Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 16, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Keep on holding up that staff!
As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel had the better of the fight. Moses’ hands, however, grew tired.
Moses is exhausted! God gave him instructions, and he cannot continue to carry them out. The staff of God gets heavy after awhile. Holding it up for … how long? Hours and hours. A hasty mid-battle meeting was called. Amalek’s forces were coming back strong.
So they put a rock in place for him to sit on, while Aaron his brother and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other, so that his hands remained steady until sunset. And Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.
A couple weekends ago we played Kid Cranium with Andi, Aki, and Miles. Miles was called on to draw a bird, using Margaret’s hand. She held the pencil tightly in her fingers, and Miles took the pencil and drew the bird. It worked. We recognized the bird and named it. In a less lethal sense but no less competitive, Miles and Margaret “mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the (pencil).”
Today’s texts call us to perseverance. Moses and Aaron held fast, and Amalek was defeated. Paul adjures Timothy to stick it out through everything, and remain faithful to what he has learned.
Proclaim the word, and be persistent, whether it is convenient or inconvenient. Convince, reprimand, and encourage through all patience and teaching.
Hold up that staff!
Today’s gospel continues the lesson.
Jesus told a parable about the necessity for us to pray always without becoming weary.
A widow kept bothering a ruthless, unjust judge. The judge grew tired of her ranting. Every day she came around and hollered at him. He might not have been just, but he was human.
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 eventually come and strike me.
Stick with it. Won’t God do the same as the unjust judge? And more?
Will not God secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them?
In his own book, James said that when we make requests of God we must “believe and not doubt.” Doubt drives up the waves of the sea, and we are “blown and tossed by the wind.” In this double-minded confusion, “I should not expect anything from the Lord.” Rather than confidence, fear flows down my cheeks and onto my chest unchecked.
But Jesus knows that is mostly the nature of things. He asks a plaintive, perhaps rhetorical question.
But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?
Thomas Merton says, convincingly, “You cannot have faith without doubt.” And when that doubt is overcome, my faith is stronger than ever. Until my next moment of doubt, that is, when once again a battleground meeting is held, and my friends hold up my arms, and God’s staff strengthens the soldiers, and the enemy is driven back, defeated and destroyed.
Until the next time … and so it goes, until at last strength follows on strength, and our ripened seed falls onto the ground as we die.
(Exodus 17, Psalm 121, 2 Timothy 3, Hebrews 4, Luke 18)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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