Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Please pray with me.
Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that as the Scriptures are read and your word is proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you say to us today. Amen.
Today's scripture is Luke, chapter 18, verse 1 through 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 accuser.
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 the widow keeps bothering me, I'll grant her justice so that she may not wear me out by continually coming at 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?
This is the word of the Lord.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Thanks be to God.
Thank you, Paul.
All right, good morning everyone.
I've got to confess.
I got a jury duty summons for this past week, and I know everyone hates getting jury duty and everyone likes to share tips on how to get out of it, but I was secretly hoping they would call me in so I could have a really good opening illustration to pair with this scripture passage. But of course, the one time you want to go, they didn't need me.
And this is probably the first time anyone has ever been disappointed to not get called in for their jury summons.
So let's just pretend that I started today telling you a really funny, poignant anecdote about a quirky, grumpy judge that I had to interact with. Okay, now, the parable in our scripture passage today sometimes referred to as the unjust judge, but I actually like the persistent Widow as a better title.
It's a story from the judge's point of view, but I think the focus is actually on this amazing widow who just refuses to take no for an answer.
You probably don't need me to remind you of the widow's particularly vulnerable position in any society, but especially in first century Palestine, we aren't told why the woman is going before a judge, except that she wants justice against her adversary or accuser, likely has something to do with money. She feels she's owed something by someone and she can't settle this herself. She doesn't have the societal power or the strength, her very livelihood may depend on the intervention of this judge.
Now, the judge is described as not fearing God or respecting people.
The exact opposite of Jesus. Command to love God and love your neighbor as yourself, and the opposite of what you would want from a public official or a person in a position of power.
So when the widow comes to him, he blows her off again and again and again. He's dismissive of her. She has nothing to offer him, and he has nothing to gain by helping her, so he refuses her.
But finally, after this constant, continual badgering has gone on for so long, the judge relents.
And he is, I think, comedically self aware.
Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, he says, I love that. I know I'm a jerk. Yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice so that she will not wear me out by continually coming. This is a nice, polite translation here, but the Greek word used for wear me out, it's more of a boxing term. It's really closer to gives me a black eye. The judge says, I'm going to give this lady what she wants before she gives me a black eye.
Now, is he physically intimidated by her? No. Can she do anything to him, really? No.
But her relentless, tenacious persistence is beating him black and blue.
This is one of the features of the parables of Jesus that he loves so much.
Reversing your expectations.
In this case, the powerful are overcome by the powerless. The mighty judge is worn down by the vulnerable widow.
Now, when we read parables, we have a tendency to look for these one to one correlations for each element of the parable. Right? Who is the widow? Who is the judge? Who is the accuser?
There's times when this can be a helpful way to dissect a parable, but in this case, I think it can become problematic pretty quickly. I mean, is Jesus really comparing God to an unjust judge?
Is God sitting on the heavenly throne, rolling his eyes at our prayer request and finally relenting just so we'll leave it alone?
Maybe some of us have felt that way before.
And if you've ever suffered under the burden of unanswered prayer, this will not be the most comforting way to read that passage.
It's easy to go down this spiral of doubt and shame thinking, well, maybe I just didn't pray hard enough, or I didn't pray long enough, or I didn't say the right words in just the right way to get God to listen.
But that doesn't sound like how Jesus talks about God or prayer anywhere else. In fact, most often Jesus prays by referring to God as father, not judge or your honor. And he says things like, is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish?
If you then who are evil, Jesus says, know how to give good gifts to your children.
How much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?
So when it comes to this parable, I don't think the point is the character of God.
I think the point is what is our character going to be like when it comes to faithfulness and persistence in prayer in the face of insurmountable odds?
And what do we do when we pray and pray and pray? And we still don't see justice.
We still don't see healing.
We still don't see relationships made whole or the world the way God intended it to be.
I wish every prayer was answered right away, as soon as you pray it. I wish that was how it worked.
That hasn't been my experience.
And critically, there seems to be something important about not just our prayers being answered, but the actual process of. Of coming to God again and again and again.
In prayer, the very act of persistently returning to God with our requests is more than just a means to an end. Jesus appears to think that showing up is part of the end goal itself.
People have debated forever if prayer actually changes things, and I would argue that it does, and I have seen it.
But at the very least, prayer changes things because prayer changes me.
There is a transformational power to prayer, but it rarely happens immediately in some miraculous light in the sky moment. More often it is a gradual forming that takes place through consistent molding. It's a slow reshaping of who we are into who God is calling us to be. That only happens when we show up for it in an ongoing way.
