Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
20th October 2013 11.00am
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?"
20th October 2013 11.00am
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?"
Genesis 32:22-31 The same night he got up and took his two
wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the
Jabbok. 23 He took them and
sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24 Jacob was left alone; and a man
wrestled with him until daybreak. 25
When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the
hip socket; and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, "Let me go,
for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go,
unless you bless me." 27
So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said,
"Jacob." 28 Then
the man said, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you
have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." 29 Then Jacob asked him,
"Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask
my name?" And there he blessed him.
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "For I have
seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved." 31 The sun rose upon him as he
passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
2 Timothy 3:14 - 4:5 But as for you, continue in what
you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15 and how from childhood you have
known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through
faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All
scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, and for training in righteousness,
17 so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient,
equipped for every good work. NRS 2
Timothy 4:1 ¶ In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to
judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I
solemnly urge you: 2 proclaim
the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable;
convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. 3 For the time is coming when
people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will
accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, 4 and will turn away from
listening to the truth and wander away to myths. 5 As for you, always be sober,
endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.
This
week, a group of us from Xchange,
the young adults group here at Bloomsbury,
joined
with a couple of hundred other people
for a preview screening of a new
film, called The UK Gold.
The
Guardian review of the film describes it as
‘the kind of film to get the blood
boiling and the steam hissing out of your ears’.[1]
It
continues,
‘With the assistance of a string of
well-informed talking heads,
[this] film points out the major
features of the tax avoidance landscape:
tax havens, brass
plates, capital flight, crown dependencies, and the like.
It soon becomes clear that the
avoiders' best weapon is silence
– the list of those who
refused to talk to the film-makers,
helpfully appended to
the closing credits, speaks volumes.’
The
film is being promoted by Christian Aid, ActionAid, and Oxfam,
and it raises uncomfortable
questions
of some practices
prevalent in the finance industry,
and particularly the
city of London.
It
will also elicit different responses from those who watch it.
Some, like Andrew Pulver of the
Guardian,
will be left with their
blood boiling.
Others, like myself, will be left
with a string of questions
and wanting to know
more.
Some may be left with a sense that
the film has overly-simplified the issue
and misrepresented the
nuances of the finance industry.
All
of these are good responses.
What would count, in my book, as a
bad response,
would be indifference.
If
we are indifferent to the way in which the powerful institutions of our society
behave,
we create a culture of indifference
which
in turn allows those institutions to become indifferent in their turn
to the effect that their actions
have on others.
And
in many ways this is the point of the film
– to challenge our indifference
to the ways in which
money, and especially taxation,
are handled at a
national and international level.
Whether,
in the final analysis,
we agree or disagree with its
conclusions
is less important than that we ask
the question.
Something
that interested me about the film
was the way in which it juxtaposed fairly
hard-headed information
on the way in which UK crown dependencies and overseas territories
such as the
Cayman Islands
offer effective tax
havens for multinational businesses,
with the personal stories of those
at the bottom end of the social scale
who are facing cuts to
their benefits as a result of austerity measures.
We
saw how companies operating in the developing world
in industries such as
mineral extraction
were able to avoid paying tax in
those countries
by registering within
one of the UK tax havens,
and
then alongside this we also saw
the catastrophic effects that such
tax avoidance measures have
on those living and
working in those countries.
The
film’s technique was to highlight the plight of the poor,
in order to highlight the
indifference of big institutions to their suffering,
in order to put pressure
on those institutions to change.
All
of which starts to sound quite a lot
like our parable for this morning
from Luke’s gospel,
where
a poor widow’s plight is pitted against the indifference
of a powerful representative of a
powerful institution.
But
more of that in a minute…
In
the question-and-answer session after the screening of The UK Gold,
the panel included the Reverend
William Taylor,
a vicar from East London
who features in the film
trying to challenge city
institutions.
Someone
from the audience asked him
what would be the one thing he would want to say to
Christians,
to inspire and encourage
them to campaign against injustice
in the way
that he has.
