Friday, October 21, 2016
Pentecost 22 ~ Proper 24C ~ October 16, 2016
Sermon for The Twenty-second
Sunday After Pentecost
Year C, Proper 24 ~ October
16, 2016
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Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided
Trinity
The pairing of this parable
of the Unjust Judge and the Importunate Widow with Jacob’s wrestling-match with
God invites us to think of the Unjust Judge as an allegorical representation of
God. But that cannot be so. That would be absurd, a contradiction in terms. In
fact it’s kind of a joke to think of it that way; maybe it is purposely funny
in order to force us outside of our ordinary habits of thinking. The parable is
also a good example of why straightforward allegory is not always useful. The
point certainly is not that if we pester God enough, eventually He will be sufficiently
annoyed to do what we ask! Still, the meaning must have something to do with
the Importunate Widow’s persistence. “Perseverance furthers,” as the I Ching famously advises. And
persistence, perseverance, not giving up IS what ties the gospel with the
prophecy.
I think this parable is
about perseverance in prayer — in spiritual practice. It is definitely not
about a contest of wills between the soul and God, but it is about
breakthroughs. All of life is a series of breakthroughs, isn’t it? We are
conceived and new life breaks through. After gestation, we break through into
the world. Then our physical and emotional and mental development are all a
series of breakthroughs: more or less painful breakthroughs, as we make the
natural transitions in life. Finally, we break through into Larger Life when we
die, an event Sufis as well as Christians call New Birth. The Wise tell us that
the same is true of our spiritual life, which is the purpose of all the other
levels of our life. The problem is that there is a conflict between our calling
into more and more being, more and more reality, more and more love, and our
natural inclination to stay where we are.
I think that is what the
Unjust Judge represents: the wall — the shell — we all build around our
individuality. We need such a shell, just as an egg needs its shell in order to
live, but it turns out to be a prison for our personhood. Eventually, the new
check has to break it and leave it behind. The Widow represents the self that
is striving to leave that individuality behind and to become a person. The Widow
represents the self called to sound through that wall, to break it down, to
wear it out, to break through the shell. Whatever our religious practice, if it
comes out of a genuine spiritual tradition and we stick with it, the Unjust
Judge will give up and give us what we want. He represents the part of
ourselves that doesn’t want to change, the shell. The Widow represents the part
of us that does. All she can do is to keep asking. All we can do is to
persevere in prayer, understood in the broadest possible way. The Unjust Judge
has all kinds of ways of refusing the demands of the Widow:
1) “No
one is listening. There is no God. You are just wasting your time."
2) “Don’t
you have something else to do? Couldn’t you spend your limited time doing
something more useful?"
3) “This
isn’t getting you anywhere. You know very well that you’re not making any
so-called ‘progress'. There is no such thing."
4) “There
is no ‘Unseen Reality.’ What you see is what you get.”
And so on. There is truth to
all of these refusals:
1) Indeed, there is no God of the kind we are capable of
imagining. It does not follow, however, that there is no God. And if there is,
then what better way to spend our time?
2) Sure I have something else to do, but what could be more
important than fulfilling the purpose for which I came into existence?
3) While it’s true that I don’t notice any progress, that doesn’t
necessarily mean there is no progress. In fact, the Wise tells us that we are
never in a position to observe our own progress. There is no way I can tell if
I am getting anywhere, because the very wall I am trying to break down is my
habitually self-regarding consciousness.
4) Unseen Reality, by definition, transcends our consciousness.
While I may accept the reality of what I see, it does not follow that there is
nothing that I cannot see. Faith, as Paul says, is the “evidence of things
unseen.” That’s a paradox, because evidence
means visible proof, and Faith is not that kind of proof, but rather the will
to entertain the possibility of Unseen Reality. Opening to it is our purpose,
and what better way to spend our time
The Unjust Judge is the
self-regarding consciousness, unwilling to entertain any other possibility.
Unjust indeed! The judgments of that consciousness are not right. Fearing
neither God nor man, the self-regarding consciousness defends against any
attempt to break through it, whether the adoration of God or the love of our
fellow beings. The practice of the remembrance of God — repeated RETURN TO the
consciousness that adores the Unseen the Reality and recognizes the same consciousness
in everyone we encounter — that remembrance will overcome the Unjust Judge if
the Importunate Widow will only persevere.
Maybe that is one of the
meanings of Paul’s advice to “pray without ceasing.” To do so literarily, with
mantras or dhikr, such as the Jesus Prayer, is commendable. But that takes a
lot of practice. Perseverance
consists in repeated return when our consciousness wanders or our practice falls
off. The woman asks, is refused, and goes away. Then she comes back to ask
again, over and over again, day after day, and she never gives up returning.
Maybe to pray without ceasing does not only mean to pray continually but never
to give up, to return to the practice of remembrance without giving up.
As I said this is not a
matter of a contest of wills, in which I am determined that my will shall prevail.
In fact, it is very nearly the opposite. My will is the Unjust Judge. The
Importunate Widow is the practice of remembrance, the Spirit insisting on
conforming my will to God’s. God does not have to be convinced to love us. God
is not the Unjust Judge. God, rather, is at work within us to wear down the
resistance of the self-regarding consciousness, which in the end wears out. The
breakthrough that follows is mysterious. Love breaks in as the Soul breaks out,
like a chicken breaking out of the egg shell, which it no longer needs.
Our part in this is faith —
the willingness to entertain the possibility of Unseen Reality, but also the fidelity of our perseverance in
repetitive practice, like the Importunate Widow. That is how we give an
affirmative answer to the Lord’s question: “when the Son of Man comes, will he
find faith on earth?”
AMEN
MARANATHA
COME LORD JESUS
