Wrestling with God

by Sharon Marr, channelling a Debie Thomas essay

(Based on Luke 18:1-8; Gen 32:22-31; 2 Tim 3:14–4:5)

In this week’s Gospel reading, Debie Thomas (of Journey with Jesus) recounts how Jesus tells a parable about a bothersome widow who seeks justice against her oppressor.   Day after day, the judge refuses to help her.  But she persists, tirelessly bothering the judge until he’s sick of her very presence: “I will grant her justice,” he says to himself, “so that she may not wear me out.  (In the Greek, “so that she won’t give me a black eye”! Don’t you love that? These are the gems you get when you dig a little deeper sometimes.)

“At the outset,” writes Debie, “the Gospel writer tells us that Jesus’s parable is about ‘the need to pray always and not lose heart.’  But this is troubling.  Are we really supposed to harass God until we wear him down?  Is that what prayer is — bothering a hard-hearted God until he gives in?  When I receive an answer to prayer, is it only because God is sick to death of hearing my voice, and wants me to shut up?

“In case we’re inclined to think of God as the unjust judge, Jesus explains that the parable works by way of contrast: Unlike the heartless judge in the story, God ‘will quickly grant justice’ to those who cry out to him. 

“But this explanation raises troubling questions, too, because our lived experiences contradict it.  Too often, God does delay, and our most fervent prayers — for healing, for justice, for protection, for peace — go unanswered.  Too often, our struggles with prayer lead us to experience God very much as the judge, turned away from the urgency of our requests for reasons we can’t begin to fathom.

“So what are we to make of this parable?  Well, for starters, I wonder if the story is less about God, and more about us.  I wonder if it’s about the state of our hearts, and about the motivations behind our prayers. Maybe what’s at stake is not who God is and how God operates in the world but who we are, and why we need so desperately to be people of persistent prayer.

“The parable begins with an exhortation not to lose heart.  What does this mean?  What does it look like to ‘lose heart’ in our spiritual lives?  The words that come to mind are weariness, resignation, numbness, and despair.  When I lose heart, I lose my sense of focus and direction.  I lose clarity, and begin to doubt God’s intentions.  I get irritable and cynical very quickly.  My spiritual GPS goes haywire, and all roads lead to nowhere.

“In contrast, the widow in Jesus’s parable is the very picture of purposefulness, precision, aliveness, and clarity.  She knows her need, she knows its urgency, and she knows exactly where to go and whom to ask in order to get her need met.  If anything, the daily business of getting up, getting dressed, heading over to the judge’s house or workplace, banging on his door, and talking his ear off until he listens fortifies her own sense of who she is and what she’s about.”

She is persistent.  I remember a story my grandmother Bebe told.  As a child she was one of seven, and food was not under any circumstances to be wasted.  One breakfast, her younger brother said to his mother, “Do I have to eat this egg?” Their mother quickly retorted, “That’s enough of that. Eat it up” … and then probably mentioned the starving millions in the world. 
“But Mum,” he said … and she responded sharply, “Eat it up and eat it now”.
“But …”
And an angry glare was given. … Silence …
Then his small voice said, “But do I have to eat the feathers?”

Persistence on his part paid off, and the egg was removed.

“What happens when we pray like the widow?” Debie asks.
Then answers, “I can only speak from experience, but I know that when I persist in prayer — really persist, with a full heart, over a long period of time — something happens … to me.  My sense of who I am, to whom I belong and what really matters in this life.  My heart grows stronger.  It becomes less fragile and flighty.  And sometimes — here’s the biggest surprise — these good things happen even when I don’t receive the answer I’m praying for.”

And maybe I am learning what it is to live in ‘your will be done’, and trust Him.

Debie continues.
“I don’t mean for a moment to suggest that unanswered prayer doesn’t take a toll.  It does.  It hurts and it baffles.  Sometimes it breaks my heart.  But maybe that’s the point of the parable, too: the work of prayer is hard.  The widow’s predicament is not straightforward; she has to make a costly choice every single day.  Will I keep asking?   Can I be patient?  Am I still capable of trusting in the possibility of justice?

“Prayer is, finally, a great mystery.  We can’t know — it’s not given to us to know — why some prayers are answered quickly and many others are not.  We can’t understand why our earnest pleas for justice (or healing, or peace) hit the wall of God’s silence and sometimes remain there for weeks, months, years, or lifetimes. And yet, from the heart of this bewildering mystery, Jesus asks, ‘Will I find faith on the earth?’  Which is to say, will I find men and women like the bothersome widow?  Will I find such ferocity?  Such tenacity?  Such fortitude?

“The widow’s only power in this story is the power of showing up.  The power of sheer grit.  But the story suggests that this power is not to be taken lightly.  Which is to say, prayer is not to be taken lightly.  We can’t always know what gets shaken, transformed, upended, or vindicated simply because we show up again and again in prayer. 

“Not coincidentally, all of our lectionary readings this week are about persistence.  The widow persists in her belief that good things will come to her, even when the odds look wretched.  Jacob, wrestling the angel in total darkness, persists until the blessing of a new name and a new future are granted to him. The writer of 2 Timothy encourages persistence again and again, “whether the time is favourable or unfavourable.”  And the psalmist reminds himself — and us — that the reason we can be persistent is … because God is. Our persistence can never be in vain, because it is rooted in God’s.  

“What all of these readings suggest to me is that God delights in those who dare to strive with him.  To contend with him.  To wrestle with him.  Wrestling, as it turns out, is not a bad or even a scary thing, because it’s the opposite of apathy, the opposite of resignation.  It’s even the opposite of loneliness.  To fight with God — to show up day after day in prayer, to wrestle with our resistance in the darkest hours of the night — is to stay close, to keep our arms wrapped tight around the one who alone can bless us.  Fighting means we haven’t walked away. 

“When the Son of Man comes, Jesus asks at the end of the parable, will he find faith on the earth?  Faith that persists, faith that contends, faith that wrestles?  This is the question that matters. Will he find such faith in us?”

Seven Deadly Sins?

Sin is on my mind this fortnight.  It’s hard to even remember what the word means, it’s so seldom said or heard these days.  Why is that, I wonder?  It seems to have gone the way of thee and thou and Sunday roast and the national anthem before a movie.  It’s a word, a concept, for which we have no further need in this post-modern age of moral relativism.

There was a time when sin was front and centre in the minds of both perps and moral watchdogs.  Evagrius Ponticus, also known as Evagrius the Solitary, which perhaps spikes his authority somewhat, a so-called ‘Desert Father’ from the fourth century AD, first proposed a list of seven deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth.  Interesting list …  Why “deadly”, is not recorded. But, is it the list you would have come up with?
What about murder and robbery?  Paedophilia and human trafficking?  Maybe they didn’t have those in the fourth century.

Personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins in a fourteenth-century manuscript

What about spite … character assassination … deception, fraud and white collar crime?  Notwithstanding collar colour. 
Trade Me rip-offs?  Emotional abuse?  Family spats or parental neglect.
[Stop me here: I could go on all day.]

Anyway, Thomas Aquinas and Pope Gregory, Chaucer and Dante, several renaissance artists, must have tautoko’d1 the seven, because they burnished them and gave them further dignity and impetus in their various treatises and paintings, and we have movies made about them today, because they’re such delicious founts of sensation and scandal.  And money-making.

I wonder if, in answering my own earlier question, Aquinas would have argued that all the other sins stem from the basic seven.  Paedophilia from lust, perhaps?  Fraud and theft, etc, from greed?  Gossip and slander from pride or envy …

Sloth!  That’s a good one.  Guilty here.
And gluttony … why is that even in the list?  Deadly? [Actually, as Wikipedia attests, it’s not just about food, but any unhealthy or excessive appetites.  So, fair enough, yeah?]

Actually, in further answering my previous answer to my own earlier question [… trying to push up my word count …], in arguing that the magnificent seven are foundational to all other sins, pride would seem to be the grand-daddy of them all.  The antecedent, if you will.  All of us are guilty of the wrong sort of pride, wouldn’t you say?  Pride is the opposite of humility, and can open the way to arrogance, hubris, narcissism and unwarranted superiority. One can even become proud of one’s humility! 