And
without missing a beat, he simply replied,
‘Read the Bible’.
Well,
he got a round of applause from me at least, on that one.
You see, I think that when we read
the Bible,
when we struggle with
the Bible,
when we try faithfully
to hold the stories of our faith
against the
realities of our world and experiences,
we open ourselves up to challenge and
change,
as the narrative of
scripture
engages and
transforms the ways in which
we live and
think and act.
Our
reading this morning from 2 Timothy
contains that famous passage on the
purpose of scripture,
which I’m sure is familiar to many
of us:
16 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for
reproof,
for correction, and for training in
righteousness,
17 so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient,
equipped for every good work.
But
did you notice what comes shortly after it?
The letter goes on:
I solemnly urge you: 2 proclaim the message;
be
persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable;
convince,
rebuke, and encourage,
with
the utmost patience in teaching.
You
see, scripture isn’t something
that readily or easily yields its
most precious treasures.
They
come slowly, and often after a struggle,
as our preconceptions and prejudices
are slowly and painfully brought
into the light for transformation,
and
as our indifference is challenged
to the point where we can remain
indifferent no more.
Reverend
William Taylor was right in what he said
– the one thing Christians can do,
to become inspired to
get involved
in working to transform
the world,
is to read the Bible,
to read it persistently,
to read it urgently,
to read it with
patience, to wrestle with it,
as its uncomfortable and challenging
message
leaves us nowhere to
hide.
As
Jacob discovered in his night of wrestling with God,
there is no blessing without
struggle.
He
emerged limping and bruised,
but having discovered the blessings
of the covenant in the process.
And
those of us who are the heirs of the covenant
need to hear that the Christian life
is no easy ride.
It
isn’t a seamless wave of blessings
received with little effort on our
part.
Oppression
isn’t transformed into justice
because someone decides one day to
claim the victory of God.
Rather,
the devilish systems of our world are challenged
when those of us who live by the story
of Jesus
bring that story to bear
faithfully, persistently, and tirelessly in our own lives,
for the transformation
of the world.
And
so we find ourselves back
at Jesus’ parable of the persistent
widow, as it is often called.
This
is a simple parable, with only two characters,
there is the widow,
who we are told is a
victim of injustice,
and there is the judge,
who we are told neither
feared God nor had respect for people.
The
judge is a representative of the Jewish legal system,
which was specifically charged under
the Hebrew Bible’s law code,
with the care of the
vulnerable within Jewish society,
including widows and
orphans (cf. Deut 10.18; 14.29 etc).
And
it quickly becomes clear
that he is not exercising his power
and responsibility as he should.
There
are two schools of thought in interpreting this parable,
which tend to occupy the pens of the
various commentators on it.
One
school of thought says that this judge
is to be seen as a kind of inverted
representation of God.
And whilst we might not see
God as capricious or indifferent,
nonetheless, the point is made that if we persist in
prayer as the widow did,
surely eventually God will hear us and answer our
prayers.
Needless to say, this is a
problematic reading,
because it raises for us all sorts of questions as to why
it might be
that God would answer our prayers on the
tenth, or hundredth, time of asking,
but not on the first.
What is it that has changed in the intervening time?
Is it that God needs badgering into action?
Is it possible that God is in fact far more unpredictable
or fickle
than many of us would like to believe?
And then there is a second
school of thought about this parable,
which draws attention to the Jewish rhetorical technique
of arguing from the lesser to the greater.
Such arguments were common
within Judaism,
and can be found in many other places elsewhere in the
Bible,
(cf. Mt 7.11; 10.25; 12.12; Lk 12.24, 28; Rom
11.12, 24; 2 Cor 3.8; Heb 9.14)
usually introduced by the phrase ‘how much more’.
So, for example,
Matthew 7:11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give
good gifts to your children, how much
more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
By this reading of the
parable, the unjust judge isn’t God,
or even an inverted representation of God,
Rather, the point is made by
suggesting an argument from the lesser to the greater:
If even an unjust judge grants justice eventually,
how much more does God long to grant the
prayers
of those
who cry to him day and night.
