The Power of Persistence

This painting was created by Marc Chagall, who is sometimes referred to as the quintessential Jewish artist of the 20th century. He was not only a pioneer, but a synthesizer of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism. His work largely influenced the rise of surrealism and expressionism. This work, "Jacob Wrestling with the Angel", is a powerful illustration of our emotional turmoil as we try to understand and wrestle with the divine, particularly in prayer.

Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. ² He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. ³ In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ ⁴ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, ⁵ yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” ⁶ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. ⁷ And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? ⁸ I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Sermon:

This morning’s parable is often paired with another, very similar, parable. That parable is about the Insistent Friend and can be found in Luke 11:5-13. Today’s is about the Stubborn Widow and both center around one of the meaning and power inherent to prayer. Yet, these two parables are also different from one another. The one we just heard is not just a story of knocking on a door waiting to receive something we need from a friend. It’s not a story about asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar. No! There’s something far more pressing in today’s parable. It’s a parable about injustice, contrasts, and eschatological hope.[1]

This is a story about Torah.[2] The unjust judge that we hear about in this story embodies the misuse of the law that God gave Israel. He embodies the antithesis to God Himself and everything that God had taught the Israelites about fairness, justice, and the responsibilities a community has towards its weakest members. In 2 Chronicles God tells Israel, and us, what a judge should be:

“You judge not on behalf of human beings but on the Lord’s behalf… Now, let the fear of the Lord be upon you; take care what you do, for there is no perversion of justice with the Lord our God, or partiality, or taking of bribes.” (2 Chronicles 19:6-7)

Likewise, God embodies all that is opposite to what we hear about the judge in this story. As one commentary from the intertestamental period exhorts:

“Do not offer him a bribe, for he will not accept it… for the Lord is the judge, and with him there is no partiality. […] He will not ignore the supplication of the orphan, or the widow when she pours out her complaint. Do not the tears of the widow run down her cheek as she cries out against the one who causes them to fall?” (Sirach 35:14-19)[3]

In other words, God gets pissed off when the weakest among us are taken advantage of. In God’s Law we find that widows, orphans, and sojourners are placed under special protection – God goes out of His way to tell Israel that these people are to be treated well, precisely because they are weak. “In the patriarchal societies of the ancient world they were structurally the first victims of economic and social injustice and of legal maneuverings, and they were the objects of treachery and attempts at exploitation.”[4]

          In the parable that Jesus tells here, the widow is treated unjustly on two levels. First, she is victimized by a man who has exploited her economic insecurity. He is simply referred to in this parable as the “opponent.”[5] She tries, like most of us would, to get justice in the court system and goes before a judge. But, she becomes the victim of a second injustice – a judicial decision that has no regard for her rights. The parable tells us that the judge has repulsed her many times. As the parables tells us, the judge did not fear God. If he had, he would have given her justice on her first attempt.

          But this widow, who has been victimized, returns again and again to the judge – apparently becoming more objectionable every time she returns. So the judge finally relents and does justice for her, not because it is just, but because he wants to avoid trouble for himself.[6] The widow’s cries, then, become an example for us of how one might protest. “She resists injustice by drawing the judge’s attention to her rights, that is, to the Torah.”[7] She is obstinate and persistent precisely because she knows that God’s law is on her side. So on each occasion as she returns to court, seeking justice, she ups the ante by going one step further in violating social boundaries – she behaves loudly and aggressively in public, so much so that it seems to embarrass the judge and makes him eager to draw attention away from himself.[8] The judge’s internal conversation, that he has within his own mind, reflects this transgression of boundaries.

This is, in many ways, a story about the spotlight of attention. When injustices are laid bare before everyone’s eyes the unjust retreat and try to hide. They deflect attention away from themselves, before the public’s eye can see too deep, and incite the hand to crush those who seek inly to enrich themselves.