It's like the calluses you build on your fingertips when you're first learning to play guitar.
It's like a cliff on the beach shaped by years and years of being hit by the waves. Prayer changes us.
The repetition of our prayers isn't a sign that God doesn't hear us or. Or God doesn't care.
The repetition of our prayers is an invitation to draw closer to God.
Persisting in prayer is an ongoing theme in Jesus teachings and ministry. Just a few chapters earlier, in Luke 11, he tells the parable of a friend who goes to his neighbor's house at midnight to borrow some bread for his friend who's passing through and the neighbor is already in bed and doesn't want to get up. But because of the friend's persistence, he gives him what he asks for anyway.
Sounds familiar, right?
Now, again, God is not an unjust judge, and he's not like an introverted neighbor who just hates hearing the doorbell ring either. That's not the point. The point is, we should be like the persistent widow or the neighbor who is so dead set on getting food for his friend that they don't give up on asking again and again and again.
At the end of Luke 18, just a few verses after the persistent widow parable, there's a story about a blind beggar who hears Jesus passing by and calls out, jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.
And everyone around him hushes him. Doesn't he know Jesus is busy? Doesn't he know his place? Shouldn't be making such a scene like this. Embarrassing, the text says. Those who were in front sternly ordered him to be quiet, but I think this is important.
He shouted even more loudly, son of David, have mercy on me.
It's a physical embodiment of the persistent widow parable that we just heard a few verses earlier.
It is being acted out in real time, and it's only after the blind man calls out again for for the last time that Jesus stops and tells him, receive your sight. Your faith has saved you.
Luke is trying to tell us something about the nature of prayer by putting these stories so near each other, Jesus is trying to tell us something about the nature of prayer.
Why do we persist in prayer to get what we want?
Maybe at first.
But the more you pray, the more what you want becomes God.
We want God.
We persist in prayer so that our desires might slowly be shaped into God's desires. We persist in prayer because we are so desperate for communion with God, and the more we draw near to God, the more we find ourselves shaped in Christ likeness.
And yes, God answers prayers, Jesus says at the end of this parable. 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?
I know some of us in this room have had the same prayers for years, maybe decades, and we might take issue with the word quickly there. Like really quickly. To who? Jesus.
But there's a promise in here, a hope that Jesus is challenging us not to let go.
Whether you have been praying for your kids who stopped Going to church years ago or praying for your marriage that feels like it's just stalled out, or praying for your health when you've gotten this life altering diagnosis.
Do we dare hold on to hope?
I was so moved to see a number of our friends and church members from Monte Vista Grove at the protest here in Pasadena last week.
Disciples of Jesus, some of them in their 80s and 90s, standing with their neighbors, praying for our country and calling out those in power to act justly.
I had to stop and wonder how many times some of you have prayed those prayers over and over and over for how many decades.
And yet today they dare to keep praying. They dare to keep hoping.
Church I am convinced hope is an act of resistance.
Prayer persistence is an act of resistance. It is an act of resistance against the principalities and powers, the unjust judges of the world, the powers of sin and disease and death that try to squash all hope and try to define the story of creation. God says no, I define the story.
Death is defeated and the kingdom of God is near, and all things are being made new so that we can be in perfect relationship with the triune God as heaven and earth come together. That's how our story ends. Do you believe it?
When we hold onto hope and persist in prayer, we are saying, God, I believe in your end of the story.
No matter where we find ourselves right now, I believe you define how it ends.
We pray again and again and again through these insurmountable odds because we believe in a good God.
We believe that drawing near to God is the best, most life transforming thing we can possibly do.
Church for those of us who feel like we are at the end of our rope, life has kicked us down and we have no strength left to give, no capacity on our own to change things.
There's this temptation to pull back, to give up.
But these are the moments when we need to be pressing in, when we are challenged to hold persistently, tenaciously, doggedly onto God, who is good and just and merciful and mighty and hears our prayers and and has a future for us and for all of creation.
Jesus Words at the end of this parable can be kind of a haunting question.
When the Son of Man comes, he says, will he find faith on earth?
But I am so Comforted by what 2 Timothy 4:7 says.
These are likely Paul's words from a prison cell not long before his public execution. I am sure he had been praying and praying and praying, and many of his prayers may have never been answered in the way he hoped they might. Be.
But it says, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.
From now on, there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the Righteous Judge, will give me on that day. And not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
As we long for God's justice and goodness to come in full, may we hold onto faith in the Lord Jesus, the Righteous Judge.
And may we become more like him as we draw near to him in prayer.
Amen.
