Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
I was just a
bit surprised when I looked at the duty list for today and discovered I was
preaching... I could have known long ago, but for some reason I didn’t notice. The
first thing I did was look for what I might have said
on this Sunday in previous years... Who doesn’t love a rerun or is that
“Greatest Hits.” But alas, I have never preached on this particular Sunday. So,
I looked at the assigned reading, and my heart sank a little further. This is
one of my least favorite Gospel passages – this story of a corrupt magistrate.
I thought for a few moments that I would begin by saying I have nothing to say
about this Gospel passage and then sitting back down. Perhaps in a few minutes
you will wish that I did...
But the more I sat with this Gospel reading, the clearer it became that this is a very relevant passage for our times. It is urgently needed... So here we go.
The author of Luke begins by telling us that this story is about the need to pray always and not to lose heart. But then we’re on to this terrible judge. The judge has no respect for the God or for people. Presumably the judgments of this judge are not particularly just. He seems mostly interested in himself and in his own comfort. Perhaps he is a bit of a narcissist. Why, I wonder, is such a judge tolerated? Why is he able to keep his position? And what has this got to do with the need to pray always... Unless, I suppose, we pray we never come before a judge like this one...
What of the plaintiff – the widow? We know that she has a complaint and that she is being denied satisfaction. She must be quite persistent. Does she spend her days screaming at the judge? She gets his attention somehow... And that pays off in the end. The judge gives her what she wants so that he will not have to put up with her. The judge, of course, couldn't care less about justice. He just wants her to go away. We assume, though the Gospel doesn’t say, that her claim was just. But perhaps she was an early practitioner of “lawfare” - where you use the legal system as weapon; a practice that some of our modern politicians seem to happily embrace...
It's possible that she is no more interested in justice than the magistrate. Clearly Jesus is not trying to get us to think about the goodness or badness of the legal system or of this widow and this judge.
Justice, in our legal system, is often seen as between opposing forces – between winners and losers, good and evil. That is an extremely limited view of justice. But before we even consider who is right and who is wrong, who wins and who loses, we have to consider what form of justice we want.
The two big flavors of justice are punitive and restorative. Punitive justice is first and foremost about punishing the bad person for their bad act. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is punitive justice in its most basic form. Restorative justice is far more complicated. We have to consider what was done, and what can be done to undo it as best we can. It gets very complicated very quickly because some things can’t be restored. How do you undo a genocide? In restorative justice, this does not let you off the hook. It means you have to be creative in your way of making justice.
The Hebrew Scriptures are full of stories of punitive justice. If somebody was blind or lame, it was assumed that this was punishment for some sin. A woman who was childless had surely earned this punishment through sin. In the New Testament when someone is sick or injured, the question comes up who sinned? And Jesus does not respond to such questions. Jesus is not interested in punitive justice. Jesus nudges us in the direction of restorative justice, of being made whole through the power of love.
Jack Miles, in his book “Christ: A crisis in the life of God” argues that Jesus represents a turning point, a crisis, in God’s relationship with us just as much as Jesus represents a turning point in our relationship with God. The God of Vengeance is replaced by the God of Love. And yet, many still hold on to the God of Vengeance – and by many, I mean most of us some of the time.
If I’m being honest, I have to admit that I would be happy for God to smite my enemies. I’d probably be OK with God smiting your enemies, unless I’m one of them... Then I might have an issue...
There is a very long tradition that teaches us that we should love our friends but hate our enemies. Jesus rejects that tradition. Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to pray for them. Remember the start of the passage from Luke... Jesus tells the disciples about the need to pray always.
At least some of that prayer has to be for folks we don’t like, for folks we don’t respect. I love the example from Fidler on the Roof of Tevya’s prayer for the Tzar: “Dear God, please protect and keep the Tzar – far away from us.” It's OK for prayer to start in that place, but that can’t be the destination.
So, let's go back to our widow who is seeking justice (that's an assumption, but let's assume it). What is justice?
Let's turn to a great profit of the twentieth century – The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr King called Justice the calculation of God’s love. This is another way of thinking about restorative justice, and it leaves no space for punitive justice.
What does God’s love look like for an abused child... What does God’s love look like for the children of undocumented immigrants... What does God’s love look like for someone going blind because they can’t afford the medication for their diabetes... If our justice does not look like God’s love, then it's not justice in the Christian sense. We need to recalculate. We need to honor Jesus.
There are a number of commentators on YouTube who are young and very secular. There are also a number who are young and very religious – at least they claim to be. My sample is far from complete or thorough, but all the “secular” folks care deeply about affordable health care, about childhood nutrition, about affordable housing, about quality education in schools where gun violence is not a threat, about protecting the vulnerable, and so on. And secular though they may claim to be, they all seem to adore James Talarico, who is a devout Presbyterian pastor as well as an elected representative in Texas, among other things. The Religious YouTubers seem to be primarily concerned with following a moral code, a holiness code.
I heard Ronald Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic Missionary Religious and Theologian, speaking at a book promotion event – he has published a number of books... He was asked how the church should respond to the threat of secularity. His answer was that secularity is no threat, but rather that secularity is the child of the Church.
He pointed out that if you examine the most secular societies of Western Europe, you will find that the hungry are fed, the sick are provided medical care, all are given access to education. Immigrants are, generally, welcomed. There is surely room for improvement, but the things that Jesus seems most focused on in the Gospels are accounted for. This he argued is because European Secular Societies learned these values from their religious parents.
The threat he felt was not from secular society, but from fundamentalism. Rolheiser noted that we generally fear Islamic Fundamentalism which we often equate with terrorism. To the extent that we know anything about it, we fear Hindu Fundamentalism (and if we knew more, we would fear it more...). We’re still flooded with guilt over the Holocaust, the Shoa, but we’re starting to acknowledge that we fear Jewish Fundamentalism. But Rolheiser believes that we tend to think of Christian Fundamentalism as our crazy uncle: Amusing, embarrassing, but not dangerous. Rolheiser asserts that the different fundamentalist movements have more in common with each other than we care to think. According to Rolheiser, we should be just as afraid of Christian Fundamentalism as we are of Islamic Fundamentalism.
Jesus in the passage we heard from Luke wants us to be in constant prayer – which includes all forms of prayer. That prayer could look like a retreat with a monastic community. That prayer could also look like the No Kings Protests of yesterday. God wants us to pray constantly, not monotonously.
Jesus also does not want us to lose heart. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of history is long, but it tends toward justice. We are about the business of building the Kingdom of God – a long process, extremely long, but it tends toward love... towards justice.
Building God’s Kingdom is not same as finishing God’s Kingdom. Moses did not get to enter the promised land, and we may not see the kingdom we are building be finished. Our joy is in the building, not in moving in.
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