Many of us, here this morning, are wrestling with questions. We all have anxieties and fears, but some of us might have more than that sitting on our hearts. Some of us are wondering why we are still seeing children being crushed under the weight of bombs. Others might be wondering why we still see men and women alike thrown into the chains of sex trafficking and slavery.[9] Some of us might be wondering why some injustice happened to us; or, perhaps, why someone was so easily able to take advantage of our children or grandchildren without consequence. We all have a yearning for justice deep in our souls and those inclinations, those ideas about justice, that we have are often expressed in God’s Law – where he talks about these sorts of things.

This is why I put the Chagall painting on the back of today’s bulletin. It doesn’t correlate directly with today’s passage from scripture, but it does express the emotions that we might be wrapped up in when we try to make sense of our world. We are wrapped up in the deeply intense, reddish, emotions as we wrestle with our minds through prayer and doubt. Yet, we also encounter the tranquility and assurance of God that’s intrinsic to His nature. The sun, the represents God’s light, shines upon all things; and illuminates what God offers, even insofar as we can turn a reflection of God’s light – in terms of attention – upon the injustices of the world.

I want to conclude by having us reflect on the same questions that Jesus’ audience was reflecting on. Just prior to this parable, the Pharisees asked when the Kingdom of God will come. The disciples asked, “where” it will come.[10] Both audiences are longing for a rapid liberation from their pains – perhaps we are too. Yet, Jesus highlights the illusionary character of these questions. He tells them that now is the time for the Son of Man’s suffering, that the judgment of the world is not set for this time, but is instead something to follow this period, which is like the days of Noah before the Great Flood.[11] We often live short-sighted and violent lives (17:26-33) as though things will go on like this forever. But they will not go on like this forever. God will judge.

This parable is “an admonition to do what is necessary in this situation, in which so much violence is [our] experience.”[12] Our task is to pray and cry to God for justice, even if it means that we have to reflect His light and shine it upon the injustices of this world. Our time is a time of repentance because we are all disdaining God’s will for justice, which is expressed in His Law.[13] As the last verse of the parable suggests, fidelity to God has become rare.[14] The unjust judge is the image of everything that is diametrically opposite to God – including the structures of oppression from which the people to whom Jesus is speaking are suffering.[15]

This passage, along with Romans 8:15 and 26, suggests that the task of believers is to pray and cry out to God against injustice – to protest and place our trust in God. We are to cry out like women in labor, not giving up, but maintain the patient power of resistance that comes from hope in the nearness of God.[16] It’s a stubborn and persistent hope in the coming of God’s justice. May we emulate the widow and reflect the light of God, just as she did.

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[1] ‘Eschatology’ is any system of doctrines concerning last, or final, matters, as death, the Judgment, the future state, etc.

[2] ‘Torah’, or Pentateuch, is the central reference of the religious Judaic tradition. It is constituted by the first five books of the Bible.

[3] Sirach, also known as Ecclesiasticus, was written between 200 and 175 BCE by the scribe Shimon ben Yeshua ben Eliezer ben Sira of Jerusalem. It is considered canonical by Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and most of the Oriental Orthodox. It is also included in many Protestant Lectionary readings, even though it is not considered canonical, but simply an important and instructive intertestamental text.

[4] Luise Schottroff, The Parables of Jesus, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), p. 191.

[5] Luke 18:3

[6] Luke 18:5

[7] Luise Schottroff, The Parables of Jesus, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), p. 192.

[8] Luke 18:7 can be understood in this way.

[9] There are approximately 30 million people still in slavery. See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/21/modern-slavery_n_4124496.html

[10] Luke 17:37

[11] Luke 17:25

[12] Luise Schottroff, The Parables of Jesus, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), p. 193.

[13] Luke 18:9-14

[14] Luke 18:8

[15] Luise Schottroff, The Parables of Jesus, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), p. 193.

[16] Ibid.

The Word of God Cannot Be Chained

2 Timothy 2:3-15

Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. ⁴ No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier’s aim is to please the enlisting officer. ⁵ And in the case of an athlete, no one is crowned without competing according to the rules. ⁶ It is the farmer who does the work who ought to have the first share of the crops. ⁷ Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in all things.

⁸ Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, ⁹ for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. ¹⁰ Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. ¹¹ The saying is sure:

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
¹² if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
¹³ if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself.

¹⁴ Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. ¹⁵ Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.

Sermon:

          Much of today’s scripture likely sounds familiar. The images of a soldier and athlete are illustrations that Paul seems to fall back on quite frequently. They lift up the virtues of endurance and long-suffering. These are good qualities intrinsic to today’s scripture. Yet, I want to shift our gaze a little this morning and focus in on another key element of today’s passage – the hymn.

          Many of you may not have even realized that this passage contains a hymn. Yet, it does – even if we don’t have access to the music which was likely never written down. So what I want to do now is a bit of a group project. I want us to work through the theology of the hymn together. Sometimes we sing songs and take them into our hearts, but we don’t really take the time to examine their depth or lack of valuable content. So let’s take a moment to examine verses 11-13.

Overall Theme: Perseverance is neither Paul’s pet project, nor is it optional. It is a trademark of Christian life and service, a manifestation of our union with Christ.

The hymn’s first two lines work in parallel, each one asserting the positive outcomes of (first) our identification with Christ and (second) our perseverance.

The third line states a kind of equivalence or reciprocation: our denial of Christ results in his denial of us.

Then, perhaps generating surprise, the fourth line says our negative action, faithlessness, will not be reciprocated by faithlessness on Christ’s part, for “he remains faithful.”

The final words in verse 13, “for he cannot deny himself,” assert, following the lead of established Jewish convictions about God that Christ must remain faithful to his own self, character, or commitments.

“The big interpretive question here is how the hymn’s third and fourth lines (2 Timothy 2:12b-13a) relate to each other. People who are uncomfortable with the notion of God denying us tend to say that the fourth line trumps the third, that God’s generous faithfulness to us will keep God from ultimately denying those who falter. In contrast, others read the line about God’s steady faithfulness as indicating God’s commitment to justice: when God denies the deniers, that’s just God doing what divine holiness requires. As you consider this question, notice that elsewhere the letter holds out hope for those it considers Timothy’s opponents (2:25b-26). The overall sweep of the letter also insists that the gospel’s influence or reliability cannot ultimately be nullified by the faithlessness or destructive behavior of some.”[1]

This brings me to the theological point I want to make this morning. In verses 8-9 we hear the Paul say, “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, ⁹ for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained.” The message hear is pretty straightforward. Paul is preaching a theology of the cross. He’s pointing to the crucifixion and suggesting that we too will experience not only death but suffering too.

In the service of the Gospel, which compels us to try and save other people, we may not only experience suffering, but we are obligated to embrace it for the sake of something far greater than ourselves. Now that doesn’t mean we need to all embrace sadism, and embrace pain as a pleasure or a good in and of itself, I don’t think any of us want that. That’s not what the text is saying. It’s saying that we are part of something bigger than ourselves and that when we sacrifice for that greater cause we will “live” and “reign” with Jesus because we will have been faithful to our calling.

Now here’s the key part I want to focus on. Paul is referencing the fact that he has been chained, like a criminal, for the sake of the Gospel. But he says that, “the Word of God is not chained.” The message hear is pretty clear. Jesus Christ was not chained by death. Death could not keep our Savior. Instead, he became a victor over death and when we follow Christ – we too can conquer death. But I think we can go farther than even that here. I think it’s fair to say that this passage should be connected to the hymn we talked about earlier. After all, they’re in the same lectionary reading; and I think there’s a very good reason for that.

When we look back on the third and fourth lines of the hymn and the question they face us with – whether we want to prioritize God’s faithfulness or God’s justice – I think that we should remember the phrase, “But the Word of God is not chained.” God’s work in the world cannot be held back by our faithlessness or our failures. Even if we go down destructive paths, God is there at work not only in the world, but in our communities and in our lives ready to accept and forgive us. God is not inhibited by us. He is, after all, God. The Word of God moves and works in the world despite any opposition it may encounter and it often moves because of the sacrifices and sufferings we might bear out for the sake of other people.

This is the Gospel for us today. No matter what you’re enduring, God is there for you. Your sacrifices for others are part of a larger plan for justice and goodness, yes, but they’re also an expression of God’s work here and now. No matter what you might be carrying, God can relate. Jesus carried the weight of all the world’s pains on his shoulders and died, as a human, to participate in the things that are weighing you down. But Jesus also conquered death and suffering. He defeated it; and He invites you to follow him in that victory over death and darkness. That’s what baptism symbolizes; and if you’ve never been baptized please come and see me and we can talk about it. It’s a beautiful expression of what we believe and what God is doing in the world. Finally, we can be assured that even when we are faithless, God remains faithful, precisely because God’s Word cannot be chained. Jesus cannot be chained by our failures. He cannot be chained by our ineptitude. And Jesus cannot be chained by any powers or principalities that seek to stop His work. Our regrets cannot even chain Him down. So the best thing we can do is open ourselves up to Him and embrace the movement of God’s Word in our lives and our communities.

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[1] Matt Skinner, “Commentary on 2 Timothy 2:8-15” - http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1835

The Role of Spatial Proximity and Repoduction in the Present Decay of Aura, Benjamin

The aura's present decay is based in two circumstances, which are "both linked to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. Namely: the desire of the present-day masses to 'get closer' to things spatially and humanly, and their equally passionate concern for overcoming each thing's uniqueness by assimilating it as a reproduction."

"The stripping of the veil from the object, the destruction of the aura, is the signature of a perception whose 'sense' for sameness in the world has so increased that, by means of reproduction, it extracts sameness even from what is unique. Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing significance of statistics. The alignment of reality with the masses and of the masses with reality is a process of immeasurable importance for both thinking and perception."

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" in Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), pp. 255-256. [Underlining Mine]

Benjamin - Human Perception Changes With Time

"Just as the entire mode of existence of human collectives changes over long historical periods, so too does their mode of perception. The way in which human perception is organized - the medium in which it occurs - is conditioned not only by nature but by history."

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" in Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), p. 255.

Benjamin - Mass v. Unique Existence

"It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced."

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" in Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), p. 254.

Benjamin - Authenticity and Historical Testimony

"The authenticity of a thing is the quintessence of all that is transmissible in it from its origin on, ranging from its physical duration to the historical testimony relating to it. Since the historical testimony is founded on the physical duration, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction, in which the physical duration plays no part. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authenticity of the object."

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" in Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), p. 254.

Benjamin - Reproducibility and Authenticity

"The whole sphere of authenticity eludes technological - and, of course, not only technological - reproducibility."

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" in Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), p. 253.

Benjamin on Art and Fascism

"Theses defining the developmental tendencies of art can therefore contribute to the political struggle in ways that it would be a mistake to underestimate. They neutralize a number of traditional concepts - such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery - which, used in an uncontrolled way (and controlling them is difficult today), allow factual material to be manipulated in the interests of fascism. In what follows, the concepts which are introduced into the theory of art differ from those now current in that they are completely useless for the purposes of fascism. On the other hand, they are useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art [Kunstpolitik]."

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" in Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), p. 252.

The Necessity of Social Strata and the Possibility of Progress

"It should be noted in passing that a reduction of group egotism and of the contrasts between group spirits, an eradication of excessive economic inequalities, and so on are things that can be achieved, whereas the complete elimination of hierarchically structured strata and of all differences in levels among groups cannot."

Siegfried Kracauer, "The Group as Bearer of Ideas", The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p 157.

