Two struggles
Luke 18:1-8
In the
face of world events at the moment, do you feel weak and powerless? Unable to change anything? At the mercy of forces greater than
yourself? On the wider level, the world
at the moment robs us of confidence, of power, as we struggle with the reality
of life. And on the personal level, I
wonder how you are feeling about the state of your church in this anniversary
year? Anniversaries can inspire us with
gratitude for God’s faithfulness over the years, but they can also bring in to
focus anxieties we have. They can
concentrate us on anxieties that arise as we compare the present with the
past. Many people have told me of how
full our churches were in the 1960s.
And anniversaries can also make us
struggle
with anxieties about the future. Where
are we going? Will we be here for the
next significant anniversary?
Powerlessness
and struggle. Two common experiences
for human beings. And two common
experiences for those who try to follow Jesus well. Here we have two fights- one an undignified tussle throughout the
night, and the other the persistent pleas of a widow-a woman with no status or
leverage in her society. Why are these
stories in the Bible? What are they
meant to show us about God, about us, about what it means to have faith in hard
times?
When I
was at theological College in Bristol there was a death in the community. The person who died was a small child, the
son of a couple who had come from abroad to study at the College. For several days before the child's death,
he was in intensive care. During this
time people came together to pray for the family. We all fervently prayed that the child would recover, but he
didn't. We were all in Chapel when the
news came through that the child had died, and we all turned to pray
again. But there was a significant
divide in the way people prayed that was reflected in the debate that took
place in the College over the following days and weeks. Some prayed like this: "We thank you
Lord that nothing can separate us from your love. We thank you Lord that death holds no power over us, and that you
have this child in your care. Help us to
trust you." Of course, all of
those statements are true. But other
people prayed in different ways: "God, why did you let this happen? Why could you not have stepped in and saved
this boy's life? What kind of God are
you to allow a child to be born and then to die so quickly? God we don't understand."
Which was
the prayer of faith? When Jacob
wrestled with God he was facing his fears-his fears about seeing his brother
Esau whom he expected to want to kill him.
His fears about where God had led him in his life, his fears about
whether God was really on his side, his fears of aloneness and
uncertainty. This was not a staged
wrestle he had with God. It wasn't
managed to ensure that noone got hurt.
Jacob went for God. It was ugly,
it was raw, it was tiring, it was no holds barred. But in wrestling like this, Jacob got real with God. Like the words from the cross, "My God,
my God why have you forsaken me?"
Jacob shows us that faith is found in the honesty of wrestling with God,
of allowing our emotion is to become raw.
Because God can take it-he allowed Jacob to press him to a draw. What kind of love allows us to press it to a
draw? And while fighting is ugly, it is
also intimate. There is the taking off
of masks, a physical closeness which can seem embarrassing.
The God
we worship is one we can struggle with, because whatever we say to him we can
trust him to bless us when our energies, our passions, even our anger has
drained from us. Faith is not about
giving your agreement to a list of statements, so much as trust in a person whom
you love but can also fight with. It is
in fighting with God that we come to realise the limits of our own strength and
the enormity of his. I would say an
essential part of being the father of three boys is knowing how to fight-some
of the closest encounters I have with my children are when they are all over
me. What is the purpose of this
phenomenon of always fighting your father?
Why is it such an instinct? The
purpose I believe is so that I can teach my sons their limits-that they can do
something with all this energy that is bursting around in their bodies, but to
learn to use it in such a way as they will not get hurt, or hurt others. I believe when they fight with me they feel
safe to be themselves. And I believe
that is the kind of relationship God desires with us-to be so honest with him
about our fears, our questions and doubts, that we are genuinely intimate. But in the process to learn the limits of
our own strength and the resources of his.
And now
on to the second story. The story of
the widow who keeps on pestering the unjust judge is the typical David and
Goliath story. Hollywood movies have
been made in which some small fry takes on a big corporation, and against all
odds eventually wins. In the film Erin Brokovich, based on a real life case, a
sassy, straight talking single mum with no qualifications, teaches herself law
and eventually prosecutes a major company up to the highest level, despite
death threats, obstacles, and the weakness of her own position, for endangering
local people's lives. Those who are
brought down by her actions are all middle aged white men who, like the judge
in the story, fear neither God, man or unemployed woman.
Which one
is God in this story? Is the point that
he is the distant, unfeeling corporation, the bigoted self-obsessed and corrupt
fat cat who needs to be worn down? Or
is he more like Erin - the searcher for justice, the one who appears powerless,
but persists in seeking for truth and justice.
Jesus' point is that God is the opposite of that judge. He is the antithesis of everything that man
stands for. He longs to hear our
prayers, he knows what they are before we utter them. He is on our case. It's
an end time story - a story that God promises to bring justice and peace at the
last. He hears our prayers. Don't give up, then, says Jesus. Don't lose heart. God is on your side.
The
church at the time Luke had been writing may have expected Jesus to return, and
may have been disappointed and even embarrassed that their expectations had not
been fulfilled. We may not be disappointed
by the lack of the Second Coming of Christ, but we may be embarrassed by the
state of the world, by the state of our church, or by the state of our
lives. We are aware that we are losing
our relevance in society, for example.
“Don’t give up on God,” this parable tells us. We see things sliding to a possible apocalyptic scenario. “Don’t be tempted to doubt that he is
involved,” the story tells us. Don’t
begin to think of God as someone who can only be persuaded reluctantly to act
on your behalf, says Jesus. He is on
your side, he will act in his own time, your prayers are heard. Keep striving for right because he will not
let you down.
Two
fights, two struggles with different messages.
Where do they leave us? It
leaves me wondering if together we might be able to help each other to share
our genuine voices together. Liturgy
can be good – it can give you a voice for prayer when words are hard to come
by. But it can also restrict the range
of the way we talk to god, the way we listen to him, and the way we even think
about him. Where is the space in our
life together for the raw emotions? The
difficult questions? The lamenting over
the world, over church decline, over the paradoxes and difficulties of
life? Where can we help each other to pray
like this, or to share our fears? If
you feel a novice at prayer, then surely where you need to go first is in
learning to express your real feelings, your real thoughts to God in your own
words, not just the ones that seem respectable. As we have seen, there is nothing dignified about wrestling. My suspicion is that if we grow to be a
people who share, pray, worship and struggle with our hearts on the outside,
the simple act of trusting God enough to be real with him, and be real with
each other will build our faith not throw it to the ground. It seems to me that we will never be truly
able to understand the reliability of God if we aren’t prepared to push him to
his limits.