Dante’s definition of pride was “love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one’s neighbour”.  C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity that pride is the position in which the ego and the self are directly opposed to God: “Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

Am I guilty of some of the downstream progeny of the seven? Or of pride, the progenitor itself?  You bet.

Perhaps the answer is to be monkeys in denial.  (See no evil, hear no evil, smell no evil – something like that.)
Or, more responsibly, consider what the book of Romans2 has to say, that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”, and that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus …”.  Weigh that against the seven and form your own conclusions about the deadliness of sin.

Ken F

1to support, prop up, agree, advocate, accept
2Romans 3:23 and Romans 6:23

Unpacking ‘Faith’

by Barry Pollard

(Based on Luke 17:5-10; Hab 1:1-4, 2:1-4; Ps 37:1-9)

It has been a busy few weeks for Keri and me. We had a social calendar, something we don’t often have, and it was pretty full. We have travelled away to celebrate a son’s 40th birthday and then our wedding anniversary, we have farewelled and welcomed monarchs, and in the last few days farewelled a dear member of the church family, Ruth Lee. Quite frankly it has been a tiring and, occasionally, an anxious time.

You know, often our anxiety and tiredness can become our focus, spoiling our appreciation of the experiences we have just had. But when I take the time to think about it I usually find that, in nearly all those circumstances, the good things actually outweigh the bad (not-so-good) things. And this is the case in the time period I have just described.

So what could be a good thing that came out of the loss of dear Ruth, you may ask?

Consider the wide view. Verily I tell you: we will all die. Despite the most amazing medical interventions these days, the best we can do is delay the inevitable a little. But in the end we are all destined to depart this world. Knowing and accepting that, Ruth had a pretty good innings (if you’ll allow a cliché or two). 93 beside your name is an impressive entry in anyone’s scorebook. If we think about the woman we all knew, the stories told about her at her memorial service were indeed testimony to her true character and faith! If you had seen the church and St Francis House filled with her ‘visual ministry’ contributions (as Joan called them) you would have been amazed. It made us all appreciate the huge impact a very small person can have on a church and community. Ruth was a quiet little lady who just got on and did things, often great things, and often for others. We have cause to be very grateful to have shared Ruth’s life here in Tairua.

So that is a good thing! And there is more, which I’ll come to shortly.

Now, the point of this chat is to reflect on the Scriptures we have heard today, try to make sense of them, and work out how to apply them in our lives.

Our Gospel reading brought a measure of relief when I first read it as I started my prep. Only five verses. Sweet! But I read the verses, re-read the verses, pondered each one, re-read them, read before and after them, then realized that actually I didn’t have a lot of leeway here. In the end, not only the brevity of the reading but the tone of the verses gave cause for concern.

You have heard them! Jesus was speaking directly and bluntly.
The apostles said to the Lord, “Show us how to increase our faith.” A good question!
The Lord answered, “If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘May you be uprooted and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you!“

In Matthew’s Gospel it’s a mountain that can be moved.

To have faith, Jesus says, is awesome!

But I hear his response to their question as a criticism. It is as if Jesus is saying, “You have good cause to ask me that because actually you don’t seem to have a lot!”

If we stopped there I imagine it would be cause for even greater concern for us. It was the apostles who were asking the question. They had been in the very midst of Jesus’s ministry, had prayed with him, had witnessed his miraculous healing power, and seen the effects of that ministry. Surely they of all people should have developed their faith.

But is faith a ‘thing’? Is it a commodity of some kind that we can possess? Is it something we either have or not have?
The Oxford Dictionary defines faith, in the context of theology, in this way:

  • Belief in religious doctrines, especially such as affects character and conduct
  • Spiritual apprehension of divine truth apart from proof (Hebrews 11:1)
  • System of religious belief (like the Christian or Jewish faith).

These definitions certainly apply. But do terms like “faith-walk” and “faith-journey” better describe what faith might be. Walks and journeys assume going to a destination. Does a faith-walk ever actually end in the achievement of faith? Or is it more like the way or method of walking and journeying that is the important bit? That sticking to the task. That turning of our attention and effort to the Lord.

