21st Sunday after Pentecost -- 21 October 2007

St Paul Lutheran Church, ABQ NM -- The Rev. J. W. Korthauer

Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 121; 2 Timothy 3:14 - 4:5; Luke 18:1-8

Grace and peace be to you from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen

-          It has been a busy first week here for me at St. Paul.  Meeting new people, taking over my job decrypted responsibilities, confirmation, church council, Albuquerque interfaith, pericope study, New Mexico Council of Churches, New members class, beginning to arrange my office, continuing to unpack,

-          It is enough to make a person almost get lost in detail.

-          But yesterday I was reminded of why we are here, why I came here, what a wonderful opportunity we all have to serve the mission of God in this place, and beyond our walls and above our peaked roofs.

-          Yes it was early on a Saturday. Sleep would have been a nice thing to get more of, but it was a chance to celebrate the good things that have gone on here in the ministry of St. Paul and to gain some perspective on the reasons that we in the class decided to make this our church home.

-          One of the question that we get asked is what is it that we call church. It is a question that there is not a set answer to, but that we do get to answer for ourselves.

-          I answered the question that I thought the church was not only a placed of receiving but also a place of responding, a place of action. But what kind of action? In a recent interview a presidential candidate made a great depiction of a reality and a remedy on a late night show. He said that for the most part people in America are encouraged to do what is best for themselves in everything from healthcare to voting to military service. He said that works in a lot of cases and things get better for the individual but not for the rest of us. The candidate suggested that people not only be motivated by that mentality, but to also strive to do what is best for the country so that we all might be better off.

-          The same intellectual exercise is what we ask you to apply to your spiritual lives too, we ask you to pray, to have spiritual discipline, to get baptized and confirmed to give time and treasure…all in the name of becoming more of what God created you to be. But also toward strengthening the community built up as the body of Christ, to make not just your conscience clear but our gifts life changing for more than just ourselves.

-          Sharon Delgado in her new book begins with a quotation from John Wesley, the founder of Methodism that I would like to share with you as to how I feel about community, especially our faith community.

-          “Give me one hundred preachers, I care not if they be lay or ordained, who fear only sin and desire only God and I will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of God upon this earth.”

-          And for my addition it matters not what age they are either.

-          Our themes and cast of characters in today’s lessons are as rich as the foci of our worship here today as St. Paul, with it being bread for the world day, and celebrating the rite of baptism in late service, what are Jacob, Paul, Timothy, the Judge and the widow saying to us?

-          We encounter Jacob on the way to in Jacob’s mind reconcile with his brother Esau.  You may recall the episode earlier where Jacob, the second born of twins stole the birth right of his older brother by tricking his blind father into blessing him.

-          Jacob in his haste to be blessed won his first blessing by deceit, in collusion with his mother he came up with a scheme to trick instead of a dedication to earn. Well Jacob had grown weary and older and moved to reconcile with his brother Esau but had a degree of fear…Esau had soldiers moving toward him which is why we pick up with Jacob sending his wives and servants and kids across the river.

-          Here God assails him, wrestles with him and finally when Jacob is willing to risk death, as seeing the face of God results in that in the OT, God blesses Jacob, not because of strength but I believe for his willingness to reconcile, his ability to think not only of himself.

-          Then we have Paul to Timothy giving advice about how to live when you have come already to the conclusion to give your life to Christ and are living according to his ways.

-          Timothy has encountered a world that doesn’t seem all that unsimilar to ours, where people have itching ears, are seeking out teachers to suit their own desires and turning away from the truth and believing instead in myths.

-          Timothy has perhaps had thoughts of giving up of calling it quits to being drunken instead of connected, but Paul pulls and encourages him up out of despair.

-          And then finally we have the widow and her raging against an unjust judge. At the time of the bible we have the most vulnerable in the society that are struggling with a system that wants to ignore them, act like they are not there and that representative is the widow.

-          As our bread for the world literature suggests, maybe we should view the widow as God rather than viewing God as a better judge than the unjust judge. In that way we see God wrestling with a system that is unjust on our behalf.

-          So we see 3 instances of God wrestling with humanity in the lessons this morning. In the first we see that God has assailed the powerful Jacob and moved him along toward community, God wrestles the proud as adversary.

-          IN the second we find Timothy being coached by Paul through a rough period where community doesn’t want to hear the gospel. I that instance God wrestles with or on the same side as Timothy.

-          And finally we have the widow, powerless by way of the system she was in and God wrestles on her behalf.

-          So then what shall we take away from these lessons? That we should wrestle with God. If we are in positions of power, wrestle for the good of all, if we are in the midst of despair, wrestle for perseverance and if we are powerless, God will wrestle on our behalf.

-          God will help us together change a system that allows hunger and God will find us in our weakness and advocate on our behalf like in the gift of baptism.

-          And how do we wrestle with God in these modern times? Prayer!

-          Pray always, wrestling with God always ends in victory for your soul.

-          Amen.