But the lesson remains uncomfortably
similar to the first reading,
which is that we should continue to persist in prayer
and God will eventually get round to
answering us,
even if at the moment he seems to be ignoring us.
After all, surely he is much
more motivated to do so than the unjust judge,
But, you know, I find this
second reading almost as problematic as the first,
because it still takes us no closer to an understanding
of why it might be that God, who of course is nothing
like the judge,
is still doing such a good impression of him by ignoring
our prayers!
So, I want to suggest a
different way of reading this parable,
and I think it’s a way of approaching it which might get
us a bit closer
to the persistent and faithful struggle embodied by the
widow,
to see the world transformed
in the name of the in-breaking kingdom of
heaven.
The
way I read this parable, the unjust judge is not God
he’s not even an inverted pastiche
of God.
Rather,
he represents the satanic forces of power at work in the world.
The
unjust judge, who has no fear of God nor respect for anyone,
represents those systems and
structures
which have lost sight of
their God-given intent,
and have become instead indifferent
to the plight of the
poor and the vulnerable.
These
structures could be governments,
indifferent to the plight of those
at the bottom end of society,
seeking to restrict
benefits and cut services
in the interest of
political expediency or ideological pragmatism.
They
could be businesses or international financial markets,
indifferent to the exploitative or
oppressive effects
that their endless quest
for profit has
upon those who find
themselves standing in the way of the bottom line.
They
could be those systems specifically charged with protecting the vulnerable
such as the police, the
army, or the justice systems,
when those systems become
indifferent to the causes
that they have been
established to champion.
From institutional racism to military
dictatorships,
it is all too easy for
power to breed corruption.
And
this, of course, is why Jesus used the image of a judge
- he is the one profession who should have stood up for the
impoverished widow.
But
beyond these large institutions and their tendency to systemic indifference,
the unjust judge could be you, and he
could be me,
This
is especially true those of us who have money and power.
Because we too face choices as to
what we will do with that which is ours to hold.
We too must make choices
about who to vote for,
or where to
invest our money:
which
pension scheme or hedge fund to endorse.
Will we make our choices based on
what’s best for us and ours?
Or will we hear the
voice of the widow at the door,
crying out for justice,
crying to us for righteousness?
In
Jesus’ parable, the widow’s continual
and perseverant approach to the
indifferent judge
is
effective in the end,
because her weakness vulnerability
ultimately calls him to account
and leaves him little option but to
act to bring her justice.
It
was the same story in the film, The UK Gold,
where the personal stories of those
affected by the avoidance of tax
were told in such a way
as to call to account
those in positions of power and
influence
who would otherwise
remain blind and indifferent
to the consequences of
their actions and decisions.
In
many ways this is the path of nonviolent resistance.
It has echoes of Ghandi, of Martin
Luther King, of Rosa Parkes.
With
the disempowered simply presenting themselves again and again,
bearing testimony in their own
bodies to the injustices they have suffered,
holding the world to account that
the world might be transformed.
Do
you know the wonderful song ‘The Mothers of the Disappeared’
by the Irish rock group U2, from
their 1987 album The Joshua Tree?
It was
inspired by lead singer Bono's experiences in Nicaragua and El Salvador
and it gives voice to the pain of
the Madres de Plaza de Mayo,
a group of women whose
children had been "disappeared"
by the Argentine and
Chilean dictatorships.
These
women simply never stopped asking the authorities,
what had happened to their children.
Through
persistence and pain they eventually got some answers,
with many of their children
confirmed dead,
but others found to have been adopted
out or otherwise re-housed.
Some
people have been brought to justice,
and the mothers keep asking the
questions.
And so we’re back to Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow,
which, according to Luke’s
introduction of it (v.1), is actually about two things.
Firstly,
it is about the need to pray always,
and secondly it is about not losing heart.
This
parable is not just about praying for justice,
or about interceding for the poor.
It’s
about taking action,
it’s about standing alongside the
widow of Jesus’ story
and
joining our voices with hers,
in persistently challenging the
forces that oppress and misuse power.
The
lesson of this parable isn’t just that 'even a bad judge will give in
occasionally'
it's rather that 'even a poor widow
can effectively challenge the powers that be
in the cause of justice
and righteousness'
And
it raises for us the uncomfortable question of whether, in fact,
it may be that the only effective
challenge to oppressive and exploitative powers
can come from the voice
of the poor,
because
it’s only when the powers are brought face-to-face
with the dehumanising effects of
their actions
that they can be held to account and
enabled to change.
Those
of us who would challenge the powers-that-be in the name of justice
but who would seek to do so from our
own positions of comfort and security
may find that we are
already colluding
with he very systems we
are seeking to stand against.
This
is why we who would see the world different
need to find ways of embracing and
including within our own communities
those with whom we would challenge
the satanic structures of the world
which keep all people,
from the poorest to the most powerful,
hostages to fortune and
authority.
We
who would have compassion for the poor
may find it helpful to remember that
the word ‘compassion’
is the bringing together of two
Latin words:
com, meaning with, and pati,
meaning suffer.
Compassion for the poor involves
suffering with the poor.
Any
challenge to the indifferent powers of exploitation
that does not include the voice of
those who are being exploited
will lack the power of the
persistent widow.
But
if our communities of transformation include those who are otherwise
dis-voiced,
then the cry we offer in challenge
of power
will be a voice of persistence
informed by compassion.
It’s
interesting to hear what the judge says as he grants the widow justice.
He
says (v.5),
yet
because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice,
so
that she may not wear me out by continually coming
The Greek word here for ‘wear me out’ is a word
that actually means
to
beat black-and-blue, a bit like a boxer at the end of a long round,
and it carries a connotation of ‘shame’ not
just exhaustion.
As a defeated boxer might be said to have been
shamed by his opponent,
so
the judge is ‘shamed’ by the widow.
When we join our voices with the voices of the
oppressed,
when
we learn the language of the poor
and
speak with them against the oppressive powers of indifference,
then God is active in the shaming of the powers
that be
into
taking actions that bring justice and blessing to those in need.
In our wrestling with God in scripture,
the
stories of our faith can become for us the persistent widow,
shaming us with their honesty,
and
persisting in their challenge that we should be different.
As Jacob was left beaten and limping by his
encounter,
so
we too may find ourselves black and blue after a night with the word of God.
But from the encounter comes the blessing,
as
we are enabled by the persistence of God
to
disentangle ourselves from the seductions of complacency
and
the temptations of indifference.
Sometimes
I despair at the intransigence
of the powers-that-be which rule our
world.
Can
they ever be brought to account?
Can they ever be changed?
Yes,
says Jesus, they can,
and it begins with those who have
compassion,
it begins with those who are
downtrodden and beaten up.
It
is an upside down revolution,
where the world is changed not
through popular uprising
but
through the telling, and living, of the stories of oppression:
repeatedly, continually, faithfully.
It
is a revolution which begins when people wrestle with God and with scripture,
bringing the darkness into the light,
even at great cost to themselves.
It
is the church in solidarity with the poor
against the indifference of the
machine.
It
is the faithful few who will not be told to be silent.
And
so Jesus ends with a question:
‘And yet, when the Son of Man comes,
will he find faith on earth?’
This
is a hard task, it is a task that it would be easy to talk away from,
especially when faced with the
indifference and hostility
of the powers of
oppression.
And
yet, and yet…
we are called to keep the faith.
When
I was a student at Bristol Baptist College,
Brian Haymes was the college
Principal,
and
every Friday, as he sent us out to preach
in the small churches and chapels of
the villages of the west of England,
he
would offer the same words of blessing:
‘Preach well, and keep the faith’.
And
it seems to me that these are fitting words for us today also.
We
have heard the sermon,
let us now keep the faith.