But according to Luke’s version of this exchange, Jesus doesn’t explain further. He then tells the apostles:
“When a servant comes in from ploughing or taking care of sheep, does his master say, ‘Come in and eat with me’? No, he says, ‘Prepare my meal, put on your apron, and serve me while I eat. Then you can eat later.’ And does the master thank the servant for doing what he was told to do? Of course not.” 

These verses I interpret as a description of a good servant, one who has multiple roles within the household, who is expected to ‘get on with it’ until all those jobs are done. Can you see that it is like saying faith is something that comes with application to task and getting on with it? This is amplified in verse 10: Jesus says, “In the same way, (as the servant he was describing) when you obey me you should say, ‘We are unworthy servants who have simply done our duty.’”

This is also a pretty good guide to our faith. If Jesus is our Lord and Master, surely, then we are the unworthy servants. I think it means we are to acknowledge our place in his plan. We are not on an even plane with God, he is above, we are below. And as to our behaviour and responses: we are to do our duty, whatever that is, just getting on with it.

So let’s go a little wider.
I have often heard Keri say to me that nothing is random. Everything has a purpose and is connected. I know that when the lectionary was compiled the readings listed for each day are supposed to have a connection. I can hear the preaching team groan! I know, sometimes it is beyond all reason to see those connections but the Holy Spirit is here to help us, and I give thanks that today’s readings do fit a theme.
The reading from Habakkuk came in two parts. In the first, Habakkuk is complaining to the Lord that his world is violent and corrupt, that people love to fight and argue, and that good is outweighed by bad. In the second, the Lord responds. The key point the Lord makes is that to avoid falling into the ways of the world, the disharmony and fighting, we need to live by faithfulness to him.

The circumstances Habakkuk found himself in are not dissimilar to those we find in our world today: Russia and Ukraine in Europe, the US and China in the Pacific, the youthful ram-raiders across the country, and so on. God’s answer to Habakkuk is the same one to us, hence the instruction to write God’s response on stone tablets so we wouldn’t forget it. God even told Habakkuk it wouldn’t happen immediately, adding to the need to make sure the correct message was sent out and remembered.

Faithfulness to God! This is how we are to live.
What does that look like? How do we do it?

A thought came to my mind not long after coming back to the Lord a decade or so ago. I was pondering the 180 degree turn I had just made and I couldn’t account for it. I had been in the wilderness for more than forty years, had opposed the church and church-goers with the same zeal that Saul the Pharisee had, had studied and believed in an evolutionary ascent of man, and was really as far from faith, the type of faith that Jesus talks about, as one could be. Yet, something inside me had broken. I was deeply uncertain about my past, but pretty hopeful about my future. I realised I was disposed to change. I needed help!

Disposition describes a mindset that meshes with the concept of belief and faith. Positively, it is willingness or openness to accept new inputs. So I knew I was disposed to change for good. I was open and ready. But I also knew I couldn’t manage it on my own.
Shortly thereafter, I was blessed to be part of a home group that met weekly, and through thoughtful and intimate teaching and discussion, and inclusive open prayer, I began a journey that has had a huge impact on my life and the relationship I now have with the Lord.
I am not saying I have no difficulties or doubts, or that I have a perfect prayer-life, or any of that. I’m just saying my head and heart are turned towards God these days. I am always weighing up the situations I am in and looking for better ways to deal with them. And I hope you are too. So to that end, let’s continue.

Our other reading, Psalm 37, holds some of the keys to what Jesus is saying in the Gospel. Think about it. This is what I hear the psalmist saying:

Don’t be like the wicked
Trust in the Lord
Do good
Take delight in the Lord
Commit everything you do to the Lord
Be still in the presence of the Lord
Stop being angry!

There are overlaps but each point could act as a guide to how we build faith in the Lord. It isn’t one thing, it is many things. But we all have to start somewhere. Each could be a focus for intentional behaviour. Each could be a reinforcement to how we build faith.
Think back to dear Ruth. She lived by these guides. She was certainly remembered by many at her memorial service as having done so.

