20 October 2013

“Wrestlers, evangelists, and persistent widows”
Genesis 32:22-31 / 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 / Luke 18:1-8
OT 29C
20 October 2013


Much of what we’ve been reading and hearing as our Scripture texts, since this summer, have been about the outer struggles we encounter as we follow Jesus’ call to be his disciples … especially, particularly, how we are called to serve those to whom Jesus always goes and serves first … namely, the poor, the outsiders, the marginalized, the downtrodden, the ill, those despised by the world.
Last Sunday, we turned a corner of sorts … moving more inside ourselves, as we heard texts and sang songs and talked about carrying forward a sense of Thanksgiving for all that God has done for us.
Ah, but now, this week, we are all about our inner work. The hard stuff, the deep ploughing, introspective thinking and meditating into our spirits and souls and hearts.
All that stuff that northern European descended American Lutherans run from like snakes on a plane.
Well, buck up! That’s the Word our texts have to say to that attitude. Because The Deep Inner Work is where our texts are leading and guiding us today.
A man who wrestles with God.
Instructions on the “what it takes” behind being a faithful disciple-proclaimer of God’s Word.
A persistent widow demanding justice, and the inner change she works on an unjust judge.

We start with that story from Genesis, about Jacob,

And a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

Yes, it is a deliberately ambiguous text. It begins with Jacob returning with his family and possessions “back home,” the place and people from whom he fled long ago, well, actually, one person in particular, his brother, Esau, from whom Jacob and his mother stole the birthright-blessing Esau deserved, Esau being the first born son of Isaac, but Jacob and his mother tricked old Isaac into blessing him, Jacob, the younger son.
So Jacob had run away, far off, so his brother couldn’t catch him and, he guessed, kill him; Jacob, the cheat, the dishonest, the schemer and plotter, made a life and got wives for himself in a far off country.
As he got closer to home, Jacob sent his flocks and herds and wives and kids across the river first, so his brother Esau would see them and think, “Hey, this brother of mine is powerful; I don’t want to harm him now,” or, perhaps, Esau would have a softer heart, seeing his long-lost inlaws.
Jacob stayed back for the night.

