To Know God
John Shuck
Southminster
Presbyterian Church
Beaverton, Oregon
May 10, 2015
Jeremiah 22:16
He judged the cause of the
poor and needy;
then it was well.
Is not this to know me?
says the Lord.
Elie Wiesel
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure
suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the
oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the
tormented.”
Walter Wink
“When anyone steps out of the
system and tells the truth, lives the truth, that person enables everyone else
to peer behind the curtain too. That person has shown everyone that it is
possible to live within the truth, despite the repercussions.”
Luke 18:1-5 (Scholars’ Version)
Once there was a judge in this town who
neither feared God nor had any respect for people. In that same town was a widow who kept coming
to him and demanding, “Give me a ruling against my opponent.”
For a while he refused; but
eventually he said to himself: “I don’t fear God and I have no respect for
people, but this widow keeps pestering me.
So I’m going to rule in her favor, or else she’ll keep coming back until
she wears me down.”
This season is the via
transformativa, the way of transformation, the spiritual path of justice
and compassion. This is the sacred path
of action. In the language of God, we
are doing divinity. God in this path is
a verb.
The way to do divinity is to do justice. This text from Jeremiah sings the praises of
King Josiah and laments that the sons who followed him were not like him. Why was Josiah a good king? Why did he deserve praise? Why should leaders be like him? Here is the answer:
He judged the cause of the poor and needy;
then it was well.
Is this not to know me?
says the Lord.
He judged the cause of the poor and needy;
then it was well.
Is this not to know me?
says the Lord.
One of the threads that winds its way throughout the Hebrew
scriptures and the through the teachings of the historical Jesus, through Paul,
and the gospel writers is justice.
Again, from Jeremiah 22:3:
Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.
This justice is more than retributive justice, that is the
punishment fitting the crime, the justice of a criminal court. What we find emphasized instead is
distributive justice, that is fairness in regards to distribution of resources.
You find in story after story throughout the scriptures that
there is not justice in the land. The
wealthy exploit the poor and the most at risk.
This thread of distributive justice calls out a preferential option for
the poor, especially for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.
God, whether as a character in the narratives or the divine
agent whose words are spoken through the mouths of the prophets, takes
sides. God sides with those who are
exploited.
The central text of the Hebrew scriptures is the exodus from
Egypt. God hears the cry of the enslaved
and responds. That is what the Bible is
about. If you need a Cliff Notes
version of the Bible, the Bible is ten seconds, the Bible in two sentences it
would be this from Jeremiah 22:6:
He judged the cause of the poor and needy;
then it was well.
Is this not to know me?
says the Lord.
If you want to know God…
He judged the cause of the poor and needy;
then it was well.
Is this not to know me?
says the Lord.
If you want to know God…
If you want a spiritual experience…
If you are curious
about God’s plan for your life…
If you want God to answer your prayers…
Then…judge the cause of the poor and needy.
This is such a clear message of scripture that it was
necessary for the powerful and the wealthy to create elaborate theological
loopholes. Judging the cause of the
poor and needy can’t be the answer. There
must be more to life than that. Let’s
invent instead some belief systems and rituals and ordained offices and the
divine right of kings and multisyllabic philosophies and then when the poor
come seeking justice we can tell them that it is so much more complicated.
There are invisible hands that guide our economic theories
and proper etiquette and degrees from Harvard and banks in big pink buildings
that are too big to fail. We must be
concerned about them first. Then justice
will trickle down. Justice for the
poor? Well charity is appropriate and it
makes for a nice tax deduction. But as
a matter of policy? No, no. Too simplistic.
That leads us to our parable.
Luke 18:1-5 (Scholars’ Version)Once there was a judge in this town who neither feared God nor had any respect for people. In that same town was a widow who kept coming to him and demanding, “Give me a ruling against my opponent.”
For a while he refused; but eventually he said to himself: “I don’t fear God and I have no respect for people, but this widow keeps pestering me. So I’m going to rule in her favor, or else she’ll keep coming back until she wears me down.”
