To Strive With God

Luke 18:1-8; Genesis 32:24-31

October 20, 2013

I found myself this week listening to that old Alanis Morrisette song “Thank U,” with its list of unexpected gratitude. Remember this:

Thank you India.

Thank you terror.

Thank you disillusionment.

Thank you frailty.

Thank you consequence.

Thank you providence.

Thank you nothingness.

Thank you clarity.

Thank you silence.

Sometimes we find ourselves giving thanks for the most unexpected blessing, and in our strange gratitude our eyes open to new possibilities.

It’s commonplace to read the parable in Luke from the perspective of the widow, and to see her as a paragon of determined faith. From that point of view, we’re supposed to be inspired to persistence in the faith even in the face of life’s difficulties and disappointments. That’s a perfectly fine reading, but when I read this story alongside the famous wrestling match in Genesis, I found myself more interested in the faith life of the dishonest judge than in that of the faithful widow.

I can imagine him, looking out at the widow at first and thinking to himself, “I don’t care a whit about this woman and her petty concerns.” Gradually, over time, the way that water wears down stone by seeping into tiny cracks, her persistence creates fissures of doubt in his mind. Perhaps it’s just doubt in his capacity to put up with day-by-day insistence. Maybe it’s deeper doubt about his own intransigence. Maybe he even begins to doubt some core belief that predisposed him to disdain for the widow in the first place.

But whatever its nature, the doubt slips in and, eventually, causes the rupture in his mind that leads him to say, “fine; you win; have it your way!”

The most typical way of reading this parable invites us to emulate the persistent widow in her faithfulness and to remind us that God is a just and loving judge. But what if we flip the reading and look at God as the persistent one pressing us over and over, day by day, to live according to justice and love?

That leaves us as the judge – initially saying, “I don’t care a whit about God and God’s concerns.”

God, in divine persistence, works away on us, never losing hope that we might open our hearts and minds to the presence of the Divine even in the midst of life’s difficulties and disappointments. God is willing and able to wrestle us into submission.

Looked at from that perspective, the wrestling image at the heart of the Genesis passage comes into clearer focus, too.

It’s helpful to hear, in brief, a bit of context for the passage we just heard. Recall that Jacob is, well, estranged from his brother Esau. It’s perhaps helpful to know that Jacob’s very name – at the beginning of the story – means, among other things, “trickster” and “supplanter.” He has tricked Esau out of the older brother’s legal birthright, and then run away and, eventually, through even more tricks, made a goodly fortune on his own.

At the point in the story where this morning’s reading takes place, Jacob is about to meet up with his big brother, and the younger brother is torn between a bit of remorse and a lot of fear. Jacob imagines the scene to come: big brother who was ripped off by conniving younger sibling, welcomes younger brother to his camp – awkward.  As the text says, “Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed.”

So, being a trickster, he ponders the scene and all its possible outcomes, and then connives to put his best foot forward in the safest possible way. Then he tries to get a good night sleep before the grand meeting.

That’s when the trickster gets tricked.

Under cover of darkness “a man” comes upon Jacob and wrestles with him straight on through the night. The text never clarifies the identity of the one with whom Jacob grapples. A demon? A stranger? Esau, himself, in anticipation of the next morning’s uneasy reunion? Yahweh – the God of Abraham whose divine name has not been revealed at this point in the history of Israel, whose own name will be given as a result of this meeting?

The text resists easy reduction and simple interpretation. That’s what makes it such a good story, and one worth wrestling with.

Even if we take the traditional route – and I tend to read it this way – that Jacob is wrestling with God, the story compels us to ask about the nature of the divine. As Walter Brueggemann asks:

But if this other one is God, what does it mean to say that Jacob has come to a draw with him? What kind of God is it who will be pressed to a draw by this man? And what kind of man is our father Jacob that he can force a draw, even against heaven? This is no ordinary man. And certainly no ordinary God! Clearly, this is no ordinary story.[1]

Perhaps this extraordinary story is not only the beginning of Israel – literally, as this is where God gives Jacob that name – but also the beginning of a theology of the cross – a theology that insists that we look for God not in absolute power but, instead, in powerlessness, in weakness, in the agency of transforming last to first, of outsider to insider, or, what’s better, of rendering such hierarchies and power structures essentially meaningless.

If we look for God in weakness – as the persistent widow, for example – it shifts the way we see the world.

That’s at least part of what’s going on in the Jacob story. From the beginning,  Jacob has tried to live according to cultural values simply by turning them upside down. Through all his tricks, Jacob has tried to get to the top of the hill by tossing others over the edge, never pausing to consider the possibility of a completely different landscape, a completely different set of values. His plotting in preparation for meeting his brother is all designed to ensure that Jacob will prevail, that he will leave the encounter with his family and finances secure even though the entire edifice was built on a foundation stolen from Esau.

Jacob has sought, from the beginning of his story, the blessings of power and affluence, but in the night he receives an entirely other kind of blessing and is transformed.

