Justice Here And Now
Luke 18:1-8
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 opponent.’ 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 this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” And 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?”
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We hear a cry for justice this morning’s reading from a widow who was being ignored by a judge. Why should we care about the widow in this parable? It’s not like we should be surprised that the widow was being denied the vindication that she deserved. Yet there is something troubling about this parable that should startle us and shake us up to see that things are not the way they should be. What should strike us this morning is the poignant question, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” There’s a lot to unpack in this question, but at the heart, we might find that Jesus is worried that by the time he comes back, things won’t be any different.
The act of faith is an act that challenges the very norms we have come to know and embrace. Faith takes us to places where people are hurting, where people are wrestling with depression, grief, trauma, and abuse. Faith takes us to the hidden corners where we have tried to make marginal people invisible, and faith brings us to the places where those who are supposed to be the models of faith are really just as broken as the rest of us. All of this is to say that faith challenges us to hear the cries of injustice and seek out their vindication in the name of God’s justice that is inscribed on all our hearts.
I’ve really enjoyed the Bible study we’ve been doing here at church, where we are skimming through the Old Testament. It’s been fun for a number of reasons, but at the top, I’ve found that I most enjoy the insights from the people who attend. Mainly how the Old Testament is filled with women and men who make mistakes, people who, in reality, are just like you and me. And out of the brokenness of these individuals, God finds a way to use the pieces that are left to bring restoration and healing.
It fits with the whole theme of what we have been looking at in this study, where we talked about the stories of creation found in Genesis 1 and 2, where God created humankind to be co-laborers, co-creators. That means that you and I play a part in the unfolding of the narrative of the world, and if that sounds like a big responsibility, it is. But it is also a blessing when we are able to give ear to the widow, the orphan, the ones who have been seeking justice for as long as they can remember. And in the times when their voices fall on deaf ears, that’s when you and I come into play.
Not many of us could imagine what the window persisted in order to reach the ears of the judge who did not fear God. I don’t know if there is anyone of us who could place ourselves in the position of the window.What kind of persevering prayer, what kind of constant knocking did the widow have to do to receive the justice that she sought? I read in a commentary about this passage about an elderly black minister who said, “Until you have stood for years knocking at a locked door, your knuckles bleeding, you do not really know what prayer is.”
Yet maybe we do know what it is like to stand in the widow's place. Perhaps we know because we've stood knocking at the door, praying for a loved one. Or maybe it's the father, mother, son, daughter, nephew, or niece who mourns the loss of one who was taken by unjust hands or an unjust system. I don't know your life's story, but to some degree, I would bet that we know what it is like to have blood dripping down our hand from knocking on the door and waiting for a response, an answer, to the things that need attention in our lives.
Our lives may feel like an endless string of prayers. Those prayers may feel unanswered, they may make us feel frustrated, and even angry. The thing though is that that is okay. It is in the persistence of our prayers (the prayers in our hearts and prayers in our actions), where we find that we find we come to find balance in the tension of God’s mysterious actions and our own desires. We do not know everything that will come our way or when the hurdles we face will cease. All we know is that life, a life of prayer, is a cycle of asking, seeking, knocking, and waiting, and trust that can sometimes grow weary. That is what it means to have a persistent, and even healthy view of faith and prayer. We should be concerned if prayer is something that only brings smiles to our faces, because know, like the widow, that faith can be a hard life.
That is the kind of faith, the kind of prayer, the kind of world moving acts that Jesus is hoping he will find when he returns. It’s not about people who are pious and have everything in a right and proper order but is about people with bleeding knuckles, who never stopped seeking justice, who never gave up, who kept fighting for the rights and voices of others until the law of God has brought vindication to all people. The power in this morning’s reading is that we are told what could be if only we set our minds on one another. If the unjust judge, who did not fear God, could grant justice, imagine what exponential good could come about when those of us who have faith instilled in our hearts act with justice and mercy.
I feel like I’ve used that word “instilled” or the phrase “written on our hearts” this morