22 Pentecost C/Lectionary 29 October 20, 2013
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Guengerich Hutson
Genesis 32: 22-31 + Psalm 121 + 2 Timothy 3: 14-4:5 +
Luke 18: 1-8
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sigh, O LORD, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
I don’t know how many of you have taken a fall and broken something. In 2002 I slipped on an icy patch and broke my arm AND dislocated my elbow. It wasn’t pretty. And I still walk with exaggerated caution across ice. On the positive side, though, I can now predict with some degree of confidence when the weather is going to change, based on the ache in that arm.
In recent days our dear Mary Smith also took a fall, in her apartment, and broke her arm. She’s fine, though, and in very good spirits about it all. As I was visiting with her this past week, and we were eating ice cream together, she told me that as she was falling, it seemed that time was passing in slow motion, which gave her time to pray as she tumbled to the floor. Her prayer was “Dear God, just don’t let me break my hip.” So, Mary seems pleased that her hip is in tact, even if it meant that her left arm bore the brunt of the fall. She also noted that she is walking carefully in and out of the area of her apartment where she fell.
Today, in our first reading, we heard a portion of the story of Jacob wrestling with a man who seems to either be God or a messenger from God. We don’t get any of the back story, though. This portion of the text offers us no reminders of who Jacob is or how it is that he finds himself alone that night. And those are important pieces of the story – too important to leave out. So….Jacob was what one writer called a smooth operator. He robbed his twin brother Esau of his inheritance; he tricked his father into blessing him when he did not deserve it; he spent years systematically stripping his uncle of his wealth and then he abandoned him, taking with him two of his daughters and most of his flock and fortune. And as Jacob flees, he gets word that his brother Esau is enroute to meet him with an army of 400 men. Jacob is caught. He is caught in all of his dishonesty and his lack of care for his family. To retreat means to encounter his uncle and to continue forward means to meet his brother Esau. Both will certainly have it in for him. So, Jacob hides half of his possessions and wealth and then sends caravans on ahead to meet Esau, hoping to bribe his way back into Esau’s good graces. Our reading picks up with Jacob sending the remainder of his family and servants across the river to meet Esau first, so that even if Esau rejects Jacob’s bribe, he might take pity on the sight of his helpless wives and children.
As Jacob waits alone, he suddenly finds himself in a wrestling match with a messenger of God. They wrestle all night long.
Earlier I asked how many of you had fallen and broken a bone, but now I’m wondering how many of us gathered in this day have wrestled with God or God’s messenger throughout the night. There’s no need for a show of hands….this seems to be a very personal question, but I also suspect that most of us have found ourselves in just this predicament. Maybe the wrestling didn’t seem as visceral as an actual person, or maybe it did. But who among us has not known that wrestling that happens in the long hours of the night, when darkness wraps around us in many ways?
In those long dark hours, we sometimes find that we are worrying….worrying about those we love and care for….aging parents, children newly out of the nest, friends in fragile places. Perhaps we worry in broader ways….for a fragile planet, for unfaithful national leaders, for a faltering economy. Perhaps we worry for our physical health or we wonder how we came to be this old this quickly. Whatever our worry in those dark hours, the wrestling feels physical. It is as though we are wrestling with God. It is as though we wonder where, in the midst of all that we have done or left undone, God can possibly be present. Or maybe we are awake with the sudden and terrible awareness of our own sinfulness. Of the ways we have separated ourselves from God and all that is holy.
Jacob, as he wrestled, must have played through how he came to find himself alone in the desert. Somewhere deep down he must have realized that all of that deceit in his life, that all of that cheating and lying, had separated him from God. It had certainly separated him from his family. And here he is, in darkness, wrestling with it all.
The Gospel story today is a reminder to us to be persistent. It’s a bit of an odd parable that Jesus tells, because I don’t believe that the judge in the story is meant to represent God. After all, Jesus describes the judge as one who neither feared God nor had any respect for people. This would not be how Jesus and his followers understood God. So the widow in the story comes before an unjust judge and in persistence asks for what she needs – justice against her foes. We don’t know what those foes were, we do not know who or what it was that she was struggling against. But what we do know is the purpose for the parable. Verse 1 of our Gospel reading tells us plainly: “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” To pray always…and not to lose heart.
I find it interesting that Jacob left his wrestling in the night with a limp. It was a limp that would, perhaps, be the place where he carried in his body the struggles of his soul. Many who work in professions that care for the body – whether medical professionals or massage therapists or acupuncturists – will tell you that much of what manifests as pain in our bodies begins in our spirits. Recently someone said to me that when we are under stress, worry, and fear we naturally turn our shoulders in and fold over our hearts, as if to protect them.
Now, don’t misunderstand – I know that there are very real diagnoses that we receive that are about the cells in our bodies going awry. There are viruses and infections we catch. There are bones that we break when we fall down.
But like Jacob, with his hip, we often do not face our spiritual struggles without coming away changed.
And in those struggles, in that wrestling, in the dark nights of the soul, we are reminded by Jesus’ parable to pray always and not to lose heart.
I imagine that the Psalmist had something of a middle of the night wrestling match when our psalm for this day was penned. And I know that many folks have turned to it for comfort in those dark nights.
I will lift up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come? My help comes from the Lord the maker of heaven and earth. The Lord will not let your foot be moved nor will the one who watches over you fall asleep. Behold the keeper of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep; the Lord watches over you; the Lord is your hade at your right hand; the sun will not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will presever you from all evil and will keep your life. The Lord will watch over your going out and your coming in from this time forth forevermore. Amen.
It is easy to lose heart. It is easy to try something else besides prayer – to try to self medicate in some way that is certainly going to fall short of what we need. Because what we need is to rest in the surety and the certainty of the One who made us, who formed us in God’s own image. Bad things happen in our lives. Sometimes they are of our own making and sometimes they are pure random chance and sometimes they are something in between. Sometimes we will lie awake at night because of them and sometimes in that darkness, when we have sent everyone else away from us, we will wrestle with God. Into that darkness, in whatever way it comes to us, Jesus says: Pray always. Do not lose heart.
Thanks be to God. Amen.