"Persistent in Faith"

Just a quick note before the sermon itself:

I want to apologize that sermons haven't been posted to the blog (nor anything else for that matter) for quite some time now - blogging and journaling have never been a strong suit of mine, and so I'm thankful to folks who are willing to help keep me accountable to this practice!  If you happen to be someone who reads this blog even somewhat regularly when I manage to post, feel free to get in touch with me and let me know if I'm falling behind again.

-JM

10-16-16 (Proper 24/Ordinary 29 C, Semi-Continuous)

Jeremiah 31:27-34; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8

Persistent in Faith

You know, it’s hard to have your birthday in December.  This time of year used to be one of the most frustrating times for me when I was growing up - and I know it sounds silly, especially looking back on it as an adult, but it used to drive me so crazy once we hit about halfway through October and then into November.  We’d be in the store somewhere and despite my parents’ best efforts to steer me away from the direction of the toy aisle, I’d inevitably spot something and it’d be imperative that I didn’t leave the store without that toy in my hands.  I’d make my case over and over again, pleading with my parents about how much I wanted or needed it, and I’d always get the same gentle, yet firm refusal, which was bad enough as it was, but then there was always that last line around this time of year that was just a little bit of salt added into the wound as they explained that “Birthday and Christmas are coming up, so you’ll just have to wait and see what you get there.”  I still feel the frustration just speaking those words, and what’s worse - I’ve used the same line on my own children now in just the last couple weeks, just without the birthday part.

As we look at the lectionary passages this week, it’s easy to hear and feel something similar to that frustrated sense of waiting.  “The days are surely coming, says the Lord.”  We hear it said several times in Jeremiah here.  We hear the same thing in Paul’s letter to Timothy - “The time is coming,” Paul writes, warning Timothy of how people will fall away as they await the Kingdom - even as Paul himself reminds Timothy that that kingdom is at hand.  Jesus doesn’t specifically say “The Kingdom is near” in this passage from Luke, but his teaching here is explained at the start by Luke introducing the parable by stating that Jesus tells it so that the disciples don’t lose heart.  The promises are there right in front of us - “the days are surely coming” - Jesus tells us that with his arrival, that day is even here.  And yet we still find ourselves in that in-between.  We’re still waiting for that something better, and the more we watch the world around us, the more urgent that day starts to feel.

In the midst of that urgency, perhaps it’s easy enough to put ourselves into the shoes of this widow - we cry out time and time again: “How long, O Lord?”  and we look for justice.  There are things we want and desperately pray for, situations that we long to see remedied, people who are in pain, situations that make us angry and impatient.  And looking at this parable, it’s tempting to be even further annoyed - why should Jesus have to tell this story in the first place?  What’s up with this picture of a God who expects us to annoy him to death before he’ll give us an answer to our prayer?  Don’t we worship a God who hears us all the time, who is quick to hear our prayers and often to answer them, even if the answer happens to be no?  What, then, is the image of God that we’re being given here?  What do we make of a God who has to be constantly pestered in order to answer a prayer?

Perhaps the problem isn’t in the parable itself, but more in how we typically tend to interpret it, instead.  Most often, we look at this parable and immediately assign the roles as we think they should be.  We’re supposed to be the widow, God’s supposed to be the judge.  The parable then means that we’re supposed to keep praying, to not give up, to keep pestering God and then God will give in and give us what we want.  If we want more money, we’re supposed to keep pestering God until God gives us a raise at work or a winning lottery ticket.  The person going through a life-threatening illness and their family are supposed to keep praying, to keep pestering God for healing, and so forth.   The problem that comes up in this interpretation, then, is: what happens if I pester and pester and still nothing happens?  Rev. Lia Scholl talks about this in a blog called “The Hardest Question.”  She asks, “So, if I wear God down, will God fix everything? And if not, how does this interpretation work through our congregations? If you believe that if you just ask enough, God will make you rich, what does your poverty say? If you believe that if you just ask enough, God will give you the desires of your heart, what happens when your heart is broken? And if you believe that God will heal your body if you only ask enough times, what happens as your body wastes away?  Is this really how God works?”

In this parable, I think Jesus tells us quite clearly that this is, in fact, not how God works.  Because God in this parable is not the judge.  Listen to what the judge says in the parable again:  The judge refuses, and then has a change of heart with the widow’s persistence as he says “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”  Jesus contrasts the judge to God, who is quick to grant justice to those who cry out to God day and night - to God who has, in fact, already delivered justice to all of us through Christ and through the promise of the Kingdom that is already here and yet still on the horizon awaiting Christ’s return.  When we look at the parable, we shouldn’t see God as the judge - instead, we should see God right there beside the widow, encouraging her in persistence, strengthening her to continue knocking at the judge’s door, time and time again, until that unjust judge finally relents and provides her the worldly justice she so desperately seeks.

Rev. Fred Craddock writes in his commentary on Luke that “until you have stood for years knocking at a locked door, your knuckles bleeding, you do not really know what prayer is.”  It’s a harsh image of prayer, a harsh image of what it means to earnestly and wholeheartedly seek God and seek justice - and yet for so many people in this world, this is exactly what the longing for justice looks like.  Jeremiah promises the people of Israel that “the day is surely coming” when God will deliver them from their exile and establish a new covenant with them, that God will be their God and they will be God’s people once again, that all their sins will be forgotten and made no more.  And yet for the people of Israel, that promise would take 70 plus years to bring to fulfillment - in some ways, they are still waiting for that promise to be fulfilled, just the same as we are.  Paul encourages Timothy, warning him that there will be many who give up and choose to follow their own path - and yet Paul tells Timothy to remember from whom he learned what he learned, and to stay strong and steadfast to the teachings that he has so firmly believed.

Our life of faith is a difficult one, and it is often filled with a keen awareness of how much there is in this world that is not as it ought to be - our world is filled with unjust judges who refuse to hear the pleas of the people.  It is filled with those who get what they do not deserve, who manipulate and exploit others for their own benefit and who refuse to even see, understand, or acknowledge the fact that their actions are hurting other people.  These are the corrupt judges upon whose doors we should be knocking day in and day out, against whom we should be continually seeking justice.  And it is God who stands there by our side, knocking along with us with bloody and bruised knuckles, giving us strength to keep lifting our voices for the voiceless until the Kingdom finally comes.  And rest assured and take hope in that promise: the days are coming when all who seek justice will finally find it, when we will know our voices have been heard all along, and that God has never left our side.  May we never lose heart as we seek the Kingdom together.  And may justice be the prayer always on our lips, this day and forevermore.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.