A rule of thumb about parables. If a parable features a king or a landowner
or a judge, don’t think of that character as God. I tend to think that many of the parables of
Jesus were not spiritual expressions of the kingdom of God. They were instead social critiques of
oppression by the ruling class. A
great book about parables along these lines is William Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech.
Jesus was very attuned to that thread throughout the Hebrew
scriptures of distributive justice:
“judge the cause of the poor and needy.”
We don’t know, of course, the original contexts in which Jesus told his parables. We have settings for them in the gospels. It is interesting how the gospel writers trip over themselves trying to provide a meaning for the parable.
We don’t know, of course, the original contexts in which Jesus told his parables. We have settings for them in the gospels. It is interesting how the gospel writers trip over themselves trying to provide a meaning for the parable.
In this one, Luke reads the judge as a God figure and then
has to explain it away by turning it into a moral about prayer. Luke introduces the parable in this way:
“He told them a
parable about the need to pray at all times and never to lose heart.”
Then when the parable is finished, Luke comes on stage again
to explain it:
And the Master said, ‘Don’t you hear what this corrupt judge is saying? Do you really think God’ won’t hand out justice to his chosen ones—those who call on him day and night? Do you really think he’ll put them off? I’m telling you, he’ll give them justice and give it quickly. Still, when the Human One comes, will he find any trust on earth?”
All of that may be a good message. Pray and don’t lose heart. God will grant justice quickly. But this parable isn’t about that. It is a very bad parable to use for that
message. If you want a parable about how
God grants justice quickly and hears prayers, you wouldn’t choose this parable
to drive that point home.
I think this parable did go back to the historical Jesus. But I don’t think it was about praying or
about God granting justice to those who pray and wait. This parable is a social critique of the
domination system and how to survive it.
The audience after hearing Jesus’s description of the
corrupt judge would get it immediately. They
would know exactly what it is like to have the deck stacked against them.
A book that would be an important contemporary commentary on
this parable is Matt Taibi’s, The
Divide: American Injustice in the Age of
the Wealth Gap. He chronicles story
after story of white collar criminals too big to jail and the poor who spend
years in jail for petty crimes. Taibi
writes:
“It has become a cliché by now, but since 2008, no high-ranking executive from any financial institution has gone to jail, not one, for any of the systemic crimes that wiped out 40 percent of the world’s wealth.” P. xix.
He writes that we have…
“learned to accept the implicit idea that some people have simply more rights than others. Some people go to jail, and others just don’t. And we all get it.” P. xix
The original audience for this parable would also get
it. They would know who pays for judges
and whose interests they serve and who gets justice and who doesn’t. This parable would not be heard as being
about an unusual corrupt, rogue judge, but justice as usual or injustice as
usual. As soon as they heard Jesus utter
the first line,
“Once there was a
judge in this town who neither feared God nor had any respect for people,”
they would know what Jesus is saying. They knew what justice is supposed to be
like and what it was really like for them.
This parable set in Palestine in
the year 30 might be more relevant than ever to America in the year 2015.
Jesus continues the parable and introduces a widow. Widows were some of the most vulnerable
people in patriarchal cultures. Whose
property are they? Not the property and
responsibility of the father, not now of the husband. Whose are they? Thus there was much special
care taken regarding justice for widows in the law because of their
vulnerability.
In this parable, it is likely that she is fighting for her
husband’s estate and that the estate is significant enough to have competition
perhaps from her husband’s family.
She is demanding to be heard. The judge keeps putting her off. Why?
It could be a number of reasons.
Perhaps he is being bribed.
Perhaps he is in the same class with her opponent. Who knows?
Jesus is clear to say that the judge is corrupt and that the law
established in the scriptures to judge the case of the poor and needy is not
happening.