And a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

Now, the text doesn’t say this is God. We surmise it from Jacob’s words,

For I have seen God face to face …

But like so many stories in the Bible, it can have a couple of meanings.
So we needn’t spend time dwelling on the “did Jacob really, literally wrestle with God in a body” question. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. That’s not the point.
The point is, Jacob wrestled with God … wrestled with his faith, his hopes, his dreams, his desires, his being comfortable in his own skin, who he was created to be … he’d wrestled with God for years. The cheat, the fraud, the one who split his family apart and ran off, it turns out he had a conscience after all. He thought, no he just didn’t think, he likely had sleepless nights, dream filled, troubled nights, melancholy days, spent wondering about what he had done and what he had left undone, in his life, with his family, how he had treated them, and through them, how he had treated God.
So this incident marks the capstone, the point of Jacob’s “sorting it all out.” It was through his internal wrestling that he’d come to grips with who he was, who he was to be, and how he needed to come back as the prodigal to his brother. He limped to be with his family and to meet up with his brother, he limped because of his wrestling; this, the mark of his struggle, his inner work; now, Jacob moves toward reconciliation with his brother, and a new life in his old home.
And so it is for us too. How many of us have life-stories, life-situations, like Jacob? Have we simply stuffed them, tried to avoid them, kept them far far away from us?
God calls us into a wrestling match. To bring those stories, those situations out, to wrestle with them, to wrestle with God in them. In prayer and meditation. In conversation with others. In confession and forgiveness. At the table of communion.
God calls us to wrestle with them, and with God. God’s big enough for our wrestling. Indeed, I’m sure the relationship God prefers, is the one with us as the wrestler, rather than as the “pious pretender,” You know what, who that is.
Bible unopened on the coffee table, one hour of church once a month the extent of our spiritual exercise.
God calls us into a wrestling match.
But wrestling isn’t the only inner work into which our texts guide us.
Paul’s advice to his young protégé Timothy contains words particularly pointed toward us, in these days.
For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.
The context of these words is, of course, Paul, giving a message to the young pastor Timothy, who has stayed behind in the church-community which Paul has founded, and then, Paul has moved on … these verses before us today are words of encouragement for Timothy to “keep on keeping on.”
Ah, but there’s some fine, rich, deep stuff for us in, under, between these words.
“Doctrine” … that’s a loaded word these days. It should be … and was, in earlier English translations, “teachings.” That makes more sense, teachings coming from those teachers which those with itching ears will accumulate for themselves.
But then there’s that word “desires.”
For Paul, that’s a terrible word.
Literally, the word is “lustful passion.” And for Paul, the sin is that people will find teachers and teachings who will feed their own lustful, selfish passions … passions for power, passions for wealth, passions for political gain … rather than holding fast to The Story, our story, as handed down to them, to us, through the Scriptures, through the ages.
Make no mistake. It is all right and good for us to have passion for The Story, the Word of God, God’s story, Jesus’ story, to and for us. But those with “itching ears” turn their backs on that community-story, that Christ-body-story … the story that requires us to dig inside, and see our sin, our shortcomings, our falling short of God … and drives us to repent and ask for forgiveness … those with “itching ears” wander off, in their selfish passions, to make life not about community, and wholeness in God, in Christ … but rather, all about themselves.
We have seen this in spades of late, and of this selfish passion, finding falsehood, pawned off, pandered to itching ears, I cannot and will not be silent.
Now, it is good and right for us to have spirited debate, faith talk and public policy talk, about how we as a society shall live and be with the poor.
But in the past few months our nation, our political, opinion, media leaders, we the people, have been part of a reprehensible twisting of God’s Word against the poor … slandering the clear word of Scripture, throughout the history of God’s people, the Word which is always and forever, to and for, on the side of, those of our community who are poor, powerless, downtrodden and marginalized, ill, elderly, widow and orphan.
It is a lie, a damned lie that “God helps those who help themselves.”
It is blasphemy to deliberately misquote the Word of Scripture, in order to justify pulling the most minimal of societal safety nets out from under those who cannot work or earn a living.
And it is surely displeasing to God that our fellow Americans living in poverty have increased in number every year, save one, since 1999, and dramatically since 2007.
Many faith leaders have heard these horrible words of late, and fearing that fate of the Israelites when they ignored, twisted and defied the Word of God’s clear command to favor the poor … fearing that the fate of the Israelites would also come upon these United States … these faith leaders, Christians of all confessions and politics came together this past week, and stood before the buildings of Congress, reading from this Bible … quoting from these highlighted 2000+ verses in the Bible where God explicitly states his favor toward the poor and powerless.

Isaiah 10.1 ff - You people are in for trouble! You have made cruel and unfair laws that let you cheat the poor and needy and rob widows and orphans.

Amos 8:4 ff - You people crush those in need and wipe out the poor ... those who are needy and poor don't have any money. We will make them our slaves for the price of a pair of sandals.

Micah 6:8 - The Lord God has told us what is right and what he demands: "See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God."

Matthew 25:45 ff - Whenever you failed to help any of my people, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you failed to do it for me.

This is Sound Teaching, the Solid, Unshakeable Word of God for us.
We Americans have much for which to answer, before God and before the world God loves … and through these texts, God’s Word, God calls us today to repentance … to repentance as a nation, as a people, no more politics or party spirit … all of us.
We are called to fall to our knees, to repent in ashamed tears before our God … to repent for our speech and behavior these past three weeks and more, for the abuse of our poor brothers and sisters in need, suffering people nearly brought to wreck and ruin, some, even close to the threshold of death itself, because of our stubbornness and division as a nation, as a people.
We have much, much deep work to be about. This is most certainly true.
But it is not deep work without hope.
The Gospel text for today does, certainly, include gospel … Good News … for us.
The story is one we’ve heard before … the unjust judge, the persistent widow, the parable on encouragement in prayer, that’s what Jesus calls it.
The widow wants justice against an unnamed opponent. We should note, however, in our hyper-polarized state of living today, that she does not demonize her opponent. Call him or her an “evildoer.” No, the word she uses literally means “anti-justice.” Grant me justice against my anti-justice.
And yet, that term is a subjective term, it’s the widow’s opinion, expressed feeling that she’s been wronged.
A judge is required to decide the case. A neutral third party, an “other.”
So the widow stands at the judge’s door and knocks. And knocks and rattles. And rattles and cries for justice.
It’s a figure for prayer, and the kind of prayer into which Jesus is calling his disciples. It is prayer that is “in it for the long haul,” that continues and continues and does not give up.
Biblical commentator Fred Craddock has these words to say about this passage:

The human experience is one of delay and honestly says as much, even while acknowledging the mystery of God’s ways. Is the (one praying) being hammered through long days and nights of prayer into a vessel that will be able to hold the answer when it comes? We do not know. All we know in the life of prayer is asking, seeking, knocking, and waiting, trust sometimes fainting, sometimes growing angry.

