6thSunday after the resurrection of the lord 2025

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's family now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Turn to the next page.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

O gracious and ever living God, you have created us, male and female, in your image.

Look upon Jacob Chandler and Ali Abney, who will come at 1030 seeking your blessing.

Assist them with your grace, that with true fidelity and steadfast love they may honor and keep the promises and vows they are to make through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Please be seated.

And to see Judah and wish her well.

Now when they came to her, they blessed her, and all with one accord, and they said to her, You are the exaltation of Jerusalem.

You are the great pride of Israel.

You are the great boast of our people.

You have done all these things by your hand.

You have done good for Israel, and God is well pleased over them.

Be blessed before Shaddai, the nurturing God, for all time.

And all the people said, May it be so.

And then all the women, children and men, plundered the camp for thirty days, and they gave Judah the tenth of full of furnace, and all the silver plate and couches and the faces, and all his furniture, and she took them and placed them upon her heal, and she hitched her wagons and harnessed them upon it.

And all the women of Israel gathered together so as to see her, and they blessed her, and some of them performed a dance for her.

And she took olive ranches wrapped in ivy in her hands, and she gave them to the women who were with her.

And the women crowned themselves with olive race, and she and those with her, and she went before all the people and began a dance, leading all the women and every man of Israel in arm, and following along with rains, and they were singing the hymns aloud the word of the Lord.

I will give thanks to the God who saves with my whole heart.

I will rejoice and I will exult in you.

When my enemies turn back, for you have done justly for me.

You have rebuked the nations, you have destroyed the wicked.

The enemy, they are finished, perpetual ruins.

Their cities you have upright.

God who is majesty sits on the throne forever.

She judges the world in righteousness.

She who is faithful is a stronghold for the oppressed.

They trust you.

They know your name.

Sing praises to the Holy One in the throne as I am.

Be gracious to me, gracious one.

See what I suffer from those who hate me.

So that I may recount all your praises.

For the knee shall not always be forgotten.

Rise up, judge of all the earth, and let not mortal kind prevail.

For every good word, to be ready, to blaspheme no person, to be gentle, showing every courtesy to all persons.

For we were once foolish, disobedient, enslaved to all kinds of passions and pleasures, in malice and envy, living our lives, and we were hateful, hating one another.

When the graciousness and loving kindness of God, our Savior, appeared, God saved us through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, not because of any works of righteousness we had done, but according to God's mercy.

This Spirit God poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having been justified by God's grace, we might become heirs according to the hope and life.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus told the disciples pharaoh about the need to pray continually and not be discouraged.

He said, There was a judge in a certain city who neither feared God nor respected people.

There was a widow in that city, and she came to him continually and saying, Grant me justice against my accuser.

And he was not willing for some time.

But later he said to himself, Though I do not fear God, or no, respect anyone else, yet because this widow persists in troubling me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not ultimately come to violence against me.

And the Messiah said, Listen to what the unjust judge says, and will not God grant justice to the elect of God who cry out to God day and night?

Will God forbear in helping them?

I tell you all, God will quickly grant justice to them, and yet when the Son of Woman comes, will he find faith on the earth?

The Gospel of the Lord.

The Lord is risen indeed.

Hallelujah.

Please be seated.

First, thanks for your forbearance, whether you gave it to me officially or not, for the common bulletin.

Sometimes it is nice, though, to know for the left hand to know what the right hand is doing, right?

Can I ask how many of you have been to a wedding at a principal Eucharist worship service on a Sunday?

One.

It's not very common, really.

Two couple in the back, thank you.

Yeah.

Were you married?

You were married at one?

No?

Okay.

It doesn't happen often, and actually I was thinking about this as kind of a gift to the community.

This is happening at 10:30, but you get to see kind of what would a wedding look like?

It looks like what we do, but with the procession of the bride after the choir, with the vows after the sermon, that's if they're still awake.

The couple gets a blessing, and then there's a general blessing at the very end, right?

The couple will take communion first if they choose, and then everybody else will be invited.

That's just sort of how it looks today.

Is there a right way to do it?

If they get married and they mean it, it probably worked.

So my last church that I was at did one of these like in 10 years.

I mean, it's really a rare thing, but just thinking about it, it's a gift that this couple is giving us, whether you're going to be there or not, because uh I was talking to my my partner at home.

My my kid has been to two weddings, and neither of them's been in a church.

This will be my kid's my 12-year-old's first church wedding, to be able to see and think about, right?

