Teeth On Edge
Jeremiah 31:27-34; Luke 18:1-8


October 21, 2001

I really like the "how much mores...?" This is the rhetorical move Jesus and other Biblical writers like to take: if someone or something is able to accomplish in this world with little resources, how much more will God be able to accomplish that and much more?

If God clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you - you of little faith?

We know that people are capable of remarkable compassion and kindness, often in spite of their self-interest and crudeness. Lying deep within you and me even in our foulest moods is the faint image of God which bursts at unexpected moments into bright flame.

Again, Jesus' parable is not meant for polite society. Neither of the characters are pretty, which is similar to the battle for justice today in which both parties are dragged through the mud.

The widow insists upon justice and does not care for her public image. The situation may well have been that her deceased husband's family is attempting to cut her off from any inheritance because she is no longer technically part of the "family." This family was likely wealthy enough to bribe the judge, but the judge - an amoral cad at best - was more concerned in the end about his sanity than his wallet.

There is nothing holy about the widow's strategy, but it works.

If the scoundrel who doesn't believe in either God or people can be made to produce justice, it cannot be hard to imagine how much more God will respond with love and compassion to the cries of the suffering?

The parable ends with something of the same doubt as Jesus' grass of the field analogy in the Sermon on the Mount - will the Son of Man find faith on earth? You of little faith, will anyone recognize that it is God who is acting in the world? And let's turn the question around: does God have faith in us?

Jeremiah knew that finding faith among the abandoned children of Israel was a problem. Their faith had been warped and self-serving in the last days of their kingdom. But now, why have faith when nothing remains from your former life?

Everything had been plucked up and broken down, overthrown and destroyed in the words of the oracle of God proclaimed by Jeremiah when no one wanted to listen.

What would you expect? God had made a covenant with Israel and Israel had broken it time and again. Now they were paying for their sins and for the sins of their parents and grandparents; and their grandchildren would surely know the bitter taste of slavery.

That's the human way of thinking about things. The day is surely coming when all of this shall change. And faith shall change as well.

The roles are reversed from Jesus' parable. In a way, God is now the widow, looking for a response from God's people, but they resist and never look God in the face. The people have no morality, only a drive for self-preservation and self-aggrandizement. But God, like the injusticed widow, is persistent.

God tried writing it all down in a specific covenant, but human beings are geniuses at twisting the words to suit their needs. Writing it down simply justifies our agenda, our version of faith.

How much more loving is our God, who does not count the strikes against him, but desires freedom for his people? This time it will be written on our hearts, no text necessary. We won't even have to teach about God because, like breathing, it will be self-evident to every human being, even to a child.

God desires a living relationship, not a legal contract. In preparation for next Sunday, the celebration of the Protestant Reformation, this is the essence of the Protestant spirit. Not ritual, not canon law, but a relationship of faith in which one knows the other so intimately that words need not be spoken. And when words are uttered - a favorite activity of Protestants - it is not a routine word, a word recited by rote, but a word full of life and love.

How much more God loves us than a crooked judge or a disobedient people that God risks being among us and within us, intimately, personally, and unashamedly, no holds barred. God became more than the embodiment of written laws; God became a human being who lived and died and loved with us.

God has faith in us, and from that relationship we have begun a new covenant already.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan