Preacher: Revd Canon Karen Schmidt
Date: 09/10/2022
Genesis 32: 22-31
2 Timothy 3:14 – 4:5
Luke 18:1-8
One of my jobs in ministry was being Chaplain to the Bishop of Portsmouth. In fact in my time in that post I looked after three bishops – the one who was retiring, the bishop who looked after the diocese in the vacancy and then the new bishop. As soon as bishop Christopher arrived in the diocese my phone started ringing more than usual and my email box began to fill up with requests for a meeting or a visit from the newly appointed Bishop. One clergyman was particularly quick off the mark. He contacted me on the day of the announcement which was about six months before the new bishop was due to take up his post. At least he was honest – his reason for writing so promptly was so that he would be first in the queue. I wrote back saying that as it would be a while before the Bishop would be arriving in the diocese and even longer before he started looking at his diary I would get back to him in due course.
Two months before Bishop Christopher’s installation I received an e-mail from the same cleric. This time he was concerned that I might have mis-filed his request. His part of the diocese had a double-barrelled name and could have been filed either under E or W. He hoped he wasn’t languishing in W. I sent a terse reply saying that I did know my alphabet and he would be getting his reply when the Bishop was good and ready – only I did manage to use more pastoral language than that. Back came a reply by return. He hadn’t meant any discourtesy – he was just following the example of the widow in today’s gospel. I had to give him full marks for knowing his Bible and putting Jesus’ teaching into effect, although I think Jesus might have had something to say to him about his motivation.
But this parable of the widow isn’t about grinding God down until he gives in to our petitions for a quiet life – that’s the human response of the judge whose only concern was for himself. This story of the widow is about our relationship with God in prayer; the place where we engage with God, drift away from him, come back to him, struggle with him, rest in him, rejoice in him, grow in him.
Because it is where we engage with God, prayer can sometimes feel like going 10 rounds with him. Whether it’s hammering away with the same request or struggling as Jacob did, a spiritual wrestling with God, if not a physical fight.
Jacob was very worried. He was frightened. He was on his way to meet his brother Esau whom he had cheated of his father’s blessing and Jacob was fearing the worst. He was not expecting a warm reception. He had prepared the ground as best he could by sending on ahead gifts for Esau but that was no guarantee that his prayer to God would be answered, the prayer he had offered just before he set out – that God would deliver him from Esau.
Jacob did receive the answer to his prayer but probably not in the way he expected. God and Jacob wrestled with one another and Jacob had the disjointed hip to show for it. We can come away from an encounter with God feeling bruised and battered because there are no holds barred when it comes to facing God. But God is ever faithful and merciful and Jacob emerged from his one to one with God with a new name, indicating a fresh start, and with God’s blessing. A blessing which redeemed the blessing Jacob had obtained by deception and set him on the path of reconciliation with his brother.
The story of the widow speaks of a God who is faithful – always there to listen, always there to help, but Jesus, knowing human nature all too well, questions whether we are so faithful. When we’ve got what we want, do we stay in touch with God or do we let him drift into the background until the next time we need him?
Today’s Gospel speaks of our need to pray always and not to lose heart; our readings together encourage us in being persistent. Persistent in prayer, in the good times and the bad but persistent also in building up the kingdom of God even in the face of adversity. Our world is a place of great uncertainty: there are wars and conflicts going on across our world but a war in our own continent certainly concentrates the mind as it impacts our lives in terms of rising costs in food and other essentials and whether we can afford to heat our homes and our church. And even closer to home than Ukraine, we are experiencing political instability in our government, and financial instability in our economy.
Very few are profiting from the current situation in this country and it’s in times of uncertainty and insecurity that ears can start to itch as they listen to those peddling solutions. And that’s where we come in with balm for the itch. Because the answer to all the insecurity and uncertainty is to anchor ourselves in the one who does not change, who hears our cries and offers us the vision of his kingdom of justice, in which each is valued for who they are and where we will know peace.
We have a big job on our hands in making known that very different way of living together in society, in bringing in God’s kingdom in our time, even as we await its fulfilment at the end time and we will need the patience of which St Paul speaks, but just look at what can come out of all the wrestling with opposition and indifference. Jacob was given a new name and went on to become the founding father of the twelve tribes of Israel. St Paul, the author of the letter to Timothy, wasn’t to be defeated in his mission of making known the way of Christ to the communities he visited on his travels around the Mediterranean, and Christ reassures us that God will listen to us in our prayers.
And it’s in prayer that we will meet God face to face. That’s the place to work it all through as we pray one to one with God. That’s where we open up to God the joys and the sorrows of our ministry and where we receive his encouragement and assurance that he is with us every step of the way as we work to bring in his kingdom.
So may it be our prayer that we may be persistent for God and his kingdom and, like Jacob, know his blessing. Amen.