Readings:
Genesis 32:22-31
Jacob -- son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, is facing a mid-life crisis. He seems successful -- a man of wealth and high standing. But his success kind of stinks to high heaven -- beginning with a birthright his mom helped him steal from his older brother; an escape to his uncle's place up north that she arranges for him; then wives, herds, lands and children he's accumulated at his uncle's expense. When he and his uncle agree to go their separate ways, Jacob begins examining his life and realizes he needs to go back to the beginning -- to face his brother and start to make amends. He's scared, and the night before he is to meet his brother for the first time in years, has a night-long wrestle with "a man." The text around "a man" is ambiguous and tradition variously has it that Jacob is wrestling with a man, an angel, and God. Whoever and whatever it is, Jacob is never the same again. He's a new man -- a wounded, limping man, and it's at this point he finally is known as "Israel."
Reading: Luke 18:1-8
The Gospel of Luke was written down sometime after
70 BCE – a generation or even two after Jesus’ life, death and
resurrection. The church at that time
was facing real challenges to their faith in the good news, and one reason the
Gospel was written was to help bolster their faith. One big blow was the total destruction of the
Temple by the Romans in 70 BCE – something that Jews thought God would never
let happen again. Another blow, unique
to Christians, was the apparent delay in Jesus’ return to make things
right. So they began to wonder: would
Jesus come back? Was the promise of the kingdom true? Was God really there like they thought he was?
So, when the Christians of the early
church have big questions (like when will Jesus come back?
Will he come back? Is the promise of the kingdom true? Is God really there like we think he is?) the only answer they get is another question: when the Son of Man, the
Lord of God’s kingdom comes, will he find faith on Earth?
Which raises in my mind, another question in
response back to that: what kind of faith do you mean? What kind of faith will he be looking for?
Saturday I was awake at 4 am, hours before sunrise, out on
the back deck bundled against the chill, looking up at the stars. Above
the trees, neighbours’ rooftops and city power-lines, through the inescapable
glow of the city of our time, the stars – enough of them visible still to be
awe-inspiring, shone through. It seemed forever since I last stood under
them this way. I felt humbled and
exalted at the same time.
I heard a coyote howl. Off to the north, for 4 or 5
minutes, a lone coyote, maybe 7 or 8 howls into the dark, then silence.
I looked up again at the stars to the east, to the north, to
the west and to the south. In the stillness I saw two shooting
stars. Two streaks of light, milliseconds-long, parallel, side by side,
one slightly ahead of the other, slashing the sky to the south, then gone as
quickly and quietly as they had appeared.
Shortly after, another new light among the stars, this time to the
west. A jet plane, its lights blinking as it flew through the night sky also
in a southerly direction.
I gave thanks. And I wondered if this perhaps is the
kind of faith the Lord of the kingdom will be looking for, that the Lord of the
starfields is looking for and looking to inspire when he comes to us on Earth.
The kind of trust in, and openness to God that draws us out
from places of comfort,to stand in Earth’s dark places,to see Earth and all life on it through
the lens of God’s good purpose and under the canopy of God’s gracious design, to hear the cries of the world that are
lifted in the dark to the heavens,to see the slashes of light God sends
through the night and to know we are called to be on a
journey, living and travelling together through the world in the same direction shown
by the twin stars of God’s Word and God’s Spirit
Two images in our readings make me think.
One is that of Jacob, painfully limping away from his
all-night struggle with God. The limp is his blessing. All along he
thought his blessing was all the stuff he accumulated along the way – the
stolen birthright; escape from punishment; the wives, the lands, the herds and
the family he accumulated; the promise of being a great man and a blessing to
the world.
Early on in his travels he dreamt of a ladder reaching to
the skies that he and the angels could use to ascend to God and to descend with
blessings. What a wonderful life he had as he skated through problem after
problem in the glow of that dream.
But it was a dream. The deeper redeeming reality he
finally came to the night before his troubling, penitent return to his older
brother – was the struggle he had to have with God, with himself, and with his
conscience about the meaning of his life – a struggle that left him with a
life-long limp, constant reminder of his brokenness and persistence, of his
sinfulness and chosen-ness. And this was
the real blessing, what would make him a blessing to others, and what gave him
the right at last to be known as “Israel” – “he who strives with God and with
humanity.”
