Luke 18:1-8

October 16, 2022

One evening after picking up her daughter from play practice, Janie made a decision that would forever change her life and the lives of the people in another family. As Janie was driving her daughter home, she noticed a teenager walking home in the dark next to a busy street. Janie pulled over and insisted that the young man–Tre–get in the car, but at first he refused. Janie didn’t take no for an answer. She says she put on her “mom voice” and told him to get in the car so that she could take him home.

Tre finally relented and got in the car, but he didn’t want to let Janie know exactly where he lived. Janie again kept persisting. She wanted to bring him all the way home, not just drop him off at an intersection. It turns out, Tre and his three siblings had been living in a motel room with their mom. Janie committed to bringing Tre home after play rehearsal every day, and soon she found excuses to pick up a meal for him on the way home. Tre started bringing some of the food home for his family, and that’s how Janie started to learn the difficulty of Tre’s situation.

Tre’s mom was working two jobs and barely making ends meet. Because she had a prior eviction in her background, she could not find anyone to rent to her, so she was forced to move her children into a motel room so that they would not be homeless. For three years, the motel room had been home for Tre, his mom, and his three other siblings. Because there was no kitchen, his mom couldn’t make home cooked meals even though she desperately wanted to. 

One day, Tre missed play practice, and Janie followed up with him. Tre’s family had been kicked out of the motel for failure to keep up with payment. Janie felt compelled to do something. Janie talked with her husband and they decided they needed to rent an apartment for Tre’s family. Tre’s mom worked hard and paid rent and utilities on time every month. She got a raise at one of her jobs, which allowed her to quit her second job. Things were going well, until Tre’s mother got sick. She contracted Covid-19 and died, despite having no other health conditions.

Janie stepped in again and helped Tre’s oldest sister do what she needed to do to become the legal guardian for her younger siblings. Tre and his oldest sister got jobs to make ends meet while they both continued their schooling. Time and again, Janie stepped in to make sure they had what they needed. When she picked Tre up on that dark, autumn evening as he walked home from play practice, Janie had committed herself to doing whatever she was called upon to do to help. And she never gave up, even when most people would’ve said, “This is too hard.” Day after day Janie showed up. She stepped in. She pushed on. Because she knew it was important for Tre and for his family.

In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable about a widow who is relentless. She has experienced injustice, and she takes up her case with a judge who couldn’t care less about her situation. Jesus describes the judge as someone who “neither feared God nor had respect for people” (Luke 18:2). Typically, a widow would be cared for by her sons, and they would be the ones to argue her case for her, but it appears that she had no one to help her. Rather than let this be an obstacle for her, she decided to argue her case on her own. Day after day she goes to the judge and asks for justice. Day after day, the judge sends her home without giving her what she asked for.

The widow persists. She doesn’t give up. And eventually, the judge is so bothered by her persistence that he gives her what she wants just to get her off his back. The judge thinks to himself–rather humorously, I think– ”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.” The Greek is much stronger than what the English translation conveys. The word translated as “bothering” can mean “to strike” and the word translated as “wear me out” can mean “to give a black eye.” The second word brings up the imagery of the boxing ring. Each time the widow comes to this unjust judge, it delivers a blow to him, and eventually he can’t stand it any longer. This woman was a force to be reckoned with.

While it seems clear that this story is about persistence, we may be asking ourselves, “Persistence in what?” Thankfully, Luke gives us some commentary that helps guide our interpretation. This commentary serves to bookend the story on both sides. Before Luke records the story Jesus told, he wrote this, “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” OK. So this story is about persisting in prayer and not becoming discouraged. But, what about when we persist in prayer and nothing seems to be happening? What if we try our best and we still get discouraged? 

This morning we continue our series “Falling in Step with Jesus.” For the last three weeks we have been exploring the Scriptures and listening to God’s leading for practical ways we can fall in step with Jesus in our daily lives. We looked at Jesus’ teaching to forgive seven times a day, and we learned that our small, mustard seeds of faith are enough. We just need to put those mustard seeds of faith to work. Last week Pastor Jeff looked at Isaiah 56 and what it means to do the right thing. When we follow through with faithfulness, the righteousness of God is revealed to the world.

Today, we are looking at the story of the persistent widow and we are asking what it means to persist in prayer. How can we continue praying when the things we pray for don’t always happen the way we expect them to? What happens when we become so discouraged that we struggle to pray at all? To answer these questions, I’d like us to focus on three different words in this passage from Luke 18: pray, justice, and faith. Though we won’t find all the answers to our questions in this brief time this morning, by exploring these three words, I’m hopeful that we will understand what it looks like to be people who persist in prayer in a sometimes discouraging world. 

First, pray. Luke tells us right off the bat that Jesus told this parable so that we would persist in prayer and not become discouraged. The tireless, persistent widow reminds us to pray. Even when we don’t know what words to use. Even when everything is stacked against us. We are to be people who persist in prayer. Do you have a regular rhythm of prayer in your life? If not, I would invite you to begin one. Start small. Maybe just a minute at a time. We can pray at any time, anywhere, and we don’t have to have the best words. Author Anne Lamott says the three most important prayers we can pray are Help, Thanks, and Wow. 

Our prayer can take many forms. We can pray in silence. We can allow the groans of our hearts to be our prayers, and the Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit will pray for us when we can’t find the words. We can pray using pre-written prayers, or we can speak more off the cuff in our prayers. We can also pray with our feet. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel traveled to participate in the Selma to Montgomery march with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When Heschel returned from the march, he was asked, “Did you find time to pray while you were there?” Heschel responded with, “I felt my legs were praying.” I’ve also heard it said that when we pray, we have to be prepared for God to use us as an answer to some of those prayers. 

As followers of Jesus, we are called to be people who persist in prayer. We are also called to be people who pursue justice. But, what does that really mean? For the widow, it looked like pestering the unjust judge every day. I suspect that Jesus chose a widow as the main character in his parable because the widow should have had other people seeking justice for her. All throughout the Old Testament, the people are urged over and over to make sure they are taking care of orphans and widows. And yet, here, the widow has to seek justice on her own in a system that’s stacked against her. 

We don’t live in the first century, but we still have plenty of people who are trying to function within a system that is stacked against them. What would it look like for us to seek justice for them? How might we partner with others so that change is possible? In the parable, the judge knows he’s unjust. He reminds himself that he doesn’t fear God or people. But, eventually he gave into the widow’s demands. Unfortunately, we aren’t always as self-aware as this judge. We may not even see the ways we are making life tougher for other people. As we persist in prayer, we open ourselves up to God’s leading in our lives. God may urge us to partner with others to seek change, or God may urge us to examine our own lives and see where we need to make changes.  

We are to persist in prayer, and we are to pursue justice. And, finally, we are to be a people of faith. Jesus ends this parable with this question: “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” This question feels strange to me every time I read it at the end of the parable, but even still, it makes sense. Even when we persist in prayer and commit ourselves to seeking justice, there are still so many situations of brokenness, pain, and turmoil in this world. We see story after story about the war in Ukraine, and we ask God, “How long will this go on?” We watch as people suffer in the aftermath of floods and fires, and our hearts break. We pray and work and pray and work, and when things don’t work out, we can feel incredibly discouraged. 

Jesus asks his listeners–and us–if when he returns there will still be people holding onto faith. Or will we have given up? This question is a tough one, but it is hard not to become discouraged when there is so much suffering in the world. So, what are we to do?

Barbara Lundblad preached on this passage in 2019 at the Festival of Homiletics, and she talked about the same three parts of this passage that we’ve explored today: prayer, justice, and faith. But, she encouraged people to think about how these three things work together. The show notes from the Pulpit Fiction podcast summarize her points this way: 

“If we pray without working for justice our prayers are empty.

If we work for justice without prayer we will think it all depends on us.

If we pray and work for justice without faith, we will fall to despair when justice isn’t done.”

In other words, we need all three–prayer, justice, and faith–because the absence of any of them is a recipe for discouragement and despair. 

Earlier in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus teaches about the goodness of God. He reminds us that God is a giver of good gifts. He says it this way: “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, 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!” 

When we pray, we are to P.U.S.H. as Pastor Pete Watts wrote in a Bible Study lesson on the persistent widow. We are to P.U.S.H.–Pray Until Something Happens. That something may be a call to take action and seek justice. That something may be encouragement from God in the form of faith. Or that something might be that the Holy Spirit will keep on praying for us when we are too weary to pray on our own. May we be a people who persist in prayer, who pursue justice, and who cling to faith as we await the coming day when God makes all things new. May it be so, and may it begin with us.