The story remains open, and the precise nature of the blessing and of the new relationship of the people of Israel with God remains undecided. But somewhere in the night, some doubt crept in to Jacob’s mind about the trajectory he expected to follow.

Last week we talked about “seeing with the eyes of the heart” – about how a heart, opened in gratitude – enables us to see the world differently. This week’s readings – with their emphasis on persistence, struggle and change – suggest that a mind, opened, perhaps, in doubt, enables us to see the world differently, as well.

So this morning I find myself giving thanks for doubt.

Doubts about the accepted “verities” can drive us to consider previously obscured possibilities.

Doubts about God can drive us deeper into the questions of faith, and lead us to new understandings that are as rich, deep, subtle and nuanced as life itself.

Doubts about ourselves can drive us into the embrace of others in a community that provides what we lack on our own.

So, thank you doubt. Thank you questions with no easy answers. Thank you stories that raise such questions. Thank you community that rests lovingly in the questions. Thank you God who comes to me in the doubts and struggles and questions, who comes to me in weakness, who comes to make us strong precisely in those weak places for the sake of the broken places in our own lives and the life of the world. Thank you. Amen.

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[1] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982) 267.

Believing Is Seeing

Luke 17:11-17; 2 Kings 5:1-15

October 13, 2013

There’s a praise song that goes “open the eyes of my heart, Lord.”

If you’re a medical student it’s not much by way of an anatomy lesson – for that you’re better served by “head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.” But it’s a pretty good faith lesson, and one that calls into question the old adage that “seeing is believing.”

The truth is, often times, that believing is seeing. That is to say, we perceive what our hearts tell us to expect to see. We see what our hearts lead us to see. The condition of my eyes, as it were, depends upon the condition of my heart. I perceive what I am open to perceiving.

These two fascinating healing stories from today’s lectionary pivot on that pattern. Ten broken, wounded, sick people call out to Jesus for help. Jesus gives them simple instructions, which they follow and are healed. They all experienced healing, but only one of them experiences wholeness. As the NRSV translates it, all are made clean and one is made well. The Greek in the text is crucial. The word describing what happened to the ten translates well as “healed” or “cleansed.” The word describing what happened to the one who turned back to give thanks is often translated as “saved,” and it carries with it the idea of being made whole.

It’s what happens when we see with our hearts what God has done for us and give thanks.

It’s remarkable just how difficult that is so often. How many times do we make Rube Goldberg contraptions of our lives or of situations within them? We go five times ‘round the block to get to the next-door-neighbor. We go to absurd lengths to prove ourselves worthy of what has been given to us. Seriously. How many perfectly healthy relationships – parent and child, sibling-to-sibling, spouse-to-spouse – get undermined by one or the other – or both – trying to prove that they deserve the love that has already been given to them with no strings attached?

That’s basically what’s going on with Namaan. He is told how he can be healed and gets angry because it is too simple. He needs to prove himself worthy of being made clean, yet that healing is offered as a gift. Step into the waters, and you will be made clean. You will be healed.

Look with the eyes of a grateful heart, and you will see clearly.

Gratitude is the fundamental attitude of faith. Give thanks with a grateful heart. A heart filled with gratitude is a heart open to the presence of the Holy in God’s world. It would not be wrong to say, simply, that to give thanks is to have faith.

Thomas Merton put it this way: “to be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything God has given us – and God has given us everything.”

I’d say it ever so slightly differently: in gratitude we recognize the love of God in everything God has given us – and God has given us everything.”

I’m not sure there’s any real difference between the two, and far be it from me to try to improve upon anything that Thomas Merton wrote. But I do want to emphasize the way that a grateful heart opens the eyes of faith.

God has given us everything. That is true whether or not we are grateful. But in our gratitude we recognize the love of God in all that God has given us, and that makes all the difference in our lives.

It was what made the tenth leper whole. It was what opened Namaan’s eyes to perceive the presence of the Holy and worship God.

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.

*****

Looking at your own life with the open eyes of your heart, for what are you thankful?

As you give thanks, what response of faith is being called forth in your gratitude?

What difference, in your life, does gratitude make?

The Life That Really Is Life

1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

September 29, 2013

 “They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.”

That line doesn’t get quoted nearly as often as the pithy one from the beginning of the passage: the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. It’s no accident that the lines come together here, nor that the editors of the revised common lectionary pair this passage with Luke’s challenging little story about Lazarus and the rich man.

It would seem like a great big ol’ softball perched on a waist-high tee that these passages should come up in the lectionary the week after the House voted to cut funding for food stamps by $39 billion even as the real income of the bottom 40 percent of Americans has declined by six percent since the so-called end of the Great Recession.

I have no doubt that I could take a good, strong whack at that softball, and knock it a ways out toward the rhetorical warning track, but I’m going to resist that. Not merely because, well, frankly it’s just too easy, but also, and more importantly, because of the other news I heard just the other day. It seems that we now gather to worship pretty much smack in the middle of the richest county in the United States.

Yup, according to the most recent data, Arlington County has the highest income per capita of any county in the country.