Those who are “Israel” – God’s people for the world, don’t
skate through life. They limp. Rather than running blithely through
the world with quick fixes, easy answers and self-serving solutions they go
slow and more painstakingly. And not just to smell the roses, although
that may happen as a result of it. But it’s because they have come to
know in their own flesh and bones, and their own heart and mind and spirit, the
brokenness and struggles of all life on Earth.
I met a man who spent months with his wife while she slowly
died. His faith and hers was strong. In all good faith, they prayed for God to
heal. And after she died and was released from suffering, and he entered
into the grief of his loss, the man had this to say: as he went through the
struggle and sorrow of his wife’s dying, he found growing within him a greater
compassion towards others than he had known before, more openness to others’
struggles, more willingness to engage and become personally involved with
others whose lives were also difficult and troubled.
So who’s to say where the blessing of Israel, and the gift of
God’s people, is? In ease of life, in comfort, and in piles of answered
prayers? Or in openness to pain, awareness of brokenness, sympathy with
sin, and a limp that slows you down, keeps you from just skating through life,
and gives you the chance to be really human?
The other image is that of the lonely, powerless widow
crying out for justice to a judge who doesn’t really give a hoot for her, for
God, or for what’s really right. Who in the end makes things right only
because if he doesn’t everyone will know just how unjust and unrighteous he is,
because of the noise the widow has made and the attention she has drawn to the
corruption of his rulings.
It’s a parable of how the world often works. There are three characters in it, and we, God
and the rest of the world are cast somewhere among them. There’s the lonely, powerless widow surely growing
hoarse from her cries for the good and right thing to be done; the judge determined to close his ears to
the cries but increasingly afraid of getting a black eye in the public’s mind; and the neighbours who maybe side with
the widow and do what they can to help, maybe side with the judge and try to defend
his ruling, or maybe close their windows and decide it’s not their struggle to
get involved in.
Lately the world has been transfixed by the image of Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-0ld climate activist calling us and our leaders to heed the cries of mother Earth and the evidence of her sorrow, and to gather up the courage to do the right thing -- to wake up from our selfish dreams and illusory structures and schemes, to save the life of the Earth for our children and grand-children and their children yet to come.
Whether we see her in the role of the lonely, powerless one crying
out day after day against the judges and rulers of her time for a right to her
future, or someone who hears the cries of mother Earth and chooses to come to
her aid, the relevance and critical truth of the parable are clear.
And the question is, in this issue as in others – from
something as global as climate change to something as community-specific as
feeding the hungry, and sheltering and supporting the broken, does the Lord of
the kingdom of God find faith on Earth when he comes among us?
In actions as big and political as expecting and
electing governments to do what’s good and right for the well-being of all and
giving them a public black eye when they don’t, to commitments as personal and hard as how
we spend our precious time and money, what we give our energy and creativity
to, who we pray for and how, who we reach out to and how, and where we find
meaning for our days, does the Son of Man when he comes to us find the kind of
faith that draws us out to stand in some way in the world’s dark
places,
seeing all of life under the canopy of
God’s love, hearing the cries around us that are lifted up
to the heavens,
looking up to see the way that the slashing
light of God’s Word and God’s Spirit mark for us to go, and then committing to be fellow
travelers with others in that direction, living and working as we are able towards
God’s great, compassionate design for all that is.
To paraphrase a comment by Tilden Edwards – one of the
quotes in the bulletin:
The life of faith is not
found in adherence to any rigid blueprint.
It is found rather in the surprising moments of meeting between God’s
active grace and our spontaneous willingness to be part of it. All of us know such perfect moments when
somehow we know we are part of a loving, compassionate, healing purpose greater
than ourselves and our own immediate benefit.
They are moments lived out of the heart, found scattered through the day
like manna falling in the desert. They
may be very simple and ordinary moments.
But the life of faith is like that.
I wonder: does the promise and the living of that kind of
life – which we all do in our own ways, make you feel both humbled and
exalted?
Is it enough to make us know we are “Israel” – God’s broken yet
persistent, sinful yet chosen people, a blessing to the world in our time,
known by the limp that slows us down just enough to be of real service?