And when did you really go to a wedding?

Well, when you were invited.

Right?

When you were invited, and that might not have happened well in your memory.

So uh it's a gift to the community to think about what the sacrament of marriage is, and how indeed, according to the prayers of the people, it's for everybody in the room and not just the couple.

What's weird about it is we didn't read 1 Corinthians 13.

The couple doesn't get to pick the scriptures.

So we got the lectionary.

And we're supposed to talk about the widow and the unjust judge.

And Judith began, right last week, she cut that guy's head off.

And um, I can do that a little differently with you all than I can with the couple sitting here.

Again, I'm being generous to them.

I'm gonna let them sit for the sermon.

Uh sometimes we have them stand.

I don't know if you know this.

John Dunn, the poet who wrote, No Man is an Island Unto Himself.

You know this one?

That's not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

Uh, we have one of his wedding sermons.

It was an hour and a half.

And they didn't get to sit down.

That's love.

Okay.

Um, so look, let me just take these a little bit in order, if you don't mind.

How many of you have read the book of Judas?

Just curious.

Not very many.

Now, if you know, the book of Judith doesn't show up in the NIV.

Um, that has a lot to do with the Reformation.

It turns out Martin Luther had Judith in his German translation of the Bible, but as an appendix.

The Apocrypha was always an appendix to the scriptures.

Luther cut it out officially after the Council of Trent said that the Apocrypha was equal scripture with the rest.

That happened unilaterally by the Pope as a display of papal authority.

That was 1564.

That was when really the Apocrypha became split from what we normally call the Protestant Bible.

But you need to know that faithful Christians for more than 1,500 years read the book of Judah alongside the rest of the scriptures, and they did it because there is something like a 500-year narrative gap.

I know the book of Daniel was written around 170, but it doesn't talk about those events.

There's about a 500-year gap between the last voice in the Hebrew Bible and the first voice in the Christian New Testament.

So, what does the apocrypha do?

It fills in the stories.

This story of Judah, probably written around the time of Daniel, is about something that happened a long time prior.

It's written about a story in which the king of the Bab uh King of the Eresyrian Empire invades the entire Levant and takes everything but the city of Jerusalem.

And they're laying siege, and then all of a sudden, one day, the people in Jerusalem who are like eating shoe leather, uh, and the only thing that saved them is that they had water.

They had a well underground that they could access, and the source was hidden or it would have been poisoned.

They wake up one day and the whole army's gone.

You can read this in the book of One Kings.

This happens under the reign of Hezekiah, who was shut up like a bird in a cage.

And this story tells you partially why they left.

The real part is there was a rebellion at home, and the king had to go back or lose his throne.

This part says the chief general Polopernes was killed by a woman named Judith who was mourning her husband.

So she had to, frankly, do something unconventional for the sake of her people that involved getting the general really drunk while dressed to the nines, and then instead of sleeping with him, cutting his head off.

This is not going to make for a good marriage.

I just want you to hear up front.

If you're going into your wedding with this strategy, I would counsel you against it.

But I would say there is something very interesting, and I think if you've been married, say more than 10 years, I don't know about you all, people talked about the seven-year itch.

I didn't have any itch in seven years, but it was ten.

Ten through fifteen.

It was a long itch.

You know, once the itch strikes, you can return to it, you know.

You can think like, ah, there's a way.

But here's what I would say.

Um, to make your marriage, well, heal and thrive and grow, you do have to do unconventional things.

And I think if you've been married more than 10 years, you probably get that.

Like things your parents said you don't do, you have found salvation in those very things.

That's a couple.

Could just be me.

Now, again, I didn't at any point put on a guy liner and get my wife junk and cut her head off.

That was not how the marriage worked.

However, my dad, who changed this many diapers in his life, I'm just gonna tell you he missed out.

And I really mean that.

I don't want to change your kid's diaper, just to be clear.

It's very strange when people say, Do you want to change my baby's diaper?

No.

But I did not mind changing my kid's diaper because that was intimate and a way of showing care.

I didn't mind doing the cooking and the cleaning and the shopping.

My dad never did those things.

Unconventional.

Oh, Mike, you're stretching it.

Yeah, maybe.

Maybe I am.

And Judith stretched it too.

She stretched it for the sake of her people and their future.

And this is what it takes to be married.

I just think this is right.

I want my kid to hear me say this.

I want my kid to hear me say this because when I grew up in church, everything was off limits physically, emotionally.

