The Widow-God

Cailleach, by Anetteprs

Lections: The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 29), AD 2025 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

In our reading from the Hebrew Bible this morning, my brothers and sisters, the patriarch Jacob is preparing to have the snot beaten out of him. And to be honest, he’s got it coming.

Jacob is an unlikely hero, to say the least. In fact, were his story written today, he’d probably be classified as more of an anti-hero. The moral ambiguity surrounding his character stems largely from his habit of being a trickster—a deceiver. Like Odysseus for the Greeks, or Loki for the Norse, Jacob uses his devious mind to get a leg up on both friend and foe alike. And frankly, he’s good at it.

For those unfamiliar with his story, Jacob is one of twin sons born to Isaac, making him the grandson of Abraham. As a descendant of Abraham, Jacob inherits the unbreakable promise of God’s love and fidelity made to his family forever. But that doesn’t mean that he deserves this promise, nor that he is its only recipient. As I mentioned, Jacob is a twin, and according to the Bible he and his brother Esau waged battle against each other while yet in their mother’s womb. Esau was born first and named for his rough appearance, ruddy and covered in hair. His brother came out clutching Esau’s heel in defiance, and so was named Jacob, which means “supplanter,” or “leg-puller.”

As they aged, Esau grew into a mighty hunter and outdoorsman, beloved especially by his father. Jacob, on the other hand, is described as a homebody and a momma’s boy. His favorite pastime, we are told, is that he likes to sit in tents; not exactly a ringing endorsement. Through trickery and conspiracy, Jacob manipulates both his father and elder brother into granting him the firstborn’s birthright; in effect, he cheats Esau out of his inheritance. Esau grows understandably enraged, and Jacob suddenly remembers just how good his brother is with sharp, pointy things. So Jacob sensibly runs far, far away.

During the years of his self-imposed exile, Jacob falls in love, gets tricked by his would-be bride’s father into marrying her elder sister as well, and ends up dishing out some pretty hefty doses of payback—not through force, mind you, but through deception. Alas, having finally pushed his father-in-law a bit too far, Jacob once again must flee the wrath of a larger, stronger man. So he heads for his boyhood home, though not without misgivings. Half a lifetime may have passed, but Jacob still remembers how he cheated his brother Esau, and he fears that old Red will reap a dire vengeance indeed.

All of which brings us to this morning’s tale. Jacob has sent his family and herds across a river, presumably for their safety, and spends the night alone on the far bank, expecting—indeed, dreading—that Esau will melt out of the shadows to put an arrow into his back. So Jacob can’t be terribly surprised when a man attacks him in the dark. They struggle all night, wrestling back and forth, until finally the dawn is about to break.

Jacob here shows his astonishing tenacity, refusing to let his assailant go even after his hip has been knocked out of joint. As the twilight waxes in the east, his attacker implores him, “Let me go, for the day is breaking!” Yet Jacob remains adamant: “I will not let you go until you bless me!” he demands. He won’t release Esau without his word he will not harm him.

“You will no longer be called Jacob,” the leg-puller, his opponent proclaims, “but now your name shall be Israel,”—which means “persevere with God”—“for you have struggled against both God and men, and you have prevailed.” The stranger thus blesses Jacob, now Israel, and vanishes into the night, leaving him alone and in shock. “It was God,” Israel gasps. “I have seen God and lived!” That was why the stranger needed to vanish before dawn: for to look directly on divinity was considered to be fatal.

With the sun now risen, Esau arrives at last. Israel cannot run anymore, not with that hurt hip. Esau runs up to his wayward sibling and grapples him in those hairy arms—not, as we might think, in order to crush him, but to kiss him! Esau weeps with joy. Jacob’s sins have finally caught him, yet he finds only his brother’s forgiveness, only love. So does justice give way to mercy, Law to Gospel. And all he had to do was stop running.

Wrestling with God: one would be hard-pressed to come up with a better image for the life of faith. Living as a Christian is a bizarre and perplexing path to trod. It is a road filled paradoxically with great dangers and great security. As with Israel, God sometimes appears both to bless us and to cripple us in a single encounter. Oftentimes God seems silent. Oftentimes we are afraid. Doubt, I’ve found, is not so much the opposite of faith as it is proof thereof. After all, had we no faith, we’d then have nothing left to doubt, now would we?

We live in a world fraught with danger, tragedy, and uncertainty. Bad things absolutely happen to good people, and suffering is often clearly undeserved and unjust. There’s no better example of that than the life of Christ Himself. We know that this is not the will of God, who never intended for Man to sin nor for the world to fall. God does not cause tragedy; He is ever our salvation. Yet He works in mysterious ways, does He not? And in His own apparently ever-patient time.

Why does God seem so slow to respond? Why doesn’t He act more swiftly, more decisively? Why doesn’t God just snap His almighty fingers and force this world to be good? Isn’t that, after all, what we would do, if we were God? This is the very question, I think, that Jesus answers in His parable this morning, when His disciples find themselves wrestling with a broken, unjust world, and therefore inevitably wrestling with God.

Jesus, the Scriptures say, told to His followers a parable about our need to persevere with God in prayer, and never to lose heart. “There was once an unjust judge, who had no fear of God nor any respect for the people,” He told them. “And a widow, vulnerable and alone, kept pestering him night and day, demanding justice. Finally, the judge granted her plea, if for no other reason than out of sheer exasperation. How much more, then,” sayeth the Lord, “will God grant justice when you pray?”

Now, in context, Christ here is teaching His disciples, via this parable, about the coming of His Kingdom; how it cannot be pointed out as a place or date in time, but as His eternal enthronement, judging, cleansing, resurrecting every moment of our fallen history; such that no injustice goes unreckoned, and no tyranny stands forever. Indeed, He prophesies and warns against the imminent destruction of a corrupted Jerusalem at the hands of Rome.

Reading it today, however, far removed in time if not in theme, our reflexive response to the story is to cast God in the judge’s seat and ourselves as the poor wronged widow whose prayers go unanswered. But alas, God is not an unjust judge; we are. We are the people in whom God has placed authority, created to be stewards of the earth and keepers of our brethren. Moreover, we as Christians are a nation of priests, called and blessed and forgiven that we might now share these gifts with the world.

And that means—O Lord, forgive us—that means that God then would be found in the widow. God is to be found within the wronged. God is the one who pesters us, hounds us, prays to us, night and day, to grant justice, to serve the needy, to fulfill our duty from the high positions entrusted unto us. God is the widow and we are the ones ignoring Her prayers.

So by all means, my brothers and sisters, persevere in prayer. God is never deaf to our pleas, never absent from our lives. He always hears, and He will act, eternally if not in time. Yet let us remember that while we are praying to Him, so is God pursuing us. Still He comes in the night to struggle with us, to wrestle with us. Still He perseveres in His love for sinners, even when we have no fear of God and no respect for His people. Still He acts in ways both mundane and miraculous, moving so obviously and with such power that only people as blind as we have become could fail to see.

But most importantly, dear Christians, God promises to us that even now the day is breaking—and He will not let us go until we bless Him.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RDGStout/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsqiJiPAwfNS-nVhYeXkfOA

Twitter: https://x.com/RDGStout

St Peter’s Lutheran

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064841583987

Website: https://www.stpetersnymills.org/

Donation: https://secure.myvanco.com/L-Z9EG/home

Nidaros Lutheran

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100074108479275

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026