Sermon - Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost (10/20/2019)
Gen. 32:22-31; Ps. 121; 2 Tim. 3:14-4:5; Lk. 18:1-8
“Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray always, and not lose heart.”
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like it would be easy to lose heart. Martin Luther King is often quoted as saying that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. But these days it doesn’t feel like the world is making progress towards justice. We seem to be getting more tribal and less rational, less trusting and more violent. The climate is changing and species are going extinct at accelerating rates, with increasingly dire consequences for generations to come, and it’s hard to know what anyone can do about it. None of us is getting any younger, and I know many in this congregation are experiencing physical limitations that weren’t there before. And yes, we know that God has promised to hear our prayers and that God is a God who loves us and who is making everything new and has promised to make all of creation right in the end. But sometimes that promise feels very far away, and it would be so easy to lose heart.
So to encourage his disciples not to lose heart, Jesus tells them yet another enigmatic parable. Once there was a judge in a certain city who who has no fear of God and no respect for people – he does whatever he wants for his own purposes and couldn’t care less about anyone else. There is a poor widow in that city who comes to him asking for justice in her case, but he doesn’t care about her or about justice. He cares only about himself, and what does a poor widow have to offer an important man like him? Nevertheless, she persisted – she made such a nuisance of herself that the judge gave her the ruling she wanted “before she wears me out.” The Greek is actually more colorful – “before she punches me out,” it’s a term used in boxing. So, to get rid of this pesky widow, the judge agrees to give her what she wants.
What to make of this story? What is Jesus trying to say? It’s hard to know for sure, and there are at least three different ways that I have seen people interpret this parable. And all three of them have a certain degree of validity to them.
So one possibility is that Jesus means to commend the persistence of the widow. Like Jacob who wrestled all night with the angel, the widow never gives up until she gets the blessing of the justice she seeks. If even an unjust judge who cares only about himself can be moved by persistence – if only to save his own neck – how much more will God hear us if we persistently call out for justice? For we know that God, unlike the judge, cares deeply about human beings, that God is passionate about making the world right. On this interpretation, Jesus is telling us to be like the widow: Be persistent, don’t lose heart, if even the unjust judge eventually listens to the widow, surely God will hear you.
A second interpretation of the parable starts from the idea that the unjust judge doesn’t sound much like God – and perhaps God, in this parable, is most like the widow. For God is always seeking justice, sending prophets to call people over and over again to treat one another with dignity and respect. “What does the Lord require of you,” the prophet asks, “but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8)
God is constantly at work in the world making all things right – when we hear the cries of the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, the poor person, we are hearing the cries of God. And when we commit ourselves to the work of justice in our own time, we are doing God’s work – our hands, as the saying goes. Even if it seems futile or beyond our strength, faith tells us that God has been in the struggle longer than we and God will bring it to completion, so we need not lose heart.
Or, here’s a third way to read the story. The widow in the story is asking for justice “against her opponent.” And, as they say, there are two sides to every story. How do we know the widow, and not her opponent, is in the right? How can we be sure what justice actually is, in this case, or any other? Maybe Jesus is expressing skepticism about putting confidence in human systems of justice, which always seem responsive to whoever can complain the loudest. Maybe Jesus is saying that the kind of justice that God will deliver is not like the justice that comes from a lawsuit, or a political campaign – as important as those things might be. For the justice of God is not about getting victory over an opponent, but rather God setting the whole creation right in a way that includes everyone. So don’t be fooled by the limited justice that this world sometimes delivers – don’t lose hope, keep trusting in God’s promise to make all things new.
So that’s three different ways I have seen this parable interpreted, and maybe there are more. All three interpretations assume that there is something not right in the world, and that we are people who know – often from painful experience – just how bad the problem is. And all three interpretations tell us that the God who speaks in the Scriptures, the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, is at work in the world to make things right. All three interpretations tell us that when we seek justice for ourselves and our neighbors, and when we seek to make right the wrongs we have done to others – we are somehow connected to what God is doing to make the world right. Each interpretation describes that connection differently – but maybe that’s a good thing for us to be challenged by.
Jesus taught in stories and parables that can be read from different perspectives and heard from different angles – and I believe he did that on purpose. For in his humanity, Jesus is a descendant of Jacob who was called Israel, the one who wrestles with God. The parables of Jesus rarely have just one point – they are stories to wrestle with, sometimes at length, until they give us a blessing.
Once in a certain city there was a widow who sought justice against someone else – so persistently that even an judge without principles or morals ruled in her favor, if only to restore his peace and quiet. But we have a Judge who has promised to make everything right. Everything. And there is so much that is not right with the world. But don’t lose heart – a Judge is coming, indeed a Judge is already here, a Judge who has accepted judgment in your place and mine, a Judge who is even now working to make everything right.
What does that mean for you? Maybe you have been hurt by others, maybe others say you have hurt them. Maybe you’ve just been affected by the unfairness of life. What does it mean for you, to hear that God is at work at this very moment to make all of it right? I promise you, if you wrestle with that question, there will be a blessing in it for you.