Kracauer and the Role of Sensations in Upholding the Cult of Mythology

"Reason can gain entrance only with difficulty when the masses it ought to pervade yield to sensations afforded by the godless mythological cult. The latter's social meaning is equivalent to that of the Roman circus games, which were sponsored by those in power."

Siegfried Kracauer, "The Mass Ornament", The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 85.

Why Reason Has Not Penetrated the Mass Ornament

"Reason speaks wherever it disintegrates the organic unity and rips open the natural surface (no matter how cultivated the latter might be); it dissects the human form here only so that the undistorted truth can fashion man anew. But reason has not penetrated the mass ornament; its patterns are mute. The Ratio that gives rise to the ornament is strong enough to invoke the mass and to expunge all life from the figures constituting it. It is too weak to find the human beings within the mass and to render the figures in the ornament transparent to knowledge. Because this Ratio flees from reason and takes refuge in the abstract, uncontrolled nature proliferates under the guise of rational expression and uses abstract signs to display itself."

Siegfried Kracauer, "The Mass Ornament", The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 84.

Kracauer: Mass Patterns, Ratio, and the Insufficiency of Cutting Off Man's Organic Being

"[T]he more decisively capitalist Ratio is cut off from reason and bypasses man as it vanishes into the void of the abstract. In spite of the rationality of the mass pattern, such patterns simultaneously give rise to the natural in its impenetrability. Certainly man as an organic being has disappeared from these ornaments, but that does not suffice to bring man's basis to the fore; on the contrary, the remaining little mass particle cuts itself off from this basis just as any general formal concept does."

Siegfried Kracauer, "The Mass Ornament", The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 84.

Abstractness as Evidence of Myth, Kracauer

"The prevailing abstractness reveals that the process of demythologization has not come to an end."

"In other words, the unchecked development of the capitalist system fosters the unchecked growth of abstract thinking (or forces become bogged down in a false concreteness). The more abstractness consolidates itself, however, the more man is left behind, ungoverned by reason. [...] It is a mere consequence of the unhampered expansion of capitalism's power that the dark forces of nature continue to rebel ever more threateningly, thereby preventing the advent of the man of reason."

Siegfried Kracauer, "The Mass Ornament", The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 82-8.

Kracauer, Capitlaism, and a Reason that Arises out of Man

"Leaving aside the stultifying effect of such regressive stances, they fail to grasp capitalism's core defect: it rationalizes not too much but too little. The thinking promoted by capitalism resists culminating in that reason which arises from the basis of man."

Siegfried Kracauer, "The Mass Ornament", The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 81.

The Ratio of Capitalism in Kracauer

"However, the Ratio of the capitalist economic system is not reason itself but a murky reason. Once past a certain point, it abandons the truth in which it participates. It does not encompass man. The operation of the production process is not regulated according to man's needs, and man does not serve as the foundation for the structure of the socioeconomic organization. Indeed, at no point whatsoever is the system founded on the basis of man."

Siegfried Kracauer, "The Mass Ornament", The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 81.

Kracauer Sounding A Bit Idealistic

"Reason does not operate within the circle of natural life. Its concerns is to introduce truth into the world."

"Even in the early days of history, mere nature was suspended in the fairy tale so that truth could prevail. [...] the fairy tale can become reality only on the ruins of the natural unities."

Siegfried Kracauer, "The Mass Ornament", The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 81.

Kracauer on Dehumanization in the Mass Ornament

"The Tiller Girls can no longer be reassembled into human beings after the fact. [...] The structure of the mass ornament reflects that of the entire contemporary situation. Since the principle of the capitalist production process does not arise purely out of nature, it must destroy the natural organisms that it regards either as means or as resistance. Community and personality perish when what is demanded is calculability; it is only as a tiny piece of the mass that the individual can clamber up charts and can service machines without any friction."

Siegfried Kracauer, "The Mass Ornament", The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 78.