"Will He or Won't He?" - Sermon for Sunday, Pentecost 19, 10-19-25

“And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk. 18:8).

Well … will he or won’t he? And what is faith, anyway?

Faith is the expression of a system of belief. The Nicene Creed we’ll soon recite is an affirmation of faith in the core tenets of Christianity. The catechism in the back of the prayer book that explains these tenets is properly known as “An Outline of the Faith.” And perhaps you’ve been asked, “What faith are you?” – which is to say “what church do you attend.”

Faith is also an expression of confidence in the institutions and ideas we hold or hope to be true, based on experience. We have faith in the merits and strength of our constitutional democracy. We have faith that the green slips of paper and discs of metal in our pockets have value. We have faith that the sun will set tonight and rise tomorrow, and that gravity will keep us from floating away.

And faith, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (11:1). More spiritual than the first two expressions, this is the faith of an interior disposition, held in our hearts. We commonly express this faith in this and the other liturgies of the church. We have faith in God’s love and mercy so that we, along with our beloved dead, will live with God for eternity. We have faith that God’s grace, assured in the sacraments, is given to us when they are administered. We have faith that God hears and responds to our persistent prayers. I think this is the kind of faith Jesus was talking about and will be looking for and hopes to find.

Faithfulness and persistence are prominent themes today. God is faithful and persistent in divine love and care for us. We are called to imitate God by being faithful and persistent as we love God back – and this may seem for us like a wrestling match in the long, dark nights of our struggle when we can scarcely summon the strength and stamina to hold on. But hold on we must.

A holy person once said that, until you’ve bruised and bloodied your fist pounding on a locked door, you haven’t truly known prayer. Another holy person said that prayer is the hardest of the good works we do, for the demons are hard at work trying to distract and derail us.

I attempt to bruise and bloody my fist and to disappoint the demons by praying publicly and often. We schedule services twenty-two times most every week – Morning, Noonday, and Evening Prayer; Mass; and Holy Hour for individual devotional prayer and meditation – as much for my benefit as for yours and the parish community. Absent this schedule and the church-bell calling me inside, I’d not likely raise even a blister on my fist, let alone send the demons packing. I take my ordination vows seriously, and I need all the help I can get in keeping them.

“Will you,” a bishop once asked me, “persevere in prayer, both in public and in private, asking God’s grace, both for yourself and for others, offering all your labors to God, through the mediation of Jesus Christ, and in the sanctification of the Holy Spirit?” (BCP 532).

Each of you holds hurt, grief, concern, and worry in your heart – and joy and thankfulness, too – and so, part of my work as your priest, then, is to pray that God’s grace falls upon you, so that your faith is strengthened to pray always and not to lose heart.

But praying always seems like such a stretch, doesn’t it? How would anyone, whose occupation is different from mine, get anything else done? How do I get anything else done?

Perhaps we can define “always” less as every minute of the day and more like at points throughout the day with intention.

Do you have a clock that chimes, or can you set an hourly timer on your watch or phone? When it rings, say a brief prayer about whatever is happening that moment.

Did something good just happen? Take a moment to give thanks and praise to God?

Are you particularly stressed? Ask God for a moment’s serenity.

Did one public figure or another say yet one more inflammatory thing? Instead of cursing, ask God to heal his heart, or hers. And your own, while you’re at it.

And at the very start of your day, ask God to make your day’s work itself a prayer, so that even if you’re not praying in thought, you’re praying in action.

I do it this way: “Thank you, God, for the day that is past, and for the day that lies ahead. May the work I do be pleasing and productive in your sight.”

Without constant prayer, however we define it or measure it, how can we help but to lose heart?

I think Jesus’s question about finding faith is less a “gotcha” to shame and scare us then it is an invitation to join him in the conversation of prayer he lovingly invites us into. He wants to heal our hearts, not break them, so that we can lift them up to him in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. To keep the faith. That’s one reason why we’re here this morning, right?

So, let us pray: Loving and listening God, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit we thank you for giving us the grace and the time to worship you and to pray with each other today. Thank you for holding our hearts and for inviting us always into relationship with you. Give us faithfulness and persistence to trust in your promises and your providence. Help our lives to be a constant prayer to you, in word and in deed, so that when your Son visits us again, he will find in us the faith on earth that he seeks. In your holy Name we pray. Amen.

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

19 Pentecost, Proper 24 – October 19, 2025

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“Will He or Won't He?”