The Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Direct references to organized sport are few and far between in the Bible. On the morning after the trauma of England’s defeat it is difficult for the preacher who wishes to mark the occasion appropriately to derive either inspiration or authority from the pages of Holy Scripture. Or so you might think. As you know, I enjoy a challenge.

The exhausted players and the commiserating supporters might in fact find painful echoes of their recent experience in not one but two passages from this morning’s readings. That from the Old Testament features one of the most famous wrestling matches in history: Jacob’s epic struggle by the Jabbok. This clash of the titans might serve as a metaphor for yesterday’s heroic efforts, but it’s the story’s ending, which has the victor limping past Penuel rubbing his dislocated hip that will bring a rueful smile to the face of rugby fans everywhere.

The Gospel, on the other hand, seems at first a much less promising seam for us to quarry, concentrating as it does upon a dry legal dispute, many miles away from the Stade de France. Pay attention to the language, though, and the kaleidoscope of interpretation shifts. When the unjust judge utters his frustrated cry ‘because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her’ he actually uses the language of the boxing ring rather than the language of the law-court. Translated strictly the judge exclaims ‘because this widow keeps blacking my eye, I will vindicate her’. I’ll wager there were a few black eyes on the Eurostar last night.

Perhaps I have just established that with a little ingenuity Scripture can be made to say whatever its reader would like it to say. Yet Paul insists to Timothy that it is all inspired by God and therefore profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training. What are we to make of his stricture, when a text is so obviously open to exploitation and abuse?

I don’t believe it will do simply to abandon the stricture, and with it the texts to which Paul applies it. As catholic Christians we revere the written word of God, the Bible, as we revere the living Word of God, Jesus Christ. The twin foci of the liturgy are the proclamation of the Gospel from among you and the sharing of the sacrament among you. In the Eucharist we expect to meet the living Word in broken bread and wine outpoured, but we expect to do so only after we have met him in the written word, broken and shared just as the Eucharistic bread will be broken and shared.

Scripture cannot be set aside and replaced by our habits and convictions. But if we are to read it well then we need to recall that its reading is primarily a communal activity. It is not something that we do alone. The writings that we regard as holy were created in an era when literacy was limited. Paul’s letters were written to be read aloud when Christians gathered to worship in Corinth, or Rome, or Thessaly. The Gospels were anthologies, collections of sayings and stories of Jesus that were remembered and retold when Christians met. None of them were originally designed for private study, for an individual to pore over in the hope that God’s meaning might thereby be revealed to him or her. And although one of the great achievements of the various Reformations was to make Scripture accessible for exactly that kind of study we need always to be cautious when engaging in it, using a commentary, or notes, or the fellowship of a reading group: anything that links our individual reading into the corporate reading of the Church.

Secondly, it is to be read as a whole. There is a huge danger in doing what I did when I began: in other words, of hiving off little bits here and there and inflating their importance. This is proof-texting. It means our approaching the Bible with a fixed idea and looking for something that will back the idea up. That may be an honest and proper use for the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, but in relation to Scripture it is neither honest not proper, however benign our intentions. In the parable we’ve heard this morning Jesus apparently speaks approvingly of an unjust judge, and even draws a parallel between him and God. I suppose it could be turned into a story that is supportive of corrupt and venal officers of the law. It has to be read alongside the overwhelming testimony of the Bible to God’s identification with the causes of justice and truth.

And thirdly it is to be read – and then read again, and again, and again. ‘When the Son of Man comes’ asks Jesus ‘will he find faith on earth?’ Yet the image of faith that today’s readings creates is very distinct. There is the faith of Jacob, who clings to God throughout the livelong night, Jacob who will not let God go so convinced is he that his unknown assailant is the one who has authority to bless him. There is the faith of Paul, who urges young Timothy to be unfailing in his patience and to teach and preach with urgency both in and out of season. And there is the faith of the widow, who returns to the judge day in, day out, clamouring for her rights and refusing to fall silent when they are denied her.

Faith, in other words, does not look neat and tidy. If it were meant to be so then perhaps God would not have sent us his Son at all; perhaps he would have sent us a tract containing a few lines of neat instruction, rather a young man to whom the startling language and unimaginable stories, the mystery and the glory of the holy book around which we gather bear witness.

Faith is a journey, an unfolding relationship. Faith can be hard work. Perhaps the God in whom we have faith knows us rather better than we do ourselves.

Sunday 21 October 2007,
Genesis 32: 22-31;
2 Timothy 3: 14-4:5;
Luke 18: 1-8