When peaceful stillness compassed everything and the
night in its swift course was half spent, Your all-powerful word, from heaven’s
royal throne bounded, a fierce warrior, into the doomed land, bearing the sharp
sword of your inexorable decree. And as
he alighted, he filled every place with death; he still reached to heaven,
while he stood upon the earth. Wisdom 18:14-16
The Lord said, “Pay attention to what the dishonest
judge says. Will not God then secure the
rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is
done for them speedily. But when the Son
of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Luke 18:6-8
Piety
Jesus, you came into this
world as an insignificant baby. You used
images of lepers and widows and children to show us how much you loved the
outcasts and sinners. Help us to reach
to heaven and welcome into our world the poor widow as you the kindly judge
would welcome her with love. Amen.
Study
Judge and Warrior. Two metaphorical images – communicating two
very different qualities about the Lord – but each complementing the other to
give us an image that helps us to understand what is happening and what will
happen.
Jesus knows that we don’t
totally “grok” some of his preaching so he provides some visual aids along the
way.
Grok is a word I came to know in high school when our class read Robert A.
Heinlein’s 1961 science-fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. Grok means to understand so thoroughly
that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry,
lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion,
philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling
assumptions) as color means to a blind man.
The Oxford English
Dictionary defines “to grok” as "to understand intuitively or
by empathy; to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or
communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment.”
Most of the time, we struggle
to grok the meaning of the Bible. We
read what it says literally and understand the words (even if we trip over the
pronunciation of some Middle Eastern names and places). We can look at what it meant in context to
the people of the time. The widow’s
mite. The widow and the just judge. The Prodigal Son. The lost sheep and coins.
We have to go one
level deeper and ask, “What does it matter?”
How is the Words today significant in our lives today? As Emmanuel, as Word Among Us, these are not just
stories on the dusty unopened pages of an ancient text.
Jesus often speaks in
parables so we can get to the level where we “grok” the meaning in our daily
lives. The image of the warrior standing
on earth with his sword reaching to the heavens gives us both the sense of the
Word connecting the earthly and the heavenly.
However, it also teaches us that the heavenly images are meant to
shatter our peaceful existence.
We get the knowledge Jesus
wants to impart by the description.
However, when we live the experience, then we can truly know (grok) what
Jesus means.
Because the Jewish people
were subject to both the repressive laws of the Pharisees and the order imposed
upon them from the Roman army, they knew injustice well. Dealing with corrupt judges was a daily fact
of life for the people. They wanted to
be delivered from this injustice so they hoped that the savior promised by God
would come in the image of a strong ruler or warrior to deliver them from the
evils of the world.
The Lord required the corrupt
judge to distance himself from what he wanted in order to dismiss the poor
widow. But she persisted. So, in order to get on in life, he granted
her wish, not out of love but out of selfishness. Jesus wants us to grok that God loves us so much
more that He will grant our prayers out of self-less-ness in order to have us
understand His ways and copy Him.
Be careful what you pray
for. You just might get it. God did deliver a warrior in the Word but his
sword separates us from all that we love and tries to bind us to all that God
loves. While people were waiting for a
savior to offer deliverance, instead they got a warrior who offered division:
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on
the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of
five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his
father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law.” Luke 12:51-53
Action
Imagine being the corrupt
judge. The Lord comes to us as the poor
widow. Will you grant her wish? Will you know that the poor widow is the Lord
coming into your life?
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