Sermon for 16 October 2022
University Lutheran Church,
Cambridge
The Rev. Carrie Ballenger
Genesis 32:22-31; Luke18:1-8
Let the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight O Lord, my strength
and my redeemer. Amen.
One afternoon at Jerusalem’s
Notre Dame hotel café I noticed a man at the next table giving me an odd look. Between
sips of coffee, he kept glancing over at my table, and while that may have felt
a bit creepy, I brushed it off because it was almost a sport for folks to stare
at a woman dressed as a priest in the Holy City.
But when I returned home
later, I saw I had a new text message. It was from that man who had been eyeing
me at the café. His name was Michael and he had found me, he said, through just
one mutual social media friend. His message said something like, “Please excuse
this unexpected message—and I promise I’m not a creep.” (Well, that always settles
it, I though! If you say it, it must be true!)
In any case, I agreed to meet
Michael for lunch at a familiar public place (in case he really was a creep). I’m
so glad I did.
Over salads and wine, I
learned Michael Bernard Kelly was an Australian of Irish Catholic descent. He had
written several books on spirituality and was in Jerusalem to participate in a
theological seminar. I learned he was a deeply faithful Christian, and that he
was very, very gay.
Michael told me of joining
the Franciscans after high school, and then of moving to the US to teach religion
at a Catholic school in California. He had been in the closet at the time,
knowing that if he came out as gay he could have lost his job, which he dearly loved.
He told me how he and a small group of friends arranged anonymous supper clubs,
where men who could not be publicly out could meet for a meal and friendly support
from other gay men, trusting they would not be known or outed by anyone present.
When Michael eventually came
out in 1993, he lost his job at the Catholic school. He left the US to return
to Australia, but he never left the church. In fact, he became part of a
revolution from within the church. Michael and a few others founded what became
known as the “Rainbow Sash” movement. Large groups of gay Catholics (and often
their families) would show up for Sunday mass in churches where gay people were
routinely denied the sacraments. When it was time for communion, they would all
put colorful rainbow sashes across their shoulders, resembling a priest’s stole.
As they approached the altar to receive the bread and the wine, they would
nearly always be refused. So, when they returned to their pews, unfed,
they would remain standing while the other worshippers—who had all been fed—were
kneeling in prayer.
These simple acts of
nonviolent religious resistance continued for years and gained much notoriety
in Australia. It became an international movement within the Catholic church in
2000, with Michael Bernard Kelly as its spokesperson. Once I asked him, “But
why, Michael? Why would you stay and wrestle with the Catholic church, after
all that they put you and others through?” And he answered me: “Well, God
wouldn’t let me go. And I couldn’t let the church go.”
My friend Michael’s story
has been on my mind and heart this week as we celebrated National Coming Out
Day on Tuesday, but also as I have been contemplating this day’s appointed Scripture
texts. Our first reading from the 32nd chapter of Genesis is the
story of Jacob, who wrestled with God—or an angel, or himself, depending on who
you ask.
The story goes like this:
Jacob—who had tricked his
twin brother Esau out of his birthright and their father’s blessing and was
therefore fleeing from Canaan—sent his wives and children and everything he
owned across the ford at the Jabbok. Jacob is alone and stripped of everything
dear to him, when suddenly a man appears out of the darkness and “wrestles with
him until daybreak”. Jacob puts up a good fight and seems to prevail against
the stranger, but then the man reaches out and touches his hip, knocking it out
of its socket. In an instant, Jacob is helpless and in pain. Even in his pain,
he says to the figure with whom he had fought, “I will not let you go until you
bless me.”
After he is blessed, his opponent
changes Jacob’sto Israel, which means “the one who wrestles with God.” Jacob then
does a bit of his own naming, calling the place where this encounter happened
“Peniel” which means “Face of God”, because Jacob said, “for I have seen God
face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”
Please note that Jacob survived
his encounter with the unnamed figure, but he was never the same. Scripture
tells us he limped way because of that out-of-joint hip. Quite literally, the
way Jacob walked in the world was never again the same.
How many of you know what
it’s like to live through something that changes you forever? Whether it’s becoming
a parent, or dealing with cancer, or going through divorce, or battling
depression, or leaving home, or losing a loved one, we never come out the other
side the same. In fact, we may wonder if others can see how the way we walk and
talk and move is different now, no matter how hard we try to hide it. Like
Jacob, when we see the face of God, when we encounter our innermost selves,
when we have by choice or by circumstance grappled with the deepest questions
of existence or identity or eternity…we will always carry that experience in
our bodies and on our person.
The great spiritual writer
Elie Wiesel had this to say about Jacob’s encounter with the unnamed one:
“Jacob has just understood
a fundamental truth: God is in man, even in suffering, even in misfortune, even
in evil. God is everywhere. In every being. God does not wait for man at the
end of the road, the termination of exile; He accompanies him there. More than
that: He is the road. He is the exile. God holds both ends of the
rope. He is present in every extremity. He is every limit. He is part of Jacob
as He is part of Esau.”
Friends, so many of us are encouraged
to pray and learn and study and go on retreats and embark on pilgrimages or
approach cancer as a spiritual test because we are told this is the way to find
God. In other words, we are told to approach hardship or struggle as a means to
an end, and that end is having an answer, or having closure, or knowing ourselves,
or discovering a God who is somehow leading us on a never-ending hide-and-seek
quest.
But Wiesel proposes that
God is not at the end of the journey. He says no: God is the road. God is
the exile. God is both at the beginning and at the end of the rope—perhaps especially
when we are at the end of our rope.
What this means to me is
that when I am struggling, wrestling, wondering, worrying—like Jacob, who had
lost everything and felt all alone at the water’s edge—I am not actually alone.
God is with me in the struggle. Dear people, God is in the mud with us, on our
worst days, even when we are our worst selves. Furthermore, God stays, and wrestles
alongside us. God stays through the night. God stays with Jacob, and with us, until
daybreak. And when we walk away, when we rest in ourselves, when we open the closet
door and walk through, we are never the same. Thanks be to God, we are never
the same.
Now, come with me as we pivot
to the Gospel lesson for this day. Remember that we heard Jesus speaking to the
disciples during their time of struggle. The 18th chapter of the
Gospel according to John begins with these words:
“Then Jesus told them a
parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”
Jesus had just been
teaching his followers about the end of the world, and of the trials to come,
and how they needed to be strong and brave and to follow obediently. And the
disciples assessed the situation and apparently were thinking: “Really, Jesus?
Why? Why should we follow? If the end is near, what are we even doing here?
What does it matter?”
So Jesus tells them a story
about an unjust judge who grants a persistent widow’s request mostly because he
was tired of hearing her complaints.
Therefore, says Jesus, you
should pray and not lose heart.
Once I was at a
Christian bookstore in Chicago, and I saw a hat that bore large red letters spelling P U S
H. Underneath were tinier letters that showed these stood for “Pray Until Something
Happens”. Is this the kind of God Jesus was talking about in his parable? Do we
serve a God who needs us to flood heaven with prayers, and if our prayers gets
enough “likes” then God will grant our wishes?
I think not. Rather, it
seems Jesus’ parable is meant to illustrate that if even an unjust judge will respond
to persistence, then how much greater is the response of the God of all things,
the one who created the world out of love! How much greater is the God who came
among us as a little child, and walks with us in our struggles, all the way to
the cross! The God we serve is not a puzzle to be solved or a prize to be won
or an unjust judge to be convinced. God, as Elie Wiesel reminds us, is at both
ends of the rope. God is with us at the water’s edge. God is already, right
now, hearing our prayers and responding.
As one who once struggled
and wrestled with both God and the church in my own coming out, I hear in these
words the possibility that God is not only on the other side of the closet. God
is also in the closet. Maybe, as Wiesel hints, God is the closet, and if we
must be there for any reason, if we must stay safe for any length of time, then
the walls of that closet are God’s loving arms, holding us until it’s time.
And Jesus says: Therefore,
pray. And do not lose heart.
Do not give up the
fight. Do not lose your courage. Do not give up on kindness.
Keep
wrestling: with those pesky cancer cells, with the lies your depression tells
you, with your own personal demons, with the powers and principalities that
seek to define who you are, or who the church is, or who God is. Keep agitating
for a better world for all. As I once saw spray-painted on the separation wall between
Bethlehem and Jerusalem: Remain human.
Just before
the COVID, in January of 2020, my friend Michael was diagnosed with an advanced
and fast-moving colon cancer. While the world was shutting down because of the
pandemic, Michael hunkered down in a friend’s cabin by the sea and started on
some experimental drugs. He kept close friends updated through occasional
emails. One of the last emails I received from Michael before he died said
this:
“So, life continues on in its amazing, unpredictable, painful
and graced way. I seek to be present and open, without resistance or
lamentation - but then again I am only human. The last mass I attended in New
York was in St Patrick’s Cathedral. It was the feast of the Baptism of Jesus.
The priest reflected that there, in the Jordan Valley just north of the Dead
Sea, Jesus was standing at the lowest point above sea level. He then entered
the waters and went lower still, entering the utter depths of human experience.
I have always loved this feast for this reason - Jesus fully and vulnerably
enters into every aspect of our human condition. In my own way, I seek to walk
with him.”
To the end, my
unexpected friend Michael never gave up on God. He never gave up on the church
he loved, either. He never lost heart.
Dear ones, if you are
wrestling with God today,
Or wrestling
with life, or grief, or worry,
Hear again
the Good News:
Through
Jesus, crucified and risen, we have come to know the goodness of God,
The One who
created us in all our diverse beauty
The One who
stays with us
And wrestles
alongside us
Through our
struggles
Through our
doubts
Through the
night
Until daybreak.
Until we
are out.
Until we
are free.
Dear ones: If you can’t pray today, I will pray for you.
I will pray with you.
And together,
we will not lose heart.
Let the peace
of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
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