Genesis 32:22-31
The same night [Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of going as he wrestled with him 26Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, ”Jacob.” 28Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” 29Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” 31The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
This is the Word of the LORD
Thanks be to God
Luke 18:1-8
1Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither eared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’”
And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
This is the Word of the LORD
Thanks be to God.
Fear, Respect, Justice. It says it right there in the bulletin. Those are heavy words. Fear, respect, justice. Any one of them, loosed in a conversation, could wrench us out of worship and cast us back into the despairing pain that infects so much of our culture, especially during an election year. Fear, respect, justice.
The clanking chains that bind these words to our hearts drag wherever we take them. Sticking us with all the links those heavy words have in our hearts. To see them all piled up in a single sermon title led more than one congregant to ask “Where're you going with this, preacher?"
We're going to Peniel. I'm taking these heavy words to the ford of the river Jabbok, where Jacob wrestled through the night and emerged the next morning as Israel. I’m taking us to a place where God may grant us a glimpse of his face, and we will limp away blessed. We’re going to a place where when the Son of Man comes, he will find faith on earth.
We’re going to loose the chains around these heavy words so that we do not lose heart. We are bound for the faith that empowers us to pray always, and along the way, we, like Jacob, are going to wrestle with Fear.
Jacob is a trickster. He has built up vast wealth from next to nothing. He is the second-born son, yet he bargained his way into his older brother’s birthright. He tricked his way into vast herds of livestock, and has picked up two wives, two maids, and eleven children along the way. He has taken advantage of as many people as he could, But at the edge of the Jabbok, he’s run out of options. His brother Esau has caught up with him, and he is driven by fear of what his brother will do to him.
After all, when the trickster runs out of tricks, all he has left is his fear. Every heel-grabbing deal along the way has left him with more adversaries than friends, and it began with his old brother Esau. Jacob doesn’t know what follows after him, whether his brother has built up a coalition of every person Jacob has not-quite wronged. His career of chicanery is finally catching up to him, and he is terrified of what he knows he deserves.
That’s the Fear we hear most often. Fear that we’re under attack. Fear that what we’ve built up is about to be taken from us. Fear that the privilege we have been given will erode or collapse. Fear that all the techniques and abilities we’ve trusted for so long will leave us stranded at the River Jabbok, facing our own inadequacy in a lonely confrontation.
But that is not the Fear by which we should be ruled. That kind of fear leads to self-preservation at any cost, shunning wisdom and ignoring the grace of God we have in Jesus Christ. When Esau catches up to Israel later in the story, he doesn’t cross swords with him, Esau embraces his brother with love and with grace. Israel is overwhelmed with the undeserved gift of reconciling with his brother. The new name takes hold as Jacob gives up his trickster ways. “Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’” Jacob is leave his fear of his brother behind, and Israel limps on with a renewed Fear of the LORD.
Fear of God is not living in terror of divine punishment, it’s not a response to wrath. It’s a special kind of amazement when we encounter the living God and are awe-struck by his holiness. It’s the ever-humbling challenge of sinners who find themselves in the hands of a loving God, when they deserve an angry one. It’s more than respect, because respect is shared among equals. It’s deeper than reverence, because reverence keeps its distance. Fear of the LORD is in our faces, reminding us that we are dust and that only God is eternal, but also that our passing stories are precious and honored in God’s sight.
God who spins the whirling planets will also “grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night.” Fear of God leaves us in a special kind of amazement that liberates us and equips us to be disciples, where other fears lead us to bondage.
Fear on its own clanks behind us and makes us lose heart, but Fear of the LORD breaks our chains and lifts our spirits, for such is the greatness and graciousness of our God.
Respect for people seems like one of those things that everyone should be able to get behind. It doesn’t need any kind of theological referent, and respect for others is a theme that crosses cultures and religions.
So why are we so bad at it?
We end up, more often than we’d like to admit, in the place of the unjust judge. We can imagine that he’s the kind of person who took his judicial appointment because it was a position of high esteem. Perhaps he took it so that people would call him “your honor.” Now I know a number of judges, and every one that I’ve met is an honorable person, but I think we all know someone who is in a position so that they would be respected, who insist that people call them by their title.
Doctor such-and-such, Congressman this-or-that, Reverend self-importance. I must admit, there is a certain amount of pompous pleasure in signing my name on official documents: Reverend Joseph W. Taber IV.
It’s not about respecting people and serving them for the unjust judge that Jesus invents for this parable. It’s not even about establishing justice and maintaining a fair social structure. It’s about puffing himself up so that he’ll seem more important and that others will treat him as better than others.
We fail to respect people when we think ourselves better than them, when we expect them to honor us, without remembering our own humility as sinners and imperfect people ourselves.
The other way we fail to respect people is when we put ourselves so far beneath them that we don’t bother to speak up on our own behalf. When we let others walk over us because we don’t want to cause a stir, or because we don’t trust how valid our experience may be. It’s why victims of abuse may not come forward for years after the events happened, and it’s why many people think they have to play a certain role in order to be accepted. The silence the voice that God has given them because they cannot imagine that the people around them would not believe them, or could not handle them.
I’m guilty of that one too sometimes, and need to be coaxed out of my despair and exhaustion by those who love me, and to be reminded always of the grace of God.
But when God created each person, he gave them gifts and a purpose. Respecting others means seeking to develop the gifts and purpose in each person we encounter, including yourself. Just as we ought not treat others as inferior, so too we should not treat ourselves as inferior. After all, it takes a special kind of arrogance to think that everybody is worth saving, except yourself.
The widow in Jesus’s parable doesn’t have that problem. She speaks up on her own behalf, she knows that her cause is just, and in spite of the many times the unjust judge refuse her, she maintains her stance. “Grant me justice against my opponent.” She’s among the weakest and most vulnerable in her society, yet she demands respect as a person, as a child of God. And she respects those around her enough to know that they can give it to her.
And so the unjust judge eventually relents, not out of a commitment to righteousness, and certainly not from fear of God or respect for people, but because he is tired of hearing about it. Even in spite of his unjust stance, justice is still done.
An unjust judge does not fear God or respect people. Therefore a believers understanding of justice emerges from fear of the LORD and respect for people.
Fear, Respect, Justice. It says it right there in the bulletin. Those are heavy words. Fear, respect, justice. Any one of them, loosed in a conversation, could wrench us out of worship and cast us back into the despairing pain that infects so much of our culture, especially during an election year. Fear, respect, justice.
The clanking chains that bind these words to our hearts drag wherever we take them. Sticking us with all the links those heavy words have in our hearts. To see them all piled up in a single sermon title led more than one congregant to ask “Where're you going with this, preacher?"
We're going to Peniel. I'm taking these heavy words to the ford of the river Jabbok, where Jacob wrestled through the night and emerged the next morning as Israel. I’m taking us to a place where God may grant us a glimpse of his face, and we will limp away blessed. We’re going to a place where when the Son of Man comes, he will find faith on earth.
“Jesus makes it clear that faith is actively hoping, eagerly anticipating the coming reign of God, never ceasing in our prayers for others, for the world, even for ourselves.”
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