God’s the one who needs to wrestle with you and me in prayer, to call us to do God’s justice in this world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 29 C
Texts: Genesis 32:22-31; Luke 18:1-8

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

God initiated this fight.

Jacob wrestles on a riverbank with someone the writer calls “a man,” who by the end is revealed as God. But Jacob didn’t start it. God showed up on the riverbank looking for a quarrel.

We sometimes say prayer is a wrestling with God. We struggle to be heard, to say what needs saying. We struggle with God’s apparent silence, we wrestle with God over the world’s problems and God’s apparent inactivity. Like Jesus’ widow, we’re invited to persistently bring our concerns to God, even if it means wrestling all night.

But what if God initiates the wrestling? What if God says “I’ve got an issue with you”? What if we’re the ones with the problem ears, the lack of action, and God has to wrestle with us to change us?

Jacob certainly needed a shake-up if he was to be God’s chosen successor as leader.

He’s been a complete jerk up to this point. Cheating his brother and uncle, treating his wife Leah as second class. Now, on his way back home with a wealth of flocks, eleven children, two wives, and a couple maids, he hears his brother is coming to meet him with 400 armed men. The last they saw each other, Esau wanted to kill Jacob.

So Jacob acts the ultimate coward. He sends his wives, maids, children, and flocks across the river to be the front line of his entourage, and he hides in the back. Knowing nothing of Esau’s current state of mind, fearing his brother’s army, Jacob says, “women and children first. I’m not facing that threat.”

Not who God needs to head this family that is meant to bless the world with knowledge of the one God who loves and cares for all. So God finds him cowering in the back, on the other side of the river, and has it out. They wrestle all night.

In the morning God blesses Jacob and gives him a new name, Israel, “the one who strives with God.” God needed to challenge Jacob, struggle with him, to make him into who God needed him to be. And what if that’s what Jesus is saying, too?

This parable seems clear in meaning.

Describing someone cold and unjust who ultimately does the right thing, Jesus says, as he has before, “how much more will God” – who, we’re meant to understand, isn’t cold or unjust – “how much more will God answer you when you persist in your prayer?”

But Jacob’s night by the river raises a different thought: what if God is the widow?

This is a parable, after all. Jesus taught directly sometimes, statements of truth, command, wisdom. But sometimes he told stories that invited the imagination to ponder, dwell, consider. If he wanted to tell us to pray persistently, he could have. And did. But he also told this story.

And Jesus’ parables are like jewels that, when you pick them up and turn them in the light, cast all kinds of different rays. There’s no reason not to take this story and consider it from Jacob’s perspective.

What if God is the widow here?

That makes you and me the ones who don’t fear God or respect people.

The ones God comes to again and again and again and again, asking, “grant me justice.”

God sees the pain and suffering of this world with eyes older than yours and mine and with a heart breaking for this beloved creation, for these beloved creatures. God sees the oppression, the racism, the hatred of strangers, the threatening of the most vulnerable, the destruction of fair government, the breaking down of protections for those in need, and wonders, “who is going to do my justice?”

It’s so easy to blame God, to be dismayed that God lets bad things happen. But maybe it’s God who is dismayed at us. God who is frustrated with us. God who comes to you and me again and again and again and again and asks, “when will you do my justice? When will you save my children?”

It’s hard to argue we don’t need a little shake-up, too.

We get stuck, fail to act. We go about our ways doing what we want, without facing that even the smallest decisions we make every day affect this world and its problems.

What if prayer is God needing to get your attention? God needing to wrestle with you and say, “what will it take for you to get going, to work with others, to realize that the justice that needs to happen is my dream, my vision, my desire, but it won’t happen without you?”

In our Prayer of the Day we prayed for a softer version of this wrestling, “inspire us to seek your enduring justice for all this suffering world.” Inspire us. Not “wrestle with us.” Maybe we fear a wrestling match, but are open to inspiration from God. Either way, the path forward is pretty clear.

There’s no mystery what God desires to happen in this world.

Scripture is full of it. And lots of wise, caring, godly people have lots of good ideas to bring God’s justice, mercy, and peace to this world. Even the threat of a U.S. government that will be authoritarian and not democratic is stoppable if enough people stand up and are counted, if enough people say, “no more,” at the ballot box, at protests, with letters and statements and action. And if enough people said “no more” to hunger and oppression and racist systems in this country, they’d collapse very quickly.

That’s what God wants to wrestle out with you and me: you are needed, as you are, with what you can bring. And all that’s left is for you and me to decide if we’re finally going to answer God’s persistence or, like the judge, keep ignoring it, hoping God will go away.

The beautiful thing is that the result of God’s wrestling is blessing, and a new you.

God and Jacob have it out, and God blesses Jacob, names him, and sends him off to be the leader God needs. The widow finally breaks the judge’s indifference and receives the justice she needs.