It is timely, too, that we weigh the life Queen Elizabeth.
At the outset I mentioned the change of monarchs. I am surprised to admit that this has had quite an effect on me. The late Queen had indeed been a constant in my life. She was the only monarch to reign in my lifetime. In the latter years I have come to understand and appreciate her life of dedicated service and her motivation to act so. From the moment of her father’s death and her accession to the throne, she acted selflessly, guided by prayer, committing her actions and the people she was responsible for to the Lord. Let’s hope and pray her son will model his behaviour and monarchy on similar principles.
Elizabeth openly confessed that she was a prayerful person. She encouraged others to pray for her. This admission that in her own strength she couldn’t rule her realms and dominions is pretty humbling. She needed help, just as we all need help.

In Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus used the example of the hard-working servant, the idea that we are just to get on with things, expecting little or no acknowledgement for our efforts, seems harsh these days. In our time and country we are not slaves. We can choose our life paths. We have been brought up to expect words of praise and reward for any and all of our efforts. Nearly everything we do is transactional. If I do this, I get that. But Jesus is saying that we are to operate in a different way, a way that focuses on duty.

Our duties are spelled out in various forms and places in the Bible, but could be summarized by loving God and loving each other.

Just as the Queen responded to duty in her life, we should respond to duty in ours. Just as the Queen turned towards the Lord to be effective in carrying out her duties, so we should. Queen or commoner, we have been assured that Jesus will never forsake us nor leave us. We can all rely on him, in all things. He is the strength we all need to ‘get on with it’.

So as I conclude, let us take heart again in the words of the Collect for the day: God our shield and our rampart, it is your strength, not the size of our faith, that supports us in all life’s difficulties; may we be content to simply serve, and, when our labours are done, all gather as equals around your table …

List of Friends

Who wouldn’t like more friends.
Some people seem to make friends easily.
They’re not to be looked on with envy, necessarily, because there are friends, and there are friends, and you don’t really know what you’re seeing.  Things are not always as good as they seem, and it’s a given that one can still be lonely or feel unwanted in an apparently riotous group of apparently good friends.

Sheldon Cooper (in The Big Bang Theory) keeps a mental list of friends (in his ‘eidetic memory’!), to which worthy individuals are added (or deleted) according to how they appeal to his ego, or not. It gives hilarious insight into how petty people can be, but perhaps also to how our need for friendship so percolates just below the surface.

The truth is, 91.3%1 of us wish we had more friends, or even a friend.  So don’t think you’re the only one.  So does everyone else!

But, it is well said, be careful what you wish for.
Here’s a cautionary poem, unattributed, with a twist in its trajectory.  It’s entitled List of Friends. Enjoy and ponder. 😊

I made a list of friends – ones I wanted to hold.
One of them stole my happiness, and one of them my gold.
One went away, didn’t even say goodbye;
One betrayed a secret … and one told a lie …

So I made another list of friends – ‘cos friends I wanted to be.
One became too famous to even remember me.
And when I stumbled, made mistakes – high was the price.
One laughed and taunted me, one gave bad advice.

Then someone came to me – and put her arms around.
In my darkest hour of grief, a friend I truly found.
She gave me strength and heart when I began to fall;
And, funny, she was one who was not on my list at all.

[Anon]

Friendship is one of the four loves in CS Lewis’s book appropriately called The Four Loves.  This unbelievably perceptive philosopher and writer observes that friendship, unlike ‘romantic love’ (which is done “face-to-face”, he suggests), is done “shoulder-to-shoulder”.  What he’s getting at (and elucidates far better than I do, and with a much higher word limit than I do) is that friends are found in common pursuit.  That is, find an interest that someone else has, or a task he or she is doing, and do it with them.  Shoulder to shoulder.  That’s where friends are most likely to be found.

The other thing is – if self-evident – instead of needily looking for friends, go out and find someone who needs a friend.  And be it.  In an un-creepy, generous, un-self-seeking way.

There you are: a couple of tips.

1Statistic obtained from the highly rated fakestats.com website