Tipping the Scales

However low you go, or however you go low, God will raise you up.

Proper 25c 2013 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
O Lord, have you completely rejected Judah? Does your heart loathe Zion? Why have you struck us down so that there is no healing for us?

Today we conclude our series of readings from the letters of Paul to Timothy. As we’ve seen over the last few weeks, Paul has been encouraging Timothy in the struggles that he faces with and among the congregation over whom he has charge. People have been caught up in controversies about the interpretation of Scripture, indulging in false teaching, and wandering away into myths. People have been casting doubt on Timothy’s authority, in part due to his relative youth, but also in rebellion against the very gospel message that he delivers. And at every stage at which people have sought to cut Timothy down, Paul has encouraged him to remain strong and to fight the good fight with all his might, to proclaim the gospel fearlessly, and in the knowledge that God’s power is with him.

Now Paul himself, it seems from the passage we read today, is about ready to retire from the combat. As he says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Using once more the analogy of a footrace, he portrays Jesus as the scorekeeper and judge who will give him his crown at the end of the race — the race he has run so faithfully.

But not before Paul will have what the English call a bit of a good moan first — you know what that’s about! Sometimes you just feel better when you let it all out and complain for a bit — not to make a habit of it, but just to let off a little steam of frustration. Contrasting the heavenly grace he expects with the earthly problems he has encountered, all the things he has been running through, Paul complains that everyone has deserted him and no one has supported him — except the Lord himself. In fact, Paul is using how low he has been to show just how powerful God is — who can lift up one who has been abandoned and betrayed. The message Paul shares here with Timothy, based on his own experience, is, No matter how low you have fallen in your own confidence, no matter how much you have been cut down by adversaries or problems, God will raise you up.

+ + +

Today’s gospel presents us with a different kind of up and down — but ends with a similar message. Jesus portrays two people: a proud and self-righteous Pharisee and a humble and penitent tax collector. I almost picture them standing on a seesaw or teeter-totter: the Pharisee high and lifted up, and the tax collector down in the dumps. For it seems that the very reason for the Pharisee to be so high is because he is so pumped up and proud of himself, because he sees himself in relation to others, whom he regards as sinners worse than he. It is the weight of the sin of those on the other side of the scale that gives that Pharisee his boost, his exaltation, his pride. He has no consciousness of sin in himself, and he plays that off against those whom he regards as “obvious” sinners — thieves and adulterers — or even like this tax collector here.

But enough about him — as I can imagine he learned better when he finally did face the Almighty judge at the end. (And let’s hope he was ashamed of himself and at the last accepted God’s forgiveness!) I would rather focus on that tax collector down there.

Jesus portrays him as being low in comparison to the Pharisee being high. If you picture that seesaw I mentioned there is no doubt that the tax collector is on the heavy end of the scale. We do not know what his sins are — unlike the Pharisee who declares what his sins aren’t and catalogs a few of the things that he imagines make him virtuous, the tax collector does not enumerate his sins — he merely repents. He beats his breast in that ancient act that forces home to me that it is I who am at fault: (for when I beat my breast I am forcibly reminded of my own physical reality and presence! And maybe we all need a little of that spiritual CPR, now and again, to remind us of where we are, and help us rediscover the true meaning of our lives.)

Jesus promises that this man, this man on the low side of the scale, who has humbled himself will return home exalted and justified. And so the message here is that it is by lowering yourself that God will raise you up. As a proverb (3:34) quoted by both James (4:6) and Peter (1P 5:5) puts it, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Or, as someone with even greater authority, Mary the mother of Jesus, put it: “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the humble and meek.”

+ + +

So the clear message appears to be consistent through all these readings: whether you have been brought low by others, have fallen low in your own estimation and disappointment, or humbled yourself in the knowledge of your sins — however you came to be low, or however low you came to be, God will raise you up. Let the teeter totter as it may, and swing us down even so low that we can feel the warmth of hell-fire toasting our feet — even then God can and will bring us up again, so long as we turn towards the one from whom our help and rescue comes. Even if we don’t look God’s way with our eyes — for recall that the penitent tax collector was so cast down he dare not even raise his eyes to heaven — even if we don’t look God’s way with our eyes, if that is towards God that our hearts are turned, God, who after all looks into our hearts and knows us better than we know ourselves, will also know that we have turned our hearts towards him, and God will raise us up from where we have been cast down, or fallen, or lowered ourselves.

God is not like that famous statue of Justice — the one who holds the scales but wears a blindfold, blind to the relative weight of sin or innocence, and simply allowing the scale to tip as it may. God is also not like the Egyptian god Thoth, who weighs the heart of the dead against the feather of innocence, and condemns all of those whose hearts tip the scale towards guilt.