How do you survive in this situation? How do you survive when the odds are not in
your favor? How do you survive the
uphill battle? The widow is her own
hero. She keeps coming and
demanding. The judge eventually gives
in not because he has a change of heart but because she’s worn him down. The verb for “wearing down” is a boxing
term that means to give one a black eye.
Because she pesters him relentlessly and publicly,
eventually he will give in, not because he cares about her or about justice,
but because she is more trouble than her opponents are worth.
William Herzog in his book Parables as Subversive Speech, writes that the widow is “blowing the cover off the operation. She refuses to remain silent but breaks the silence surrounding the covert machinations.” P. 229. Herzog quotes Walter Wink:
William Herzog in his book Parables as Subversive Speech, writes that the widow is “blowing the cover off the operation. She refuses to remain silent but breaks the silence surrounding the covert machinations.” P. 229. Herzog quotes Walter Wink:
“When anyone steps out of the system and tells the truth, lives the truth, that person enables everyone else to peer behind the curtain too. That person has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth, despite the repercussions.” (Engaging the Powers, p. 98)
The widow is the example.
The widow is the figure who represents the kingdom of God. This parable isn’t about prayer or waiting
for a divine being to do something. Her
persistence is the divine act.
Jesus’s parables were not about grandiose things. He didn’t say the kingdom of God is like the
mighty cedar of Lebanon. No, he said it
is a mustard weed that takes over a field.
It is leaven that corrupts a whole loaf.
It is not a wise judge on his throne.
It is a persistent widow who pesters judges for justice.
These parables were quickly tamed and distorted to serve
other interests, even within the New Testament itself. The writer of Luke misses the whole point of
this one. He turns an active story
about a widow giving a corrupt judge a black eye to a morality play about passive
piety in the face of injustice. Just
pray about it.
Which leads me now to Mother’s Day.
When I was a kid in church on Mother’s Day, the church would
award flowers to the oldest mother, the youngest mother, and the mother with
the most children. My mother never got
one. She wasn’t the youngest. She didn’t have the most children and wasn’t
likely to have more. The only hope was
that the older mothers would eventually go to their heavenly reward and she
would be left. Actually, I think she is
the oldest mother in her church now.
Then after the flowers were awarded we would hear a rousing
sermon on conservative family values and the evils of feminism. That was pretty much Mother’s Day.
I thought in the spirit of the persistent widow and Mother’s
Day, I would read the original Mother’s Day proclamation from Julia Ward
Howe.
Julia Ward Howe was
famous for writing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. She used that fame to do important
things. She founded the New England
Suffrage Association and tirelessly wrote, spoke, and campaigned about women’s
equality.
She was a strong advocate for peace. She
gave this speech in Boston in September of 1870 in response to the horrors of
the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. It was called an “Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World”
and then later known as “Mother’s Day Proclamation.”
Julia Ward Howe.
Again, in the sight of
the Christian world, have the skill and power of two great nations exhausted
themselves in mutual murder. Again have the sacred questions of international
justice been committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day
of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has been allowed
to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the bloody exchanges of the
battle field. Thus men have done. Thus men will do. But women need no longer be
made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite
the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word
to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be
heard, and answered to as never before.
Arise, then, Christian
women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be
that of water or of tears! Say firmly : We will not have great questions
decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with
carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to
unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and
patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another
country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of
the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, disarm! The
sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out
dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the
plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be
left of home for a great and earnest day of council.
Let them meet first,
as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take
council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live
in peace, man as the brother of man, each bearing after his own kind the sacred
impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of
womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women,
without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed
most convenient, and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to
promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of
international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
She did have her congress and a Mother’s Day for Peace was
observed for several years. Anna Jarvis picked up the torch for Mother’s
Day. It was established as a national
holiday 100 years ago this month in 1915 by President Wilson.
The emphasis on peace was lost.
Perhaps if we are as persistent as a widow, that original
Mother’s Day message of Julia Ward Howe can be spoken and heard again and
again.
Amen.
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