Wrestling with God

Proper 24C-25

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8b) How would you answer Jesus’ question?  Second Timothy sounds like it could be written today. “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but, having their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth—” (2 Timothy 4:3-5).

 We live in a time when many Christian siblings have replaced the gospel with an anti-gospel. We see evil masquerading as law and order, antisemitism, and as government efficiency. Freedom is manipulated to destroy our freedoms—and I could go on—and so could you. Yesterday was an important and joyful counterpoint. In what some have said is the largest public protest in U.S. history people turned out and said, No!

 Together they provide one answer to Jesus’ question. Yes, because the separation of the church and state is a sacred boundary.  It’s one Christians have fought for and died for. Because that separation doesn’t just benefit the State, it benefits the church.  The protections go both ways. When religion gets too cozy with political power it loses its prophetic voice and its ability to speak truth to power.  Moreover, church people have often needed those outside it to remind them of their own values –such as the abolition of slavery, the inclusion of women, voting rights, civil rights, GLBTQIA+ rights.  Yes.  We need the separation of church and state but that is not the same thing as a separation of faith and politics. We must bring our faith into the public sphere to question power and reinforce the individual value of every human being. (Heather Cox Richardson and James Talarico, “A New Way to Think About Religion and Politics,” America Conversations, 10/11/25)

Seminarian James Tarico, a candidate for the US Senate in Texas has said, “Democracy is very much a spiritual exercise.  It’s not just a form of government. “It really is a commitment that we have to our neighbors, especially our neighbors who are different from us, especially our neighbors who disagree with us on important issues. And unless we have that moral commitment to each other, there’s no way we can continue this American experiment.” (Heather Cox Richardson, “A New Way to Think About Religion and Politics with James Talarico,” American Conversations,  10/11/25.)

Yes Jesus, we find evidence of faith on earth. But it doesn’t look like what we expected. It doesn’t always come from behind altars or from Bishops and councils, but we see prophetic faith springing up everywhere in people and places who are making a difference in the streets, and beside hospital beds, and feeding the hungry, or with those who refuse to laugh at a cruel joke.

  And yet, perhaps for the first time in the history of the human species, Jesus’ question about finding faith provokes a different and deeper one: is the future of our civilization sustainable?  Jesus is not merely pointing out the sins, commissions, and omissions of other Christians. A closer look at history reveals that work to end the injustices I mentioned a moment ago was not well supported by church folks.  Most Christians did not oppose slavery.  Most Lutherans cozied up to Hitler. Most did not like Martin Luther King. Today, many of us are just now waking up to the fact that our highly prized lifestyles are tightly connected to the destruction of people and the planet. “And so, asked another way, when the Son of Man comes, will he find any people on earth? And if they way we are living now inevitably will lead to there being no people on earth, wouldn’t that be a profound indictment of our lack of faith?

So, let’s turn to our parable of the bothersome widow. What are we to make of it?  I wonder if Jesus is asking us to take a good honest look at ourselves. Shine the light of grace into the dark corners of our heart –bravely ask the hard and difficult questions about the systems, economy, and culture we have created. The parable of the bothersome widow might just be 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.” (Debi Thomas, “The Bothersome Widow,” Journey with Jesus, 10/13/19)

“The parable demonstrates an intrinsic unity between justice and prayer. Jesus portrays the widow as the one whose pleadings for God’s justice are the essence of prayer. As Jesus taught and demonstrated in his own life, prayer is the way of breaking ourselves open to the presence of God’s love at the center of our being. And as that happens, we embody the yearning for God’s purposes to break into the world. That’s how Jesus is teaching us, in this parable, to pray, and telling us to pray always.

And this comes in the face of what seem to be impossible odds. In the parable, this unjust judge, with real power in society, had no respect for people, and certainly no fear of God. He was a law unto himself. The parallels to today are chilling.” And also hopeful, because the bothersome widow prevails. (Diana Butler Bass)

Our first reading from Genesis promises God will not abandon us to our own worst choices and instincts and that grace never tires of working toward our personal and collective transformation. One of my favorite art works here at Immanuel is tucked away in the back stairwell. It’s the series of three stained glass windows depicting Jacob’s ladder.  Jacob’s name implies that he is a person who takes advantage of others in whatever way suits him best. ‘Jacob’ means ‘cheater’ or ‘deceiver’. And yet,

Jacob’s dream of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven reaffirms God’s covenant with Abraham’s descendants and symbolizes God’s direct communication with humanity and the divine connection between heaven and earth, signifying God’s promise, guidance, and presence (Genesis 28:10-22).

 About 20 years later, Jacob the cheater is heading home. He was fleeing one set of problems of his own making and returning to the scene of another. As Jacob contemplates the deceit, the trickery, the craftiness, the manipulation, the way in which he had cheated his brother Esau out of his heritage, he isn’t sure about the reception he is to receive. Then the news came. Jacob’s messengers returned to tell him his brother, Esau, was indeed coming to meet him along with 400 armed men with him.” (Genesis 32).

Well, as you might imagine, Jacob couldn’t sleep. The details of the story are a little sketchy.  A man comes unbidden, uncalculated, to wrestle with him. Later, Jacob later called the place “Peniel” because he had seen “God face to face.” Jacob faced his demons, and God blessed him with a new identity, signified with a new name. He is no longer Jacob, the cheat, but his name is “Israel”, meaning “he who struggles with God”. The struggle left Jacob with a limp and symbolized a pivotal moment of transformation and a deeper, albeit lifelong, relationship with God.

With the new name, Jacob is told that, even in his weakness, even with his failures, even with his sorry track record, God can work through him.  God works with imperfect people.  God makes Jacobs into Israels.  By grace, God works even now to transform us from the inside out. Faith will not perish but lead us ever forward in the struggle for justice and in making homes, neighborhoods, and communities of peace to live in.