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Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost, 10/16/2016
Sermon on Luke 18:1-8, by Frank C. Senn
Texts: Genesis 32:22-30; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8
We all know persistent people, and they are a real nuisance. Jesus tells about a widow who was persistent in pursuing her case with a judge not known for giving just judgments. But because the woman in Jesus’ parable persists with her suit, she finally prevails. She received a just settlement because she refused to go away and the judge got tired of her petitions.
We definitely don’t want to see God in the character of the unjust judge. Jesus specifically contrasts God’s responsiveness to the needs of his people with the hardheartedness of the unjust human judge. But we have seen Jesus use unscrupulous characters in his parables to make points about our relationship with God. We are reminded that in the biblical narrative God also works through the sinful actions of people to accomplish his purposes. The Bible is not a book of morality; it’s about God working his purposes out for the long term good of his elect people.
There’s no better example of this than the story of Jacob. Jacob had cheated his twin brother Esau out of his birthright. You know the story about how Esau was a hairy man and Jacob was a smooth man, and their mother Rebecca favored Jacob while their father Isaac favored Esau. Isaac’s eyesight was getting poor, so Rebecca put animal fur on Jacob’s arms so that her husband Isaac would be fooled into giving his blessing and inheritance to Jacob instead of Esau. Having done that, Esau was out of luck because Isaac had only one blessing to give. Esau was outraged and since he was apparently a bigger and stronger guy known to act on impulse, Jacob fled from the camp and went to live with his Uncle Laban in the north country.
After twenty years Jacob had worn out his welcome and decided to find another place to live. Heading back to his home country in the hope that Esau had forgotten his rage, he is given the chilling news that Esau is advancing toward him with four hundred men. That number seemed more like a war party than a welcome home party. This is the dilemma Jacob faced when he came to the River Jabbok.
Dividing his possessions in half so that at least some of his goods might escape Esau, Jacob put his wives and children across the ford of the river and spent the night on the other side.
It was not a restful night. A man appeared who wanted to wrestle. They wrestled all night. It was a tough fight. Jacob’s hip was put out of joint, but Jacob would still not let the man go until he gave Jacob a blessing. “What is your name?” the man asks. When he answers, “Jacob,” his opponent gives a blessing that must have sent chills up and down Jacob’s spine; for now it was apparent who he was wrestling with. It was God himself. Jacob had been wrestling with God through the night, because the blessing was a new name: “Israel,” which means “he who strives with God.”
Names are important, and name changes are especially important. The name “Jacob” means “cheat.” The new name, “Israel,” confirmed that Jacob was indeed the bearer of God’s promise. It meant that reconciliation with Esau was possible. Jacob walked off limping into the morning light.
God’s blessings do not come to us because of what we deserve. They come because God gives them according to his own purposes, without regard for the worth of the recipient. The character of Jacob’s life up to this point did not commend him as an instrument of God.
Even when he was struggling with God in the night, Jacob did not realize who he was struggling with. God does not always come to us in ways that are easily recognized.
God often meets us in the struggles of life, and if we abandon those struggles too quickly we may miss the insight that we are struggling with God. So we must really persist in our struggles. They may seem to get us nowhere, but we must persist. For as he did with Jacob, so God may confront us in situations for which we think we have other explanations. But God is often at work in those situations in which we think the obstacle cannot be overcome, and if we persist we will come to recognize God’s reality and also the new future that awaits us.
Will God ever get around to bringing about that future? Will his reign come visibly and in power? For two millennia Christians have prayed, “Your kingdom come,” and while we see signs of the kingdom here and there, the full reality of God’s kingdom still remains in the future. What are we to think about that?
An answer is given in the Gospel of Luke. Luke was writing to Christians who were no longer counting on Christ’s immediate return and to a church that had settled down into a kind of institutional life. Luke’s answer (quoting Jesus) was: “be persistent.” Jesus drives home that point in the parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow. Even when the results seem unattainable, Jesus encourages us to persist. Such persistence is precisely faith. That’s made clear at the end of verse 8. “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Will he find people still praying and working for the coming of God’s kingdom when the Son of Man finally comes?
We often pray, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus,” as a liturgical refrain—and we mean it. But we know that faith and faith active in love are needed in the meantime. That’s why we invest our time, our talent, and our resources in the campaign for God’s kingdom in both good times and in bad, when things are going well and the numbers are up and also when things are bumpy and the numbers are down.
The question is not about the faithfulness of God; the risen Christ has laid that doubt to rest once and for all. The question is about us and our persistent faithfulness. Will we struggle with God until God blesses us, even though we walk away limping? Will we persist in our prayers for God’s kingdom and follow that up with our actions? Will we keep the life and mission of the church vibrant and effective as we move into uncertain times?
The times are always uncertain. It takes no faith to act when the outcome seems assured. Faith is needed when the outcome is uncertain. Since our outcomes are always uncertain, faith is always needed. “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
If the Son of Man does find faith, it will be because people like Timothy and you and me have held to it steadily and proclaimed it forcefully. There is practical advice in the verses from our Second Lesson, advice on how to hold the faith steadily: by relying on the faith taught and lived in Christian families and by relying on Scripture which is inspired by God and is useful for teaching and being trained in righteousness, in a way of life. These verses deal less with a theory of biblical inspiration than with an appeal to an authority that serves as an anchor for faith that keeps us from running from one fad to another.
This danger is real, especially when we don’t think things are going well---in our lives or in the life of the church. We flit from one idea to the next. If things get really uncertain we wonder if our basic premise is at fault. The tendency to run from one idea to the next is as real in our time as it was in the second century with all the gnosticisms---the so-called “knowledge”---that threatened to undermine the revelation of God.
The Second Letter of Timothy argues that the faith has a content that can be communicated. The practice of the faith has a form that is given and reliable. If we hold up word and sacrament as the central focus of congregational life, it is because we offer a Scripture-based and tradition-tested faith to those who are wrestling with faith-issues. This may not be fashionable. There are all kind of ndw ideas out there about how to do “church.” But if we believe that this is our mission, we will have to be, in the words of 2 Timothy, “persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.” And we will have to be persistent in supporting it with our time, our talent, our treasure, our attendance. Amen.