There’s that wrestling again.

Persons of such prayer life can only wonder at those who speak of prayer with the smiling facility of someone drawing answers from a hat.
In a large gathering of persons concerned about certain unfair and oppressive conditions in our society, an elderly African-American minister read this parable and gave a one-sentence interpretation: “Until you have stood for years knocking at a locked door, your knuckles bleeding, you do not really know what prayer is.”

Enter the unjust judge. He is unjust because he doesn’t listen to the widow’s requests. But finally he abates.
The English translation we have before us is a poor rendition of what he’s really saying.
Which is:

… because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so I don’t get a black eye in the process.

The judge’s motivation for giving the widow justice? He doesn’t want to look bad.
In honor- and-shame based societies … sometimes, our own … certainly, the Mideast at the time of Jesus … “looking bad” before others is something to be avoided at all costs.
We have seen this recently in the Amanda Knox trial.
Americans have a hard time understanding why the prosecutor in Perugia continues to submit the same old evidence, evidence which has been disproved, evidence which one trial overthrew already, to try to prove that Amanda Knox is guilty of murdering her roommate Meredith Kerscher.
But to Italians, it’s very clear.
This is all about “saving face,” in Italy known as not ending up with Brutta Faccia … “ugly face.”
Retracting his position now, even in the face of overwhelming evidence against him, would bring the Perugia prosecutor Brutta Faccia … “ugly face” … among his constituents. A state of shame for him, his family, his associates.
The same is true of the unjust judge in our text. He decides he needs to save face … get this nagging woman off his doorstep and out of his life … before people start talking … “What is going on between you and that woman, anyway???” … it would be an embarrassment to him … and so he decides to grant her justice … whatever that is … the text is not clear … and again, it’s not important.
Because what IS important is what Jesus says in the very next sentence.

Listen to what the unjust judge says.
And will God not grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.

The point, according to Jesus, is that God doesn’t care about Brutta Faccia … saving face … this God who comes to us as one of us, born a baby in poverty, who lives our life, suffers our suffering, dies our death … this God, our God, doesn’t care one whit about “face.”
Indeed, this God, our God, dies to “face” forever … and in Jesus’ rising from the dead, lives anew for life anew, in life to come, and to redeem and make whole the life that is now.
So, back to our story’s analogy … if even this unjust judge grants justice, so much more will God hear the prayers and cries of his people.
“His chosen ones?” … well, that’s simple … anyone who calls on God in prayer does so by the movement of the Holy Spirit in their lives, so that’s chosen enough right there. Don’t get wrapped around the axle over that.
May it take a while? Yes. We all know that. And that’s where the wrestling comes in. Sometimes our prayers are “works in progress,” meaning, what we are praying for at first … after we go deep, plough the ground well in our lives, meditate, wrestle, do the deep deep work of faith … we may, no, we will find that our prayers change along the way, through the wrestling, the knocking, the seeking, the asking.
Ask Jacob. Surely when he started his journey, running away from his brother and mother and dying father, stolen birthright and blessing and all, surely his prayer was something other than what it was, there, in the place of our Old Testament text today, as he limped across the river to meet his brother Esau once again.
And so it is with us. When we wrestle … when we engage with these texts, through prayer and study and meditation … when we worship together, when we confess our sins and hear the words of forgiveness, when we commune together at Jesus’ table and at his invitation and in his welcome … as we gather as wrestling community … we change, too. Our prayers take on real flesh and blood, for real lives, the lives of those for whom and with whom we live and breathe, walk and work, suffer and rejoice, live and die.
And The Good News of all Good News … we are not left hanging …

When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

The Son of Man has come, and comes, and is coming, and will keep coming … in these gifts of bread and wine, water and word of forgiveness, comfort and hope … in this community of fellow-wrestlers … The Son of Man comes … and grants us faith … faith enough for us … faith-strength to wrestle, to wrestle and reflect, to wrestle and repent, to wrestle and rise to forgiven, freed, new life … for our neighbor, for ourselves, for our nation, for this world.
The Son of Man has come, and comes, and is coming, and will keep coming. To us. For us.
So wrestle, wrestle my friends … wrestle … and hope, and dream, and live … live in, and for, the life that really is life.
Amen.