Opening Thought
We focus today on two things: one reality, and one question. The reality is there is a lot that’s gone wrong in the world, and needs to be fixed if the world is to be for the well-being of all, the way God intends and desires it to be. The question is how God – and we, do this.
Reading: Luke 18:1-8
The reading is a parable that Jesus tells his disciples, just before they begin their final journey into Jerusalem. For some time now, all around Galilee, Jesus has been teaching, healing, and creating a new kind of community of faith among the poor and ordinary people of the province.
People begin to hope that maybe the kingdom of God is beginning to break into the world, and soon will appear in all its glory. They ask Jesus about it.
And he tells them two things. One, is to expect that the kingdom of God will come. Two, is that it will come at a time and in a way that they do not expect. Then, to give his disciples some idea of how to live in faith towards that promise, he tells them a parable about an unjust judge and a powerless widow – two figures they can easily imagine.
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Reflection
The story Jesus tells is both very simple to understand, and very easy to misunderstand and misinterpret.
Often, we fall into a trap – even though Jesus tells us not to, of getting from this story the idea that we are like the poor widow needing something to change, that God is like a judge holed up in heaven – good-natured, but still holed up in heaven, and that our job is to pray often enough, long enough, and hard enough to wake God up and get God to do what needs to be done.
I wonder why we don’t listen to Jesus when he says that’s not what he intends the story to mean, and not the image of God he wants to leave us with?
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What if what Jesus is saying
is simply this: that in a world where people like the unjust judge and
the poor widow co-exist, the way God’s will gets done is by the unexpectedly
persistent nagging of the widow in the face of judge. And that it's in that persistent voicing of, and attention to the needs of the needy in the face of the powerful and the oppressor, that God – the
energy for good, is set free in the world. And that that’s what prayer is in a world
always on the way to the kingdom of God – not God being awakened to do
something, but us being awakened to what God really is about, and then rising to be a channel of "not my will, but thine, be done."
And there it is – the sermon for today.
On one hand is “the poor widow” – which in Jesus’ day and any day is familiar short-hand and a handy image for anyone who is alone in the world, vulnerable, without resources or support, powerless and put upon, and – maybe most important of all, expected not to make a fuss, not to have a voice, with rules set up to make them stay quiet and just be content and grateful for whatever little bit they are given.
And on the other hand, is “the judge” – those in Jesus’ day and any day who are those in society who have power and privilege, who are comfortable and taken care of, who without needing to have control of everything, can still make good things happen for themselves and for others. They have agency in the world, possibilities, and chances of making dreams come true.
And Jesus says that the holy question – one of the hinge-points of the kingdom of God showing up or not in a world like that, is whether the poor widow(s) in the story finds a voice or not, and uses it or not, and uses it persistently or not. Uses it so much and so pointedly that the judge at some point gives in, takes up the case, looks at it honestly rather through the filter of the people who support him and bribe him to rule in their favour, and makes the appropriate ruling for her against her oppressor.
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Two things about this, in the way Jesus tells the story.
One is that the judge is not converted to total solidarity with the widow. Jesus does not paint him like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Unlike Dickens, Jesus does not say the corrupt judge “became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”
The judge in Jesus’ tale is simply worn down and tired of having to listen to the widow day after day. The word used for “wearing me down” has the sense of “wrestling with me without giving up.” It even means “hitting me in the eye – giving me a black eye.” He’s worried about a blow to his reputation and getting a bad name if people start seeing how corrupt he is. It seems he even imagines the woman someday might attack him, and give him a literal black eye.
So, to save himself trouble, embarrassment and further injury, this time he does the right thing. Maybe the way Stephen Harper was led to stand in the House of Commons and offer a formal apology to the people of the First Nations of Canada? The way Doug Ford gave in to protesting parents of children on the autism spectrum, and restored funding to some of their support programs? Maybe, too, at least part of the reason the developed world suddenly took on the case of Syrian refugees, after the picture was published of the body of little Alain Kurdi washed up on the beach of the Mediterranean?
It happens. People in power and people with privilege sometimes do the right and good thing mostly to save themselves and serve their own best interests. But it counts nonetheless. Sometimes that is how the kingdom of God breaks through and into the world as it is.
___
And the second thing is that in the way Jesus tells the story, the poor widow never uses nor threatens violence. She is not a terrorist. She does not became an attacker. She does not hold people hostage. She shows up where she is not expected to be (women in that society were not to appear representing themselves before a judge). But she appears over and over again and only as a plaintiff pleading her case. Easy enough for the judge – who worships power, to imagine she will resort to violence. But that’s his last resort; not hers. And his problem, not hers.
Her last and only resort is persistence. Okay, patience and persistence. Alright, maybe good purpose, patience and persistence. Three last resorts.
And what the three add up to, Jesus says, is the fourth of prayer (as in “may the fourth be with you”?) – the kind of prayer that becomes a channel through which the energy of God, and the good will of God for the well-being of all, is able to flow into the world as it is.
And it happens.
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When I think of the poor widow meeting the judge every day on his way to the judgement seat, I think of the Raging Grannies who were a force to be reckoned with a few decades ago in Canada. They were literally grannies with nothing better to do – really no better way to spend their days than dressing up in old Victorian dress, taking stands together at public sites, and singing songs they wrote themselves in protest against hunger and poverty, against nuclear armaments, against underfunded health care systems, and against the government and other leaders of the day who refused to try to fix what was wrong. Prayer? Does Jesus say, Amen.?
Which brings to mind also the grannies of Africa who were the ones who stepped in and got organized to take care of hundreds and thousands of young children orphaned when their parents were lost in the first wave of the HIV-AIDS and no one else was able or willing to step up and do the right thing. Prayer?
Closer to home, and around another issue, are the Grandmothers Teas organized by women of the Six Nations for native and non-native women to be able just to sit down and have tea and chat together about real life and share wisdom with the one another across the divide. Prayer?
Even the Quilt Club, with nothing better to do on a Thursday morning than come to the church, chat and have tea, support one another, and make hundreds of lap quilts and quilts year by year to donate to organizations that help support and care for refugee families, women and children escaping abusive relationships, families in poverty, people living with cancer. All of it prayer – a way of praying God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven?
Every week in worship and at home, we offer prayers in words for healing in the world. The same prayer is offered in action by folks like Doctors Without Borders, by Medical Ministries International (by the way, Elizabeth and Robyn are leaving for Columbia this week for two weeks), and by any one of you every time you send a card, take over a casserole, or just sit and listen to a neighbour, a friend, a stranger who’s got a bad diagnosis, is living with illness, or is heart-sick with grief.
Every week we pray with words for the hungry, the homeless, and the needy. And we collect food for the food bank. We respond to crises with special offerings and projects. We look for ways to reach out with whatever little help can. All of it prayer. Ways of opening channels for the good will of God for the well-being of all in the world.
And it’s so amazing – it really is, and we need to celebrate this – the variety of ways in which this church prays – the variety of ways you become one with people of faith around the world as it is, in the variety of ways you lift up faithful words of persistent longing and loving care, and reach out with equally faithful actions of equally persistent longing and loving care.
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One last thing. In the end, what Jesus has for us is just this question: “But when he comes, will the Son of Man find faith on earth?”
May it be so, at least in what we can control. Among ourselves, with what we are given, and in our little part of the world may we continue to live with God’s purpose, persistence, and patience in all we say and do.
When we do, the fourth shall be with us. For it’s prayer. All prayer.
May it always be.
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