A Poem/ Reflection for XIX Pentecost, Proper 24 C St. Andrew's, Nags Head, N.C.
October 20, 2019 Thomas E. Wilson, Supply
An Impatient Lover
Today the Gospel lesson from Luke is a story that Jesus is telling which is usually called something like “The Unjust Judge” or “The Importune Widow”. A lot depends on who we think is the main character of the story. When Jesus tells a Parable, the point of the story is to tell us about God, God is the reason for the story. For instance, there is another story that Luke has Jesus tell which we like to call “The Prodigal Son”, but the point of the story is not about the son but the Father who loves his child so much that he is constantly watching for his son's return to welcome him back home. Where are we in the story; where is God in the story? Often it depends on where we are in life.
Let’s step back for a minute and see how the editor of Luke made decisions on how to put these stories together. Since I have been here as your supply clergy the Gospel reading are set in the journey of Jesus after he set his mind to go to Jerusalem, beginning in the 14th Chapter. even when he knows what will likely happen to him there. He knows there will probably be an unjust Judge waiting for him. He knows he will be asking for Justice and he will probably not get it unless the Judge is persuaded by people pleading for justice on his behalf. You all know what will happen as the crowd turns on Jesus and asks that he be crucified, wanting law rather than justice.
Last week we talked about the story of Jesus and the 10 Lepers, which is in the 17th Chapter. The beginning of the 18th chapter is a discussion with the Pharisees who are asking him clever questions like “Well since you say the Kingdom of God is coming and you are so smart; give us the time and date when it will show up?” Jesus answers that the “Kingdom of God is among you, right here and right now!” Jesus then turns to his disciples and warns them that things will change quickly, so be prepared. They ask him “Where?” He finishes his warning with a disquieting phrase; “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” Jesus knows what is coming.
The editor of Luke probably said to himself, “This story of the Unjust Judge fits right here after the warning of the corpse.” What is the editor trying to tell us? Is the story of Jesus complaining to the Judge, God, to grant him justice and save him from being an early corpse? And the answer could be to continue praying, for God, the judge, might still interfere. In which case we in St. Andrew’s in the beginning of our Stewardship Campaign would be to say that our stewardship is to pray unceasingly, and; oh by the way, the church needs time, talent and treasure to keep the place open for you to pray.
Well the church DOES need the time, talent and treasure, so that could be a place to stop. My usual spiel is to say that God or the church does not push equal gifts, but equal sacrifice, not an average pledge but a loving commitment.
Except, I want to go in a different direction. It is almost too easy to see God as the Judge. Remember that Jesus does the unexpected. I was thinking that God is not the Judge but the Widow, crying out for justice. What happened to the widow may have been legal, but it was not just. There can be a real difference between law and justice. Laws are made and enforced to bring order out of chaos for the benefit of some and the detriment of others, because we, who are comfortable hold on to the illusion that we live in a divinely ordained competitive system between winners and losers, saints and sinners. Joseph Fletcher proposed that “Justice is love distributed”, from the winners to the losers to bring about equality and equity. Reinhold Niebuhr said: “Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not ... Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”
Popular culture tends to like the image of the Male God as the final High Judge who will weigh the balance between the breaking and keeping of the Divine Laws. But in this story Jesus suggests that God is in the image of the woman, who pleads for justice to be done. Who are we in the story? There are times when I am the one who says, “I just don't want to be bothered with this idea of justice. I worked hard for where I have gotten. Leave me alone!” Yet God, she is a real nag, keeps showing me where injustice is being done and I am a beneficiary of that injustice. Back to Niebuhr who looked at the human family and said:
Family
life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can only be
sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice. Justice requires that
we carefully weigh rights and privileges and assure that each member of a
community receives his due share. Love does not weigh rights and privileges too
carefully because it prompts each to bear the burden of the other . . .Love is
the motive, but justice is the instrument.