And then you got married, and it was all just gonna happen.

What we were never told is that marriage is really hard.

And marriage is really hard.

I don't regret it.

I just think it's hard.

Because you change.

You change together, but you change separately.

And I don't know if as a married person you've ever had this thought, boy, if I met my spouse today, I don't know if we'd be interested in each other.

But we didn't meet today.

We met 23 years ago, and we said, with everything that I am, I will show up.

That keeps me interested.

It keeps me interested to the point that I'll do unconventional things for the sake of life.

And that seems what marriage is really all about to me.

I will do what it takes so that our souls can stay entwined, so help me God.

That's what we're gonna promise.

Right?

Now, it's weird that Jesus tells a parable about how we should never, did you hear the frame?

We should pray continually and not be discouraged.

And the parable sounds like that.

Once upon a time, there was somebody with a lot of power.

He was a judge, but he didn't respect or fear anybody.

I mean, maybe that's the blindest form of justice, but he doesn't respect anyone.

Sound like the worst kind of justice.

And then there's this widow who comes and she pastors in.

Now, widows, of course, have no power at all.

So this is like the true David and Goliath story.

Um, we don't know, by the way, if she's right.

She could be completely in the wrong.

I just want to make sure you know that.

The story doesn't tell us she's right.

The story just says she has no power.

But by her persistence, the judge says, she's gonna hurt me if I don't give her what she wants.

Now that's ridiculous.

She's a woman, she's a widow, he's a judge, which means he's like the most powerful guy in town, reputation-wise, asset-wise, and otherwise.

He wasn't appointed by the Supreme Court.

He didn't have that.

He's the elder of the town.

So, how is she gonna become violent with him?

I mean, it's ridiculous, the story.

Nevertheless, he's worried that maybe she'll make him look bad or something, so he gives her what she wants.

So, how much more will God give you what you want?

Now, you might hear this story, and you might think Jesus is making the clear point that if I just harass God with my prayer requests, eventually God will get annoyed with me and give me what I'm asking for.

And if that's the way you've heard the story, I mean, more power to you.

I just think you've heard it wrong.

Because Jesus says God isn't like that.

And I will say that my dad gave me some really great advice before I got married that the best two words I could have in my arsenal were, yes, dear.

Which is exactly why I did not want the marriage he had.

Because it's demeaning.

And a marriage in which you have to nag your partner endlessly to get them to do what is right is not in a marriage I'm interested in living in.

This is the unmarriage story.

I know you love me, and the best gift you could give me today is this thing.

Which one among you would not give your partner the gift that their heart desires, knowing it would please them?

Who would not do that?

So, honey, do list and yes, dear, have no ram in my marriage.

Because we wouldn't be married anymore if that was my response.

I married somebody with too much self-respect to be demeaned by their spouse.

And I'd like you to think that if I could do that with all of my foils, God does that for us regularly.

What use does it do in nagging God and destroys your faith?

Period.

God is not like an unjust judge who is not afraid of God or does not respect persons.

God is a lover of your soul.

The scriptures tell us that.

God knows what you have in mind before you ask it.

So why is it that we pray?

We pray, friends, for ourselves.

Because God already knows.

Now that may sound strange, but since Moses Maimonides, and he was a rabbi in the first, uh in the tenth century, he's the one who came up with the idea that God created the world from nothing.

It's called Creatio ex Nihilo.

God spoke everything into existence.

Have you heard this before?

There was nothing and God spoke something.

That's not the oldest Jewish idea.

The older Jewish idea, there was a mess and God ordered it.

Maimonides, called the Rambam, is the one who came up with this idea that Christians have embraced.

And so don't you understand that since God has spoken first, prayer is not when we speak to God, prayer is when we answer.

Prayer is our answer to God.

So there are provocative books out there called Never Pray Again.

And it's an interesting book because it challenges us, instead of praying for God to resolve world hunger, for us to get up and do something to resolve hunger in our own community.

Instead of asking for God to forgive my neighbor, for me to get up and forgive my neighbor.

Instead of asking God to change my feelings, I really want that one to work.

To do the work.

I mean, friends, I just want to make sure I underscore this with full honesty.

I would rather crawl up my knees on a hill in Greece to a shrine that will offer me a miracle.

There is one of those.

I'd rather do that for 24 hours than do the five minutes a day work it would take to retrain my brain in thought loops, it has accepted.

Why?

Because it would only take me one day and it'd be over instead of a lifetime of work.

I'm just wired that way.

You may not be.

You're probably sensible people, unlike me.

I'd rather do something ridiculous and short than something that takes ten minutes a day for years.

I just would rather do that and have it done.

So just so you hear this, God had to do that for you.

God is not going to take away your alcohol addiction because you want God to do that.

You're going to do that work.

God is not going to take away any bitterness you have toward your spouse.

You're going to do that or you're not.

I wish it were different, and it just didn't in my experience.

I wish exorcism was really real and that I could do it on command.

I mean, I would exercise all kinds of drivers on the highway.

You better believe I'd exercise one and a half of my kids.

I've got a new puppy.

I would do an exorcism on the puppy because it's peeing on my carpet.

And there are moments in years 10 through 15 I probably even would have exercised my spouse.

But don't exercise me, God.

So the idea behind never praying again is not that we don't do it.

It's that instead of asking, we answer.

You said I had dignity and worthiness to stand before you, to love my partner as I love myself, to love myself.

That's what you said, God.

How will I answer you?

With my marriage, with my checkbook, with the things I find entertaining, with whether or not I accept conventiality, regardless of whether there's life in it or not.

These are the things I think that matter not only in how we're married, but how it is we choose to live with God.

I mean, do we really think that God is a slot machine in the sky, and if we just put enough coins in and pull the arm enough, finally we'll get what we want?

Or could we imagine that when things fall apart, and they do?

Like people in this very room who have been married 50 years and have lost their spouse, and you spend 50 years trying to make sure that you don't know where you end and where they begin.

Spent 50 years doing that, and now they're gone, and you don't know where you end.

What do you want?

God to take that away?

The only way that goes away is if it never happened.

We don't really want that.

So what do we say?

God take away the pain, or do we say, God, give me the courage?

What do we say, God, why have you left me?

Or can we imagine that God is in fact with us, grieving our own deepest loss?

That's what we tell the story of every Friday before Easter, that God descends into death and grief itself, not to solve it for us.

How's God going to solve your love?

You loved for a good reason.

There's a solution to that.

God's not going to solve it.

God's going to enter into it with you.

And there are things in marriage that neither one of us contrived to do wrong.

Life is hard.

And if you've been married more than 10 years, I'm suspicious.

There came a moment where you just sat and said, I don't know how we got here, and here we are.

And grief and that ability to do it together is what keeps you together.

Such seems to be spiritual life.

And just because we read Titus, I just should mention that, you know, there's this interesting thing that's happened to me when I got married.

There's habits that my partner has that if anybody else in the world did it, I'd be mad as hell at them.

I married a clutter bug and a night owl.

I am neither of those things.

For the first few years, for the first few years, I made allowances for them.

And then after a while, this is the 10-year itch, I started to think, you're doing this because you don't respect me.

You ever had that thought of your spouse?

Take that captive quickly.

It leads to not good things.

And then that itch got resolved when I realized I didn't love my spouse in spite of those things.

I actually love her because of those things.

Because what I realized is that unlike me, she'd better clean up at the end of the day so that we can have time and immediacy instead of at the end.

Now, me, I'll work all day, and then when it's time to connect, I'll just go to sleep.

So we do it different, and I love her because we do it different.

Somehow I chose to do that with my spouse.

Not saying I choose to do that with you all.

So really, when we have a function, clean up after yourselves.

And I'm glad you do.

I'm glad you do.

But there is this interesting thing about marriage, if we enter into it rightly, we have this window in which we will suspend all of our unbelief for this other person.

We'll accept things we would accept from no other.

And what is, in fact, and I think this is how marriage becomes sacramental, what having done that, the invitation isn't to just extend it a little bit further.

By the way, if you have kids, you will find yourself allowing them to do things you were never going to allow your kids to do.

And hopefully you still love your kids.

And then extend that a little bit further.

Because after all, I mean, your in-laws are your spouse's family, so you've got to at least be, you know, kind of nice.

And then even though, you know, your spouse went to Duke, and you know that Duke is a terrible school, you have to like show some love for the Dukies, right?

And if you do that, then there's NC state, and I hope you get where I'm going.

Marriage invites us into making exceptions to our own rules, and having done that, we can continue to make exceptions for every member of God's family, because the marriage isn't really, in the end, it's going to be the two of us.

It's going to be the human race.

How we answer that now matters.

Not how we ask for it.

That's how it's going to be.

How we answer it is what God asks us to consider this week.