RECORDED SERVICE

Luke 18:1-8

18 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4 For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

On Tuesday, when I came up with a sermon title for the bulletin, I hate to admit to you, I didn’t really know what direction this sermon was going to take.  So, I reread the text from Luke’s gospel and thought about that widow.  She’s a pesky thing, isn’t she?  The widow keeps coming and coming and coming to the judge.  I imagine her like a mosquito buzzing in my ear, or the kitchen timer—does yours do this?—that beeps to let you know when the time is up and then every 5 seconds or so beeps again and again until you’ve shut it off.  Or the young child who desperately wants the attention of her dad who is talking to another adult.  So the child pulls on his shirt sleeve and says, “Dad, dad, dad, dad.” 

Just like the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, we finally stop what we’re doing and address what is nagging us.  We swat the mosquito, we get up from the tv to shut off the timer, we excuse ourselves from adult conversation to respond to our children. The judge grants justice to this persistent widow. 

That’s pretty straightforward, right?  Finally a parable that’s clear!  Jesus tells the disciples a parable about how to pray: we are to be persistent in prayer, just like the widow was persistent in coming to the judge.  And God, who is loving and just, will answer more quickly than the unjust judge.  Moral of the story-- be the squeaky wheel!  Great!  If we hurry through the last two hymns we can get on to the birthday cake waiting for us in the fellowship hall! 

As much as I might like to preach a short sermon (and as much as you might like to hear one!) I have to tell you, this parable got much richer for me over the week.  It’s not as straightforward as I imagined. 

Listen again to the story:

18 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4 For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

First of all, what about these characters?  Widows, we know, are common symbols in the scriptures of the poor and powerless.  They represent the most vulnerable people in society.  And repeatedly in scripture the people of God are told to care for the widows.  The judges, in particular, were to grant justice to the widows because widows had no one but the law to speak on their behalf. 

Clearly the judge in this story is a bad one because he’s NOT doing the very basic things he has been charged to do: offer justice and, in particular, care for the powerless, namely the widows and orphans.  One wonders how this particular judge found employment because he seems to lack the two criteria we would expect of judges: that they are believers in God and respect people and the law.  This judge doesn’t meet either criteria.  He’s a bad judge, refusing to grant justice to this widow.

Eventually the judge changes his mind because, as the text reads, the widow is wearing him out.  We need some translation help because our English translation doesn’t cut it.  The phrase “wear me out”, in the Greek text, literally means to “give a black eye.   Not only was the widow getting on the judge’s last nerve, but her persistence was shaming him, humiliating him publicly, giving him a figurative black eye, and he decides to grant her the justice she deserves.

Now that we know a little more about the two main characters, what is the point of their story?  Jesus offers this interpretation of the parable:  “Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?  Will he delay long in helping them?  I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.”  Even the unjust judge finally granted justice.  Will not God also, whose character is merciful, who is to us as a loving Parent?  Will not this God grant justice and even more quickly than the judge?  Jesus tells us that this is good news for us, indeed—that God will grant justice to those who cry to God day and night; God will respond quickly to God’s children.

Then we come to the last question of the text: When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?  And here is where it all gets trickier, because what does this question have to do with the rest of the parable? 

The Son of Man, we know, is the Messiah, Jesus, coming again at the end of time.  The author of the parable is apparently concerned about the faith (or the lack of faith) of the people.  Kenneth Bailey is a bible scholar who specializes in understanding the Middle Eastern culture out of which these bible stories have been written. To answer this last question about finding faith on earth, Bailey has us return to the previous question:  Will God delay long in helping them (that is, those who cry out)?  The Greek word translated here as “delay” has rich biblical context and is often translated in other places as “patience.”  This adds nuance to the question as it becomes at least two-fold: Will God delay in helping those who cry out and secondly, will God be patient with those who cry out?  The answer, in both counts, works in our favor.  The text tells us that God will not delay but will quickly grant justice. 

Further, as to the question of patience, will God have patience?  Yes.  And what is the patience for?  Here, we will go back to the beginning of the parable.  Jesus tells the disciples that this is a parable about praying always and not losing heart.  The author who has written down this parable is concerned about the community’s lack of faith.  He is concerned they are losing heart.  You have had moments when you’ve lost heart, haven’t you?  When you’re waiting and watching and hoping and what you hope for is just not coming to pass?  When the clock is ticking down and the team fumbles their last attempt at scoring.  When you check the mail day after day and finally the news comes that you didn’t get into the college you hoped to attend.  When celebrating and adjusting to the news of a baby halts abruptly as a pregnancy ends in miscarriage.  When, after months and months of diplomacy, an attack is made and negotiations for peace break down. 

In those moments of losing heart, those moments when faith seems far away, and God seems even further, God will have patience with us.  God will not judge us for our lack of faith in those moments—God will be patient with us.  God will patiently wait for us.