In Jesus' story there is a woman who is the image of God, who loves and is a lover calling for Justice from outside of our windows through which we want to separate ourselves from our neighbor. She does not call for generosity out of the goodness of our hearts or out of pity but out of loving Justice. The message of God remains the same from the importune widow to the prophet Micah, eight centuries before Jesus' vision, who asks, “What does the LORD require of you, but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.”
God, she, keeps crying out to us and we keep silent in word and deed. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote in his Letter From the Birmingham Jail to White Christians: “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
God, she keeps crying out to us and sometimes we are moved to say, “I can keep silent in word or deed no longer.” When I reflected on the lesson, I realized that the woman was not crying out to an uncaring God but God, she was speaking to the uncaring side of me declaring her love. She is asking me to look at the plight of the victims of war in Syria and work for justice. To speak out more to my representatives in Congress about the treatment of people asking for sanctuary from violence and poverty.
Closer to home; how can we respond in a loving way to the victims of the hurricane, Dorian, on Hatteras Island and Ocracoke? How can we respond to neighbors who are in trouble? This week I was encouraged as the members of the St. Andrew’s Brotherhood at their Tuesday breakfast talked about the projects that they were doing to give their strength and sweat to help a family; it had nothing to do with the law but it had everything to do with justice as love distributed.
How will you answer the Stewardship request of time, talent and treasure, from St. Andrew’s church? These are some of the choices:
(1) Ignore it, since the church did not do what
you wanted on something or another over the last year. You are under no legal
obligation to support the ministry of the church if it swerves from your
wishes.
(2)
Do a cost benefit analysis of the going market rate for the services you
received. So many dollars for the sermons that you found helpful, visits that
were healing, hymns that ministered to you, etc. You are under no legal
obligation to pay more that the going rate for religious merchandise.
(3) Figure out your fair share and divide the
budget by the number of parishioners to get the amount of your bill. You are
under no legal obligation to pay more than your “fair” share.
(4)
Decide you are going to be a Patron and give an amount that would fit your
status in the community to support an institution of which you approve. It may
be a way to get a legal tax deduction.
(5)
Go to the Books of the Law in the Old Testament and read the legal requirement
to give 10% off the top, talking with your accountant to find out if that means
gross or net of time, talent and treasure and then talk about charity in addition
to that.
(6)
Do standard fund raising; figuring out how much money needs to be raised to
meet the budget. Then appoint a group of people to go through the roster of
membership and friends of the church and do a sales campaign on them on a level
of giving what you think they need to give. Divide up the givers into
categories like angel, archangels, seraphs, cherubim, etc, and post the names
on the church wall. The focus will be on the survival of the religious
institution. Don’t waste time with prayer and reaching out to do justice by
keeping it business like.
(7)
Go beyond the legal and calculating into the loving and just. Do justice, love
mercy and walk humbly with God by praying and listening to our impatient lover.
Then give what you can in time, talent and treasure based on your prayers as a
gift of loving justice, not a tax on faith.
In my meditation, and in my prayer as I began the poem. I thought that God was just not the Importune Widow calling but the Impatient Lover calling me to love. In my meditation there were three people: (1) the Impatient lover as God, she, calling to me to love and do justice in return, (2) the Priest, the religious conservative in me, is having difficulty hearing that kind of prayer from God, and (3) Me, trying to figure out which voice to follow. As I share the poem with you, now there are (4) you! What voice do you hear?
An Impatient Lover
Turning
up to air she said “Tell me,
share
what’s in your heart, my love.
To
my hand you are like a glove
covering
my very soul with thee.”
The
Priest harrumphed, “Tis not
seemly
that you’d speak out thus
in
prayer as if you were giving a buss
on
divine lips. Not respect as we’re taught.”
She
replied, “I’ll have no need for shame,
for
my whole being longs to be known,
as
child, maiden, lover and old crone,
entwined
by love beyond any name.
Out
of impatient love I’ll dare to yell,
harridan
like, till your distance I’d quell.”
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