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Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 147
Reading 1 Ex 17:8-13
In those days, Amalek came and waged war against Israel.
Moses, therefore, said to Joshua,
“Pick out certain men,
and tomorrow go out and engage Amalek in battle.
I will be standing on top of the hill
with the staff of God in my hand.”
So Joshua did as Moses told him:
he engaged Amalek in battle
after Moses had climbed to the top of the hill with Aaron and Hur.
As long as Moses kept his hands raised up,
Israel had the better of the fight,
but when he let his hands rest,
Amalek had the better of the fight.
Moses’hands, however, grew tired;
so they put a rock in place for him to sit on.
Meanwhile Aaron and Hur supported his hands,
one on one side and one on the other,
so that his hands remained steady till sunset.
And Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people
with the edge of the sword.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 121:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
R. (cf. 2) Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
I lift up my eyes toward the mountains;
whence shall help come to me?
My help is from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
R. Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
May he not suffer your foot to slip;
may he slumber not who guards you:
indeed he neither slumbers nor sleeps,
the guardian of Israel.
R. Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
The LORD is your guardian; the LORD is your shade;
he is beside you at your right hand.
The sun shall not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
R. Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
The LORD will guard you from all evil;
he will guard your life.
The LORD will guard your coming and your going,
both now and forever.
R. Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
Reading 2 2 Tm 3:14-4:2
Beloved:
Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed,
because you know from whom you learned it,
and that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures,
which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation
through faith in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is inspired by God
and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction,
and for training in righteousness,
so that one who belongs to God may be competent,
equipped for every good work.
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus,
who will judge the living and the dead,
and by his appearing and his kingly power:
proclaim the word;
be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient;
convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching.
Alleluia Heb 4:12
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The word of God is living and effective,
discerning reflections and thoughts of the heart.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel Lk 18:1-8
Jesus told his disciples a parable
about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.
He said, “There was a judge in a certain town
who neither feared God nor respected any human being.
And a widow in that town used to come to him and say,
‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary.’
For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought,
‘While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being,
because this widow keeps bothering me
I shall deliver a just decision for her
lest she finally come and strike me.’”
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?”
It's not about prayer, and it's not telling us anything about god. This little moral tale is about being hungry. A modern parallel might speak of the various online petition systems, where you can launch an appeal or a protest and pick up 5,000 signatures in a day, 50,000 in a week, half a million if the cause is big enough, numbers that even politicians are forced to take notice of. With persistence we can even get laws changed.
Just wanting things to be better doesn't do much for the community, though it is a start. Really wanting is a hunger: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice... Some people have the practice of real fasting on special occasions, which gives them a feel for hunger. They know from experience what it's like to be really hungry, and how you would do anything to get the food you need.
"Justice" is what we need, "rightness" - truth and integrity and justice for those who have been wronged.
We've seen plenty of examples of people working their guts out for justice, particularly for victims of clergy sexual abuse, over the past decade or two. That hunger led to formal enquiries and a Royal Commission, and still the victims have not even had a fair hearing from the church, let alone just compensation. Still the cover up continues, and the Gospel tells us today we are not to grow weary. Be hungry. Be insistent. Be unrelenting.
"A widow in the town" - the poor unfortunate widow. Scarcely a week passes than we hear of another case of a widow, or even a whole family who have lost everything and the insurance company finds some cause not to pay out, or the bank finds reason to repossess the house and leave them on the street, literally. But is the modern "widow" symbolic of another disaster, god's favoured people suddenly bereft of effective leadership, lost, wandering in a desert, directionless. People flounder around in the shallows looking for what would revitalise the church. As if there were a formula, an adjustment of the structure, as if re-thinking the theology could change anything. As if human ingenuity is what's needed.
"But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” What do you mean by 'faith'? Is a longing for justice enough? Is a love for the Church enough? What about a readiness to jettison the baggage of two millenia and start building afresh?
I feel that 'faith' might be a willingness to trust in the power of the Spirit to enliven hearts and minds one by one, and in community to make love real for all those in need. The religious institution is such a distraction, and worse, it is such a trap. Every ounce of energy that goes into building up the institution is wasted energy, and with that waste some needy person was left in their need, some widow left without justice, some victim ignored and further victimised.
If you waited a thousand years you'd scarcely find a better time, or a fairer reason, to disband the institution in favour of caring for people, because so many in need of care are direct victims of the institution. Th writing on the wall would not be more clear.