The instruction given to us is that in those moments, even though hope seems lost, we are to pray always; to be persistent in prayer.  Prayer might seem a funny response at those time when hope is invisible and God feels distant.  Isn’t prayer what you do when you’re full of faith in God?  Isn’t prayer what the giants of the faith do?  It doesn’t seem the appropriate response for one who is losing hope…for one whose faith is wavering under the stress and strain of loss and disappointment. 

Nonetheless, prayer is what Jesus tells the disciples to do, I think, because at its heart prayer is about opening space to be with God.  Prayer might involve words, like we use so often in church.  It might involve music, like the anthems the choir offers up each week or the songs you sing in the shower.  It might involve the body in dancing or kneeling or lifting our arms or embracing a loved one.  It might involve silence.  It can be as simple as the prayers I just taught the children: thank you, thank you, thank you; help me, help me, help me.  All of these can be our prayers to God.  Jesus’s words to us in this parable remind us that it is precisely in those moments when we are losing heart that we need to pray always.  Though God seems far away as the world is crashing down on us, prayer opens space in us and we’ll find that God is right there, patiently waiting for us to take notice. 

In the book Eat, Pray, Love, the author Elizabeth Gilbert tells the story of her own losing heart.  She was in the middle of an emotional crisis.  Her marriage was falling apart; she was losing herself.  At three in the morning she found herself sobbing in the bathroom and it occurred to her that sometimes people in this state would approach God for help.  These are her words:

What I said to God through my gasping sobs was something like this: “Hello God. How are you? I’m Liz. It’s nice to meet you.”

That’s right—I was speaking to the creator of the universe as though we’d just been introduced at a cocktail party…

“I’m sorry to bother you so late at night,” I continued, “But I’m in serious trouble…

[I sobbed even harder.]  God waited me out… “I’m not an expert on praying but can you please help me?  I am in desperate need of help….please tell me what to do.”

And so the prayer narrowed itself down to that simple entreaty—Please tell me what to do…  I begged like someone who was pleading for her life.  And the crying went on forever. 

Until—quite abruptly—it stopped.

…I sat up in surprise, wondering if I could now see some Great Being who had taken my weeping away.  But nobody was there.  I was just alone.  But not really alone, either.  I was surrounded by something I can only describe as a little pocket of silence—a silence so rare that I didn’t want to exhale, for fear of scaring it off…

Then I heard a voice.  Please don’t be alarmed—it was not an Old Testament Hollywood Charton Heston voice, nor was it a voice telling me I must build a baseball field in my backyard…it was merely my own voice, but as I had never heard it before…perfectly wise, calm and compassionate…how can I describe the warmth of affection in that voice, as it gave me the answer that would forever seal my faith in the divine?

The voice said: Go back to bed, Liz.

I exhaled.

It was so immediately clear that this was the only thing to do.  I would not have accepted any other answer.  I would not have trusted a great booming voice that said either: You Must Divorce Your Husband! or You Must Not Divorce Your Husband! Because that’s not true wisdom.  True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer. Go back to bed, said this omniscient interior voice, because you don’t need to know the final answer right now, at three o’clock in the morning on a Thursday in November. Go back to bed, because I love you. Go back to bed, because the only thing you need to do now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do know the answer….Go back to bed, Liz.

In moments when we are about to lost heart, God is there, patiently waiting for us, waiting to grant us what we need, waiting for us to take notice. 

Elizabeth Gilbert’s story is a powerful one, but God doesn’t wait for the dark night of the soul to seek us out.  God is also all around us every day, trying to get our attention.  There’s a favorite song of mine that we listened to in Encounter this morning.  One of the verses goes like this:

Every day you wake up and every day a day goes by

You’re never going to catch up ‘cause there’s never enough time.

And there’s no one in your love life.

There’s nothin’ on the news that’s nice

But somethin’ keeps you goin’

Something’s keeping you alive.

It’s a penny on the sidewalk.

It’s a feather on the subway train.

Sleepin’ to the rhythm of the Sunday morning rain

It’s those magic little moments you’re tryin’ hard to understand,

Wonderin’ if it’s luck or loving hands.

God is all around us, in remarkable and profound ways, and in simple graces, just waiting to be noticed.

So the answer to that last question of our text—when the Son of Man comes will he find faith on earth?—the answer is yes.  Not because we’re model disciples persisting in faith like the widow, but because God waits faithfully and patiently for us.  God may not be the squeaky wheel, but God is persistent and patient…always waiting, for us, offering faith, ready to encounter us in prayer, ready to be noticed, if we will stop long enough to do so. 

Thanks be to God.

Boring, Eugene and Fred Craddock. The People’s New Testament Commentary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004, p. 249.

Ringe, Sharon. Luke: Westminster Bible Commentary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995, p. 224.

This section is informed by Kenneth Bailey, Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983, pp. 127-142.  Thanks also to Tom Tate who helped me distill that exegetical work into accessible themes.

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, Pray, Love. New York: Penguin Books, 2006, pp. 15-16.