Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity 2019

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!