But nothing will happen, so advocates must continue to pester relentlessly for fair and just compensation for lives ruined by abuse.
FAITH OR THEOLOGY
The Earth from Space was a documentary on SBS a few weeks ago and it provoked a question on the forum: Can God change the weather? and a call for a renewed theology framed within the scientific reality of our current understanding of the universe. As I was already questioning the readings for this day it brought to my attention the great divide there is between faith and theology, and the peril we encounter if we mix the two indiscriminately. Theology is NOT faith, nor is faith theology. I'm very happy to pray for rain when the crops need that timely boost, and for a clear sunny day when our family plans a rare outing together. It's not that I expect a miracle. It's actually an expression of my trust that all things are working out for the best, and part of the energy that is involved in this mighty complex is my wanting.
To pray is as natural as to want for something to work out well. The praying is a reaching out beyond my anxious concern that it might not work out well; it's a going beyond my little inner world where I am the centre point of the 'all'; it's an opening of my heart to be part of the great Complex. My wanting rain when the ground is dry is empathetic with the plants in the garden, their leaves drooping, their stems losing their sturdiness, their roots shrinking to economise while they wait.
But can my wanting actually bring on the rain? I daresay not, because as science clearly shows, the rain is one phase of a vast sequence of interactions. It makes more sense to choose plants for that suit a certain climate than to wish to change the climate to for the sake of unsuitable plants. Still I find it natural to want the rain to come, and that wanting is the heart of prayer. If I pray for something it's because I want it very badly.
WHY DIDN'T YOU ASK FOR HELP?
The question of prayer may not be a popular topic, but I think it is absolutely fundamental to a healthy self-awareness. Some seem to take pride in their ability to manage any challenge that may come their way. Others recognise that no one is self sufficient. We need each other. A mature person accepts their dependence, the fragility of existence, the support of their social environment.
In the context of religion, the issue is to acknowledge dependence on god, on a Supreme Being, or if you prefer, to acknowledge our dependence in being on Being itself as something greater than the individual human self.
Prayer has two sides: one is praise and gratitude, the other is respect, knowing our limitations, and trust in the goodness of Being.
THE PENNY DROPS
I don't think I have ever seen the point of this note about how even a poor widow might get a hearing if she pesters the authorities relentlessly. It seems to be saying that God is better than a corrupt civil servant, but then that seems pretty obvious. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with some story having an obvious message either, except that I feel the gospels were trimmed down and pruned over time until you can say that every line has meaning, every episode a message.
The penny dropped in the early hours this morning. What if it's not about praying with perseverance and repetition after all, but the very opposite. What if it's saying: Don't pester the Father with your petitions. Trust him.
The world turns upside down. Last week Bruce posted a story in the Sunday Readings thread about life in the '60s. I had been thinking back to those times too before I read about Jack and Max. My thought, more about the '50s, was that they were feverish times. There was a fever of building, making cars and fridges and roads and bridges, getting television and getting around as you never could before the war.Post-war reconstruction tuned into a fever of getting stuff.
The Church was caught up in the fever, opening new parishes, building new schools and churches, raising money, getting vocations by the dozen, Rosary Crusades, Eucharistic Processions, St Patrick's Day marches, and the Novena. The Novena takes the cake.
Six sessions a day in a busy city church, packed to the porches every time, petitions counted and thanksgiving letters read, hymns and colourful sermons, and feverish fervour tangible. One witty priest read a thank you for curing a migraine, followed by one for the healing of a sore foot, and quipped: See, Mary takes care of you from head to toe.
Then it palled through the '60s, and was over. The fever had subsided. Or perhaps it was redirected through Woodstock into the Peace Movement, Hippie Culture and the great Liberation. Vatican II and renewal in liturgy absorbed much of it, channelling the hunger along more serious paths. Prayer has changed, but has it yet been understood? Has The Renewal ever really touched the heart of prayer - what praying is about?
I think today's story might be telling us that prayer is not about relentless perseverance in petitioning. That does get results in the world. A hundred thousand signatures on a petition will move a government, millions might stop a war, lobbying is a craft in high demand. It's all old hat, for the Church has been pushing the petition line for centuries. Indulgences and 'saying mass' for the dead to get you out of purgatory brought on the Reformation. However the spiritual person lives in another mode altogether.