No, my friends — and it is a good thing for us — God is neither blind like Justice nor a mere secretary like Thoth recording the result shown by the scale. No, my friends, the good news for us is that God tips the scales in our behalf, for the mercy of God is greater than the justice of God, and although God is just, the heart of God is love and mercy and forgiveness.

When God sees we are cast down by the assaults of others, God will raise us up. When God sees that we have abased ourselves in our own eyes, discouraged or despondent, God puts a powerful arm around us and raises us up. And when we are sunk low in the depths of the knowledge of our own faults and failings, God pushes that lightweight Pharisee from the other end of the seesaw and presses it down with a strong arm and a mighty hand — and O my friends, are we in for a ride!+

---

Memory of Persistence

Keeping on keeping on, urged towards justice and blessing...

Proper 24c 2013 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.

In keeping with the theme for the readings today, we persist in hearing from the letters of Paul to his disciple Timothy. Today we hear Paul urging Timothy on, like the coaches who accompanied Diana Nyad on her swim from Cuba to Florida. Look at all the encouragement Paul pours out: “Continue in what you have learned… I solemnly urge you… be persistent… endure… do the work… carry out your ministry fully.”

As with most of Paul’s letters, we only have one side of the conversation. That is, we have no copies of the Letters of Saint Timothy to Paul. But common sense tells us that Paul does not write a letter such as this — full of the voice of a coach offering encouragement — if Paul has not heard, either from Timothy himself or perhaps from some other messenger, that there is something about which Timothy is discouraged.

We don’t have to look very far to find indications of what is causing Timothy’s discouragement. People are challenging his teaching — which involves passing along the gospel that Paul has passed along to him. As we saw in last week’s passage, people are “wrangling over words,” that is, perhaps arguing over different interpretations of Scripture.

In a verse we don’t hear between last week’s portion and this week’s, Paul complains that some people are giving in to“profane chatter” as he calls it, that will “spread like gangrene” because some — and Paul is not afraid to name names — “some have swerved from the truth by claiming that the resurrection has already taken place.” Paul denounces these people as frauds who are just trying to take advantage of people and make themselves rich.

In today’s passage he alludes to those who have “itching ears,” who choose teachers to their own liking instead of listening to the truth, putting their faith in myths rather than in the sound teaching that Timothy is trying to offer them.

In the midst of all this trouble — and doesn’t it sound familiar, even in our own day? — Paul urges Timothy to press on, to keep the faith and to spread it. Four times in this relatively short correspondence, he uses the phrase, “The saying is sure” to introduce some fundamental doctrine to which he urges Timothy to hang on as he would to a life preserver in a flood. The message to Timothy is persistence.

+ + +

Our other readings today reinforce this theme of persisting, holding fast, and not giving up. The story of Jacob’s wrestling match with God takes the image of holding fast literally. The amazing thing is that, not only does Jacob wrestle with God — or God’s messenger — but that he gets his adversary to cry uncle! Jacob simply will not let go until he gets that blessing, and so he receives the blessing; he becomes a father of nations, and he gains a new name, Israel — which means “he who contends with God,” whose face he sees, and yet lives — even though he is left out-of-joint and limping.

+ + +

The gospel today shows a different kind of persistence, in the parable of the widow and the unjust judge. Whenever I hear this parable I can’t help but think of those women who for many years stood in the public squares in Argentina, El Salvador, Chile, and Guatemala — all of them holding up photographs and posters with the images and names of Los Desaparecidos — the “disappeared ones” — their brothers, sons, husbands and fathers abducted by political authorities with no more care for justice than the unjust judge in today’s parable. They persisted, in a testimony to their faith that justice will eventually prevail, and that right will triumph in the end. Sadly, some of them are still waiting.

In the parable, however, we aren’t given the details of what the widow’s complaint is, only that she has an opponent, and the judge — who has no fear of God or respect for people — is not rendering a decision. Perhaps he is looking for a bribe, perhaps he just doesn’t care enough to take up her case, or perhaps — in spite of his not having respect for people — he doesn’t want to cross whoever her unnamed opponent is. Whatever the reason, justice is delayed — and as the old saying goes “justice delayed is justice denied.” Finally, though, in this case, we hear the end of the story, and the persistent widow wears the unjust judge down.

+ + +

Jesus then gives us a moral to this parable, as he spells it out, and it is an example of a teaching technique that the rabbis called “light and heavy” — a teaching device very common among the rabbis, and used a number of times by the Rabbi Jesus. We heard an example of it some weeks ago when Jesus confronted those who were upset with him for healing that woman on the Sabbath: and he confronted them by saying, if you will rescue an animal on the Sabbath how much more a human being.

This teaching technique of light and heavy was very popular with the rabbis, and Jesus uses it again and again; even in perhaps his last teaching. Even on the road to Calvary, as he carried his cross to his crucifixion, when he met the women weeping for him, he ended by saying, “If they do this when the wood is green, what will they do when it is dry.” Light and heavy — simple and hard.

So too here the “light” is the unjust judge and the “heavy” is the just God. If even an unjust earthly judge will eventually give in and do justice for those who appeal to him, how much more will the just God hear and respond to his people when they cry out to him for justice. Light and heavy.

As with Paul’s encouragement to Timothy, this is Jesus’ encouragement to the disciples, “about their need to pray always and not to lose heart” — if an unjust human will finally do justice, will not the just God ultimately do justice as well — and far more powerfully, with far more weight?

And as with all of Jesus’ teaching, this is directed to the church to which Paul ministered and Timothy ministered — and to which all of us minister in the church today, for we are his disciples. I don’t just mean the ordained ministers but each and every one of you, as each of you has some ministry, some service in the gospel to the spread God’s gospel on earth, to let all hear of the kingdom and its coming. We are, all of us, called to persevere and persist in our work and in our prayer.

As I said a few moments ago, when I was listing some of the problems that Timothy had to face: some things haven’t changed since the first century. There are still people who will get deeply into arguments about words, using the Scripture not as a medicine for the soul but as a weapon to bash other people over the head. There are some who engage in profane chatter and spread false doctrines or their own half-baked ideas instead of relying on the wholesome gospel truth of Christ and his saving life and death, and life again. There are some who prefer myths and fantasy to the tested and assured doctrines of salvation, or who have itching ears and seek out teachers who will tell them what they want to hear, instead of challenging them with the demands that Christ places upon us. And there are some who are willing to be such teachers, willing to give people what they want to hear, and make a fine living out of it, creating personal cults with devoted followers — and we’ve seen the tragic results of such things in places like Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate.

I’m tempted almost to cite our Lord’s pessimistic — it seems — closing comment, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Will he? Will he find it hear among us? Everywhere the church seems to be in decline; it is so much less a part people’s lives today than it was even thirty years ago, even twenty years ago; while the “new age spirituality” section at Barnes & Noble takes up several shelves — and anyone with itching ears for salvation through crystals, or yoga, or transcendental meditation can find plenty to occupy their time — and fill the pockets of those who are ready to provide such spiritual junk food.

But, to quote Saint Paul, “as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed.” For we have studied the Scripture together, persistently examining it and exploring it for all of the benefits that can be found in it: a light to our feet upon the way. We have recognized that the inspired Scripture is useful — this is no fantasy game! We are called and challenged, my brothers and sisters, to persevere in these disciplines of prayer and devotion and work, ministers of God as much as Paul and Timothy, each of us equipped with varying skills and differing talents, all of which can be used to the service of God and to spread God’s kingdom. Only let us persevere, and blessing and justice will be ours at last.+

---

Bondage and Freedom

Constraint comes in many forms... some prevents, some serves the gospel.

SJF • Proper 23c • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendent of David — that is my gospel, for which I suffer, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained.

In our Scripture readings today we hear of three different kinds of bondage, and also of the paradoxical freedom that transcends bondage in each case.

The situation in which Saint Paul found himself involved bondage in its most literal sense. As he wrote to his young disciple Timothy, he was bound in iron chains, kept under house arrest and unable to move from the inexorable path towards judgment before the imperial tribunal and death by execution — though he would move soon enough.

The Scriptural record of the early church, much of it from Paul’s own hand, cuts off before we reach the end of his story. To hear what happens after the end of Luke’s record in Acts of the Apostles, we must rely on other early historians of the church. They tell us of Paul’s execution in Rome in the days of the Emperor Nero.

But regardless of Paul’s ultimate end, here in this letter to his young disciple Timothy as we have been hearing over the last weeks — here he writes of his imprisonment, the indignity of being chained up like a common criminal. But he uses his situation as an opportunity to contrast the human condition of bondage with the divine freedom of truth. He may be in chains, but the gospel is not chained.

Ironically, Paul’s arrest and imprisonment not only did not stop the gospel from spreading, but actually helped the gospel to spread. This is part of the great paradox of his suffering. For as Paul was ferried from port to port on his journey to Rome, at each stop along the way he preached and shared fellowship with Christians in each place. And later in Rome at last he was given opportunity to witness to the power of the gospel, and make his testimony even in the court of the emperor. There he ultimately achieved the crown of martyrdom, executed by the earthly power of humans, but bearing witness to the heavenly power of God, trusting in those words he wrote to Timothy — “The saying is sure: if we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him.”

There is an incident much later in Christian missionary history that bears witness to this truth as well. A group of Europeans in 19th-century Burma were captured by a warlord and placed in prison. Among them was a Christian missionary. The prisoners were hung by chains in a dank prison. One of the other prisoners, a colonial trader, jeered at the missionary, saying, “What do you think your chances are now of converting the heathen!” The missionary answered, “They are just as bright as ever they were, for the light of the Gospel is not quenched — even here.”

My friends, even in the place of bondage, the Christian is free. Think for a moment of the letters that Christians have written from prison: from the time of Paul, writing to Timothy; from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from a Nazi prison, facing his own execution, awaiting his death; of the letter from Birmingham Jail, from Martin Luther King — yes, the man may be bound, but his gospel is not bound; it goes forth. And those letters are read to this day, while those who imprisoned those men are long gone and forgotten. Another Martin, for whom Martin Luther King was named, Martin Luther, stated it well in his great hymn: “The body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still; his kingdom is forever.” The bondage of restraint cannot stand against the power of God.

+ + +

Our gospel reading today tells of a different kind of bondage: a bondage not from without but from within. It is true that the lepers whom Jesus heals are freed from the bondage to disease that has kept them cut off from the rest of human society. But the bondage I want to note today in their case is not that external bondage, but rather the inner compulsion that leads one of them, one out of the ten, the Samaritan, to turn back to Jesus, to thank him for healing him. Here we are not dealing with the iron chain of imprisonment, but rather the elastic band of conscience. You know how that works. When you know that you ought to do something that you haven’t done, and that the longer you wait, and the further you get from the thing your conscience is calling you to, the stronger the pull becomes — the elastic band gets harder to pull the further it goes.

With every step that the healed Samaritan takes away from Jesus, the stronger he feels the pull grow, the pull of the need to give thanks. Finally the pull becomes so strong that he snaps right back to the feet of Jesus and falls there, offering his thanks!

The English writer Dorothy L Sayers once observed that “The divine scheme of things... is at once extremely elastic and extremely rigid. It is elastic, in that it includes a large measure of liberty for the creature; it is rigid in that... however created beings choose to behave, they must accept responsibility for their actions and endure the consequences.” This bondage of the conscience — this responsibility for ones own actions — becomes more binding the more you stretch it. The more freely you move, the stronger will be the pull.

And as we see in the story of the healed Samaritan, this is not a negative bondage — this is not a bad thing. In this case it is the bondage of gratitude: when you know you need to give thanks for something, because as even the casual expression puts it, you owe someone thanks. And it is no accident (I remind us in this stewardship season and on this day of the harvest) that it is exactly a tithe — one tenth — of the healed lepers who turns back: one out of ten, one tenth — a tithe.

This reminds us of our own call to give thanks by returning a portion of the abundance with which we have been blessed back to God — to God’s church, for the work of the church, the work of the spread of that ministry here and now — even to realize that somehow we owe God this portion of what we have received — and how some struggle, and how tautly pulled is that particular elastic in some cases! But when we return in faith and thanksgiving to the one to whom we owe that debt of gratitude, we feel the relief of knowing we have done as God wants us to do. Responding to the bondage of duty leads us to the true freedom of thanksgiving.

+ + +

The third form of bondage in our scripture readings today appears in that story of Naaman the Syrian. He too suffers from leprosy, but what seems to hold him in bondage, isn’t the disease himself; it seems to be more his pride — both his personal and his national pride. When the messenger from the prophet asks him to do a simple thing to free himself from the bondage of leprosy, to dip himself in the River Jordan, his personal and national pride stand in the way. He doesn’t want a messenger — he wants the prophet himself! He doesn’t want a to be told just to take a dip in the river, he wants a ritual; he wants a ceremony; after all, he is an important person! He deserves it! And he protests that the rivers of his homeland are better than all the waters of Israel. It takes the wise words of his servants to put him back on the right track: if you’d been asked something hard you would have done it; why not do what is simple? This wise counsel finally frees him from his bondage of pride and nationalism — and he takes those dips in the river, and he is healed of his disease, with his skin like that of a child.

Three forms of bondage — two negative and one positive — are set before us today. May we too, my dear sisters and brothers in Christ, when constrained by bondage beyond our control find the freedom of the Gospel; when healed of our ills give generously in response to the bondage of gratitude; and when challenged to do what is simple, released from the bondage of pride, and trust that God knows best what to ask of each and every one of us, and that God will be true in imparting gracious blessings, when we do as we are bid.+

---