makes a most unique contribution. We can see it here in the woman’s own “planned” persistence. She keeps going to this judge, not simply for herself, nor only for her own cause, but she keeps pestering this judge with what is she knows is “right” and what “he ought to do” for her. The path she takes is not just “her own path”, but it is the well worn path everyone already knows to be right. This is the whole point of Jesus’ story is made clear at the very beginning when Luke says, “Jesus spoke a parable, so that people OUGHT always to pray, and never give up” (Luke 18:1). The word “ought” stands behind everything this woman does. It is the main reason for this woman’s “persistence” and it was the “main reason” this judge should hear her. She does not just make her point to drive this judge up the wall, but she is driving him up a wall because she is demanding what is “right” and what he “ought” to be doing in the first place and it is worrying him nearly to death.
Here we find the heart of self-control as Christian spirituality understands it. The Christian faith says we can only gain control of ourselves by “denying ourselves” “crucifying ourselves with Christ”, as we also “crucify our desires.” Self control is not what we do for our own sake alone, but we have a “goal” that is bigger than ourselves. This woman’s persistence worked for her because she was pushing for the “right thing” and this judge could not help but feel it, even in his “unjust” bones. In the same way, we “drive” our own lives best, when we know where we need to arrive. Too many people start drifting and lose control of their lives, because they are not really “driving” and they have no real clue where they are supposed to be going, or where they are going is not at all the right direction. It doesn’t take long going down the road in the wrong direction to become the cause of the worse accident you’ve ever seen in your life. To know where you’re supposed to be going and keeping your hands firmly on the wheel are probably the greatest skills in keeping control of your car and your life.
DON’T DRIVE ALONE AT NIGHT
If this widow teaches us we must “drive” with focus, (there are curves you must navigate and dangers to avoid) and secondly, if she also teaches us that we must know where we ought to arrive, even before we start to drive (we’ve got to be going in the right direction, not just any direction we choose); then, following this same analogy, there is a final part to this story and the lesson we learn here, may be the most important driving lesson of all.
The most important message comes, not from the widow, but through this surprising “voice” of the “unjust judge”. Jesus tells his disciples to “Listen” and to pay special attention to what the unfair judge is saying, as he responds to the woman’s persistent drive for justice: “I will give her justice, (he says) because she wears me out with her continual coming to trouble me” (vs. 5). Then, Jesus explains: “If this ‘unjust’ judge finally hears her, think how much more God will do what is right for his own people who cry out to him day and night?” (Luke 18: 6).
The final word about gaining “self-control” in your own life situation is about prayer. Jesus wants us to know that the most important way to stay on course, and know where you should go in life, and to arrive at the right destination, is to believe that God hears and answers prayer. Following our analogy, if you don’t believe prayer has anything to do with driving, you haven’t driven on the autobahn or in rush hour traffic in a large city. And if you don’t believe prayer has anything to do with having control over your own life, then you need to visit an half-way house or an treatment center for people with uncontrollable addictions that have ruined their lives. Right in the middle of every single viable and successful treatment option available in the world today is some form of positive, persistent self-talk or some form of religious prayer.
Recently I heard someone say they stopped trusting God because they prayed and God did not answer. When I heard that complaint, my first reaction was to wonder how that person defined prayer. Was their approach to prayer to believe God is like a Santa Clause who is there to always give us what we want? If you study Jesus teaching about prayer as asking, seeking, and knocking (Luke 11.9), Jesus clarifies that God “gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask” (Luke 11.13). Prayer is not a technique to get what we want (magic), but true prayer is gaining the Holy Spirit, having “guidance” and living our lives in God’s presence. Having the “self-control” or “discipline” we need to deal with the challenges, distractions, addictions and the unpredictable situations of our lives has more to do with “who” you are traveling with, than “what” you have to face on the road.
The other morning, while watching the news, a new advertisement came up, trying to lure teens and young adults into the party life. I guess you could say, in this commercial they following the rock star, Mick Jaggar’s philosophy: “It’s O.K. to let yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back.” That’s like recommending that your teenager can drive on the wrong side of the road, as long as nothing’s coming and they don’t get caught. Anyway, in this commercial, they were showing how some “imaginative” computer software might send a picture of what you were doing at any moment and make it safe for your mom to see. The point was, if someone sent a text to show others who you were with or what you were doing, which might not be what your mom would like to see, this software could automatically change the picture into something safe and suitable for your mom. For example, if you were in that city where everything is suppose to stay there, the software could put a picture of a large teddy bear beside of you, or a some kind of clown or something and then, they suggest, you’d be safe.
While we know the point they were trying to make, but the point they really making and didn’t at all realize, is that if your “mom” knew where you were and what you were doing, you probably wouldn’t be doing it in the first place. That is the powerful difference a positive “presence” can make in your life---in how you “control yourself” and in what you do and what you don’t do. Isn’t this the main point the story of the persistent widow? Knowing God is with us, beside us, and for us, who answers our greatest needs, is greatest resource and “strength” we have to face all the “situations” that confront us. On this dangerous and curvy road we call life, we can keep our lives “in control” because God’s abiding presence keeps us focused, guides us to the right destinations, and gives us inner strength for the journey. There is nothing that shapes our choices more than to know that we are never, ever, traveling through this life alone.
Plato and Paul are in perfect agreement on this one thing: It’s completely amazing what levels of performance a person can reach, what a person can accomplish, what a person will never dream of doing or fall into, when they stay focused, know where they should be going, and most of all, when they know they are loved and are not alone. Knowing perfect love is the very “root” of the fruit of the spirit we call self-control.
This is exactly what Paul young Timothy about taking control of his own life and his destiny, when he wrote: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind….(Keep) that good thing committed to you, by the Holy Spirit that dwells in you (2Tim. 1:7,14 KJV).
However, we decide to drive through our lives, the most obvious truth that will eventually surface is that living “your life is not a Sunday drive”. Living in this world of rapid lane changes and high cruising speeds is something between driving at Talladega or at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. If you take your eyes off the road or your hand off the wheel, only one second, and if you don’t know where you’re going in the first place, and if you don’t have a head set, a crew-chief and pit crew supporting you, well, if you'll excuse my direct, football coach like language, if you don't have all this going for you, "it would be better if you had never come out of the garage." In a world so fast paced, and so often out of control, God’s guiding Spirit is only hope we have to arrive alive. Amen.
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