You don’t have to look too far in scripture to find two striking themes: God’s deep concern for the poor and God’s deep suspicions about the idolatry of money.

Jim Wallis, long-time editor of Sojourners, frequently recounts the story of a project he undertook with friends early in his seminary days. They took an old Bible, searched (and this was way before search engines, by the way) for every verse that had to do with wealth, poverty and economic justice, and cut them out. Wallis always says, “we were left with a Bible full of holes, and this has become the American Bible.”

As my mom’s college classmate, William Stringfellow, observed, “where money is an idol, to be poor is a sin.”

As Pope Francis said recently, the great and growing disparity between the world’s rich and its poor “is the consequence of a world choice, of an economic system that brings about this tragedy, an economic system that has at its center an idol which is called money.”

That’s the problem with the American Bible: money is its most powerful god. According to its teachings, the poor deserve their fate and, therefore, the rest of us are off the hook. If poverty is not, itself, a sin, it is, according to the American gospel, a result of sin or, at the very least, of mistakes, bad choices, or individual ineptitude.

There are, of course, connections between decisions and outcomes in any individual’s life, but the great American myth of social mobility is not actually a myth; it’s a lie, and all of the economic statistics tell us that. The plain and simple truth is that poverty in American has a great deal more to do with where and to whom you were born than with anything that happens after that moment.

Not only does the American gospel of prosperity let the rest of us off the hook for any responsibility for and to those who are poor, but it also encourages us – the obviously not-sinful-because-we-are-not-poor – to separate ourselves from the poor. After all, you wouldn’t want to live next to a red-light district because you don’t want to be associated with that sinfulness – it might just rub off.

There’s nothing wrong with the American gospel of prosperity until it claims to be Christian. Or, as another Roman Catholic theologian – Stephen Colbert – put it:

“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.”

Now it’s pretty obvious that poverty, food policy, food stamps, unemployment and all the rest are both political and economic issues. It’s just as obvious that there are a wide variety of approaches to these problems, and that people of good faith can reach quite different conclusions about the best and most effective policies to address them.

I do, of course, care about that stuff, and I certainly have opinions about it. But none of that is what most concerns me. Jim Wallis was on to something crucial when he cut up that Bible, because this is, first and foremost, a theological problem for me, and it is one that challenges me deeply.

After all, I live in the richest county in American and I follow the one who said, “you will have the poor with you always.”

That is among the most regularly misunderstood words of Jesus. It has been used often as either an excuse to ignore poverty out of resignation or to charge Jesus with not caring about the poor.

But Jesus was not making economic predictions – as accurate as they may have been as such. No. Instead, he was offering a description of the community of followers of Jesus. The people of the way would always include the poor. The poor would be, always, part of the community of faith. Rather than being reduced to consumers of charitable services, Jesus understood that the poor would be full and significant members of the community of faith.

I fear that we are constructing a “great chasm” between ourselves such that we cannot get from here to there, as the Lazarus story puts it. We cannot get from here to abundant life much less to eternal life – however we think of that – if we cannot get across the great chasm that we construct between ourselves and others.

Passion and compassion are fundamental to the way of Jesus. To follow the suffering servant means following him into places of despair, and it means being willing to experience that despair ourselves, fully. It’s hard to do that when we live fenced lives, gating ourselves off from the risks of poverty as if we might catch it like a virus.

Richard Rohr, one of my favorite contemporary spiritual writers, put it this way:

Until we walk with despair, and still have hope, we will not know that our hope was not just hope in ourselves, in our own successes, in our own power to make a difference, in our image of what perfection should be. We need hope from a much deeper Source. We need hope larger than ourselves.

If we live the life of the rich man – a life well and clearly designed and constructed to avoid suffering and despair – we do not know that we need hope from a much deeper source. Until we let go of our own designs, Rohr goes on to say, “we will never discover the Real Life beyond what only seems like death. Remember,” he says, “death is an imaginary loss of an imaginary self that is going to pass away. This very journey is probably the heart of what Jesus came to reveal.” (Rohr, Near Occasions of Grace, 100.)

Most of the time we are asleep to that journey.

A wise friend once said to me “discernment essentially means ‘wake up.’” Discerning God’s call and claim on our lives entails waking up to the reality of our lives. For us, here in the middle of the richest county in the richest country in the history of the world, waking up means being honest about what we have received, what we have been given. Waking up means hearing, again, with honest clarity, Jesus’ charge that from those to whom much has been given, much is expected. Waking up means seeing with honest eyes the great chasm that we are digging between ourselves and so much of the rest of creation. Waking up demands a journey to the other side of the chasm. Waking up means confronting the truth that the life that is really life lies mostly on the other side of the chasm.

Waking up means, for individual life, for congregational life, for political life, that the first question we must ask about decisions we make in each of those realms of life is this: will the choice I make help bridge that chasm or will it dig it deeper? As we try to follow the way of Jesus toward the life that really is life, may our lives and choices and, yes, our politics, be filled with building bridges. Amen.