And so God wants your attention, needs to wrestle with your objections, your resistance, your fear, your reluctance, your confusion, your lack of self-confidence, to convince you that you are the answer to God’s prayer. And somehow in that wrestling, you are made new. Your ears are opened to God’s needs, your whole being embraces God’s sending you out as the one God needs for justice to happen in this world.

Obviously, it will take more than you, more than me. But that’s God’s to deal with. When it comes to Jacob, or the judge, or you and me, God needs individual attention, an individual wrestle.

And, blessed by God, you and I will be God’s blessing for the justice God so deeply desires to see in this world.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

All people and creatures are bound together in Christ in healing and life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 28 C
Texts: 2 Kings 5:1-15c; Luke 17:1-11

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

They weren’t alone.

Sure, in one sense these ten suffering from a terrible, contagious skin disease were alone. They were banned from contact with loved ones, neighbors, the world, having to shout “unclean” when any came near.

But they had each other. They walked with each other, they made a community. Ten people who understood suffering and pain, loneliness and rejection, sadness and fear, and shared that life with each other when no one else could.

Naaman also had community. A servant girl, a hostage of war, who cared enough for him to suggest a possible cure. A king who valued his leadership enough not to exile him but to generously enable his cure attempt. Servants who loved him enough to insist that he consider trying the prophet’s treatment.

And so it is with us.

Our community here is made up of people suffering from many different things. This community embraces a deep sense that no one here is unbroken. We have no expectations that any here have it all together, that any have no sin, that any have no pain, that any here haven’t suffered rejection or loss or sadness. I’ve never heard anyone say about another in this community, “That’s just not normal.” We expect we’re all in need, and we love each other because of it.

It takes years of a community learning to love those who are hurting, who’ve been turned away elsewhere, who suffer silently, to understand that here woundedness is our normal. You don’t have to pretend you’ve got it together, not here. You don’t have to lie to yourself that people won’t love you if they knew the messes you made, not here. You don’t have to fear that if your truths were told you’d no longer be welcome. Not here.

Our shared sense of need for God leads us here, to this place.

Here is where we are healed, together. Here we meet a scarred, wounded Christ at this table and are given love and life, together. Our little band of sick people shows up here on a Sunday morning and together, like these ten, says, have mercy on us, God! Hear our prayer, and come heal us!

And the healing we receive here, God’s welcome, God’s love and forgiveness, teaches us to love each other, to band together with each other, to be Christ to each other.

And this, too: the healing you receive here, the healing I receive, teaches us to always be ready to welcome others into this group of wounded, sinful, needy people who seek God’s healing and life.

Today we see Syrians and Samaritans included in God’s healing, too.

Not just the chosen ones. All are beloved. Christ draws all people, all things, into the life and heart of the Triune God at the cross. No boundaries, no exceptions.

And the Christ who heals you asks you: what if you learned to see everyone – not just folks here, everyone – with the same understanding as those you know here, the same compassion, expecting all to be wounded as well, wanting to walk with them and help and be helped?

When you understand this breadth of God’s love and healing, all sorts of Jesus’ teachings become clearer. This is why you’re commanded to pray for and love your enemies. Then you admit they’re part of you, they belong, so they can’t be enemies. And empathy for their pain leads you to pray for the removal of their hate, so they can be whole and healed in God, too.

This is the heart of Christian life: all suffering belongs to all of us, all pain matters to all of us, all people are part of us because all are in God’s loving embrace.

And Jesus invites you to see healing is deeper than just physical health.

Jesus says to the thankful one, “your faith has saved you,” or, “your faith has made you well.” For Jesus, being saved is being healed in God’s love and in God’s community even if some ailments remain. God’s healing and wholeness is real even when individual pains aren’t taken away, because in Christ we find the healing of our spirit, our heart, our mind, our life, together.

So Paul can be content in any and all circumstances, even after praying that his suffering be removed and not having it removed, because he is part of Christ, part of Christ’s family, and knows Christ’s peace.

And so we, who know so many whose physical or mental illnesses aren’t removed, who know that everyone here, and all God’s children, are wounded, inside or out, who know that the pains and suffering of this world will not all be fixed in our lifetime, we find salvation and wholeness in the deeper healing of God’s love that has made us one and whole in Christ with all creatures.

We haven’t talked about gratitude yet. Maybe we don’t need to.

Naaman overflowed with gratitude for his healing. One of the ten who was healed broke from the group and ran back and gave thanks to Jesus. We don’t know about the other nine, but they’re not the point.

When you know the amazing gift of healing and wholeness you have in Christ and in each other, you don’t need to be reminded to be grateful for it. Not a day goes by without me being thankful to God for all of you, for this community of wounded people who walks with me in my woundedness, and are Christ to me, who, with me, gathers at this Table seeking forgiveness and life and wholeness.

And the more we understand the connectedness God has made between us and all God’s children, and everything else in creation, the more we see the place of this broken, troubled, wounded world in God’s heart and life, gratitude comes pretty easily.

You belong, always, to this fellowship of broken ones. And everyone, all people, even the hard ones, do too. And in that community God’s healing comes. In this world, and even in a life that is to come.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen