19th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 24C

19th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 24C October 16, 2022 My paternal grandfather was a United Methodist minister; I grew up visiting his church, seeing him in his black robe in the pulpit, hearing him preach. He was a big man with a deep voice and a commanding presence. The very first church that I served was in the same town as the last church Pop had served—the one he officially retired from. It was a small town and everyone knew who I was—the young, female, Episcopal priest (with a husband and new baby) in rural, Southwest Mississippi. When I went places in town, it was not uncommon for me to run into someone who would tell me a story about my grandfather. Their favorite stories to tell were the stories when Pop threatened to beat someone up. (Yes, there were many of those stories.) You see, my grandfather was a boxer in his youth, and there are some parts of us that even seminary and ordination cannot temper. And it seems that while he didn’t employ the threat often, there were occasions when Pop thought a person needed more than words and prayers to whip them back into shape and make them act right. As best I could tell, no one ever needed to take him up on his offer to “step outside” with him. The offer itself was enough to steer the offender back onto the right path. And what I came to learn was that underneath these stories of my grandfather as a fighter was a man who loved his flock fiercely and who was willing to fight to make the world a better place (and to get people to do better, to be better). Our scriptures for today give us two stories about people who are fighting for what they want and what they believe in. First, there is Jacob, who is returning home and mentally preparing for a big showdown/fight with his brother Esau who he has cheated out of their father’s blessing. Jacob, the quintessential, scrappy conman, has sent his entourage ahead when he encounters the mysterious stranger with whom he fights all night. When the two reach an impasse, with Jacob holding on for dear life, he demands a blessing from the stranger-perhaps in the hope it will give him a leg-up in the coming fight with his brother. And the stranger not only gives him a blessing, but he also gives him a new name—Israel—which literally means “God-fighter.” Then there’s the parable from Luke about a widow and an unjust judge. Luke gives the story a framework, telling us that Jesus tells the story to teach his disciples about “the need to pray always and not lose heart” and about faith or faithfulness. And Jesus’s parable is all about fighting. The widow has an “adversary”, and she keeps going to the judge demanding justice or possibly vengeance (the word can be translated as either) from the judge toward her adversary. We don’t know what the issue is or whether the woman’s cause is just or unjust. The strangely self-aware judge, who admits he doesn’t fear God or respect people, decides that he will give the widow what she is asking for so that she “won’t give [him] a black eye”. (The word that is translated in our reading for today as so that she won’t “wear me out by continually coming” is actually a Greek boxing term that means to give someone a black eye. We may very well be seeing some of Jesus’s humor at work in this.) Jesus is telling a story about a judge who isn’t afraid of God or other peoples’ perceptions of him but who is afraid of a widow giving him a black eye (or at least continuing to bother him with her demand). So, what does all this have to do with us or with our faith or with our relationship with God? I’ll confess that my first instinct is to identify with the fighter. The very opposite of losing heart is being willing to fight for something or someone. What does that mean to fight for something in our relationship with God, in our faith? Maybe it means showing up and when all else fails, holding on for dear life until God gives us something akin to what we demand. Maybe it means nagging, again and again, when even we are sick of the sound of our own voice asking…demanding justice. Maybe it means finding the same fire for justice or vengeance or self-interest toward God and the potential for God’s kingdom in the here and now, in and among us. Maybe it means asking ourselves what do we love enough to fight for, and how does our faith become that fierce and fiery, too? But what if the fighters in these two stories are meant to reveal to us something about God? What would it mean for us to think that God fights for what God loves and values with the tenacious, scrappy, persistent passion of Jacob? What if God fights for us with the single-minded purpose of a scorned widow seeking vengeance? If we knew and believed God was already, always fiercely fighting for us, how would that change our faith? How would that change the way we pray, what we pray for? Your invitation this week is to embrace this image of God fiercely fighting for you and to pay attention to what happens, how that changes you.