Luke 18:1-8 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always
and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who
neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow
who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ For
a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God
and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will
grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” And
the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And 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. And yet, when
the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
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I want to share two stories with you. The first one is from the sermon roundtable
this week. As we contemplated this story
from Luke, one of our members said, “It sounds like the moral of the story is
to be like a nagging widow.” That gave
me a brilliant idea. I said, “Let’s do
the widow ladies dance – kind of like Beyonce’s single ladies dance, only
different – instead of flashing your ring finger, you wag your pointing finger.” It seemed like a good idea to me, but we
couldn’t do it because suddenly everyone at the table remembered something else
they had to do, someplace they had to go.
No one was with me. Maybe that’s
for the best.
The second story is about something I heard on the radio this
week, having to do with our current national politics. The reporter was in a home in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania talking to a husband and wife who are essentially cancelling each
other’s votes – he is voting for him, she is voting for her. As the wife was explained the reasons why she
is voting for her candidate, her husband interrupted her and said, “Do you
really think she comes across as a good person?
She reminds me of the evil schoolmarm – she’s old, she’s overweight, like
some of these other women you see.” His
wife pointed out that his candidate was also old and overweight, but he said,
“No, he’s fine. He’s 230, can hit a golf
ball 280. He’s in fine shape.”[1]
It was more than a little disturbing to hear that this candidate
is being judged as evil because she is old and overweight. There are legitimate reasons for opposing her
as a candidate for president, but this is not one of them.
When women are valued for their beauty, we want the less
attractive ones to disappear. When women
are valued for their fertility, the ones who are beyond those years can just
disappear. In the world of the New
Testament, fertility mattered. So an
older woman, particularly an older widow woman, was without value, therefore
without respect. This story seems to illuminate the point that there are some
people in our world who are not respected because of the categories they fall
into.
And it should not have been this way. The law of Israel explicitly guaranteed
certain rights for widows, along with orphans, because they were the people who
were most vulnerable. Without a man to
take care of them, widows and orphans were at the mercy of society. According to the law, this woman’s plea for
justice should have been heard.
But this particular judge didn’t care about that. He didn’t care about anybody or anything
other than his own self-enrichment, so he callously turned this woman
away. She had nothing to offer him, she
was of no value to him.
Yet this widow was not ready to give up. She hounded the judge, day in and day
out. She knew her rights and she was
insistent that she would get a hearing.
She finally succeeded, not because his heart softened, but because he
was irritated, or embarrassed, perhaps.
In the end it was his self-interest that brought justice to this woman.
Years ago, I heard a woman on the radio, part of the Story Corps
Project, I think, recalling what it was like living in the south during the
days of Jim Crow. She recalled going to
the courthouse to register to vote. But
she was black, and the man turned her away.
She came back the next day, and he again turned her away. So it went, day after day after day she
showed up at the courthouse asking to register to vote. Finally, one day the man said to her, “I’m
gonna let you register just so I don’t have to look at your ugly face ever
again.” Such as it was, she got
justice.
Jesus says that when even an unjust judge will eventually relent
and give you justice, wouldn’t God grant justice to God’s children crying out
day and night? Eventually.
Eventually.
Notice that Jesus gives no assurances that justice will arrive
quickly. And while we know God is not
like the callous, small-hearted judge, God’s ways are often mysterious to us
and justice sometimes seems long delayed.
The question is: when it finally arrives, when the Son of Man arrives in
the fullness of time, will he find us faithful?
Will we still be praying for justice?
This is the third time in as many weeks that the question of
faith has been raised, and each time Jesus holds up a different facet for us to
examine. In the first case, he suggests
that faith is a matter of being open to receiving it from God – any amount of
faith, even faith the size of a mustard seed, can do wondrous things. The question is not how great is your faith
but how open is your heart to receiving faith as a gift from God? In the second case, he suggests that faith is
a matter of recognizing all we have as gifts from God to us, just like the
Samaritan man who was healed of his leprosy and returned to give thanks. And in this case, in the parable of the
unjust judge, it would seem that faith is a matter of persistent prayers for
justice.
In our own lives, what does it look like to make our persistent
prayers for justice?
I know a United Methodist pastor who was serving in the Houston
area last year when a woman named Sandra Bland was pulled over for failing to
use a turn signal. She was removed from
her car, beaten on the ground, and arrested.
This much was filmed on the dash camera.
Three days later she was found dead in a jail cell. From that moment until now, the Reverend
Hannah Bonner, along with others, has been persistently shining the light of Christ
on this case. Sadly, there have been
some voices of authority who have demeaned her, trying to shame her into
retreating. But she has not; she will not back down from demanding justice.
What is a prayer for justice?
Calling out to God to fix a broken situation, to heal, to mend, to right
what is wrong. But it is also to
confront the injustice where it is.
To persistently and faithfully confront injustice with justice,
violence with peace, hate with love.
We live in a world in which justice has not yet fully
arrived. And there are seasons when the
injustice of the world feels so real, so omnipresent, it is easy to lose
heart.
I will share one more story with you. It is a story about a time when Mother
Theresa was visiting New York to meet with some high power executives about
donating money to her work among the poor in Calcutta. Unbeknownst to her, the executives had agreed
with one another before the meeting that they would not give her any
money. She made her plea to them, but
they said, “We appreciate what you do, but we just can’t commit any funds at
this time.” Mother Theresa said, “Let us pray.”
They bowed their heads and she asked God to soften the hearts of these
men. After saying amen, she asked again
if they would consider donating to her work.
They said once more that they were sorry but could not commit any funds
at this time. Mother Theresa said, “Let
us pray.”
Pretty soon, they pulled out their checkbooks.[2]
Don’t lose heart, Jesus says to us. We don’t know how long justice will take;
some days it feels far away. But don’t
lose heart. Make your persistent prayers
for justice; keep your eyes on the prize; recognize that, as our Pledge of
Allegiance says, justice means justice for all – for all!
Don’t lose heart. Don’t
retreat to a corner and disappear. Make
your persistent prayers for justice in the face of injustice. The days are surely coming, says the prophet
Jeremiah. Don’t lose heart, says the
Lord.
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