Lectionary
readings: Genesis 32:22-31 and 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 and Luke 18:1-8
‘...be
persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke,
and encourage...’
‘Then
Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose
heart.’
The
whole of torah, of biblical instruction for living, is expressed in the command
that we should love the Lord our God with all of our heart (your ability to
choose for yourself) and all of our mind (your ability to train thoughts and
feelings) and all of our strength (your ability to act on your choices) and all
of our soul (your deepest, truest being); and love our neighbour as ourselves.
Everything else is commentary. But chief among the commentary is the repeated
instruction to care for the widow, the orphan, and the alien living in our
midst; the most vulnerable, who lack or risk losing a stake in the outworking
of God’s promises.
And
so, the parable Jesus tells in today’s Gospel reading is quite bleak. For here
is a widow, who has an opponent; someone who, therefore, opposes the will of
God. Moreover, the person appointed and recognised by the community to
arbitrate between them is a man who not only does not actively love God or his
neighbours; he does not care; indeed, he takes pride in his self-centredness. Note
that by virtue of his position he represents an entire community that puts
self-interest before justice. Yet this man, who embodies power, is bested by a
woman who embodies powerlessness [in the Greek, though lost in translation into English, he is worried that she will give him a (very visible) black-eye]. And yet, Jesus asks, when the Son of Man
comes, will he find faith on earth?
Have
you ever wrestled with unanswered prayer? With why a God who, it is claimed, is
perfect in love and power, stands by in the face of injustice?
Jacob
was a wrestler. Before he was born, he wrestled with his twin brother in their
mother’s womb. Esau was born first, with Jacob following, grasping his heel.
Indeed, the name ‘Jacob’ means, ‘to grasp the heel.’ His whole life was defined
by wrestling, with being unable to let go, unable to accept what had been given
to him and what had been given to others. He cheated his brother out of the
first-born’s birth-right, and ran away. He sets his sights on his cousin, his
uncle’s younger daughter; but is cheated by his uncle, and ends up paying for
two brides, two sisters drawn into his wrestling. They become opponents; seek
to cheat in order to gain the advantage, to get what they want. Rachel is
loved, but barren; Leah, unloved, and so God gives her sons. Rachel responds by
exploiting one woman, her maid Bilhah, in order to hurt another woman, her
sister. When Bilhah bears Jacob a son, Rachel declares, ‘God has judged in my
favour, has vindicated me.’ (Really?) When Bilhah bears Jacob a second son,
Rachel declares, ‘With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and
have prevailed’ (Genesis 30:1-8). (Does that sound at all familiar?)
Eventually,
Jacob has a large family, by four women, and, having cheated his uncle to
wrestle great wealth from him, runs away again. He is met by the angels of God,
those beings whom he had seen ascending and descending between earth and heaven
years earlier, when God had promised to keep him and bring him back; and from
there, he hopes to be reconciled with his brother. And on the eve of their
reunion, Jacob finds himself alone, and confronted by a stranger. They wrestle
all night, until the sun is about to break over the eastern horizon. Then, to
break the stalemate, the stranger strikes Jacob’s hip socket with a major blow,
and, as he continues to wrestle, the hip joint is dislocated, with permanent
damage to muscle, ligaments, and nerves. But still, Jacob will not let go,
unless the stranger first blesses him.
Of
course, a blessing is a letting go, a setting free to be what you were made to
be. Jacob will not let go of the stranger, until the stranger lets go of him.
And the stranger’s blessing is a strange one; for he says, You shall no longer
be called Jacob, but Israel; no longer ‘the wrestler who grasps the heel,’ but,
‘the wrestler who has wrestled with gods and humans, and has prevailed;’ has
shown yourself to be able, to have power. In other words, the new name is not a
new identity, but a fulfilment of his identity. Jacob’s wrestling
is not over: in many ways, it has only just begun. His greatest challenges lie
ahead of him. He’ll still get things wrong, but he’ll never again run away.
What,
then, might we say regarding our need to pray always and not to lose heart?
First,
that God’s will is resisted and opposed. That is, after all, why Jesus tells us
to pray that God’s will should be done on earth as in heaven. Yet, as we pray
and wait, we hold on to the truth that God remains on the side of justice until
justice is accomplished. As we speak truth to power, we draw on God’s strength.
As we refuse to give up in the face of hard-hearted self-interest, our own
hearts need to remain soft and warm, and so we must draw on God’s love. And
when it feels too hard, and God too distant—as will be our experience many
times—we need to stand together; so that the Son of Man—that image of the
faithful remnant, the community constituted around Jesus, the Body of
Christ—will, together, find faith on earth, alive and active in the world.
Second,
sometimes our will is not as fully aligned with God’s will as we like to think.
We deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. We seek, like Jacob and like
Rachel, to bend the world towards us at the centre. Sometimes the wrestling in
prayer confronts us with this until we cannot ignore it. Sometimes the
wrestling in prayer brings us to a point of breakthrough, where God asks us to
let go of whatever vindication we have been holding on to, and where we find
ourselves willing to do so if God will only bless us first—and then, at last,
God is able to do so, setting us free to be our fulfilled self.
Third,
the wrestling makes us able, powerful. Unless we wrestle, we remain unskilled,
unable to prevail. But each wrestling match prepares us for the bigger challenges
that lie ahead. And, sometimes, redeems the sense of failure, the pain of past
defeats. We hear in Genesis that the Lord God made us by breathing life into
clay. Sometimes the wrestling is ongoing new creation, the laboured breath of a
wrestling god breathed-out into clay being remoulded in his hands. You might
look like a little old lady on the outside, but be a mighty warrior in the
kingdom of God. But that comes with the discipline of repeated effort—which is
why Paul writes to Timothy, start young, get into the habit: wrestle to
convince, to rebuke, to encourage, when it is going well and when it isn’t. This
is a life-long calling; and often, it is as our outer lives are diminishing
that our inner lives break out in power.
As
you wrestle for climate and environmental justice, as you wrestle for welfare
justice and tax justice, as you wrestle for a future for your children and
grandchildren—as you wrestle for God’s kingdom to come on earth as in
heaven—let us pray always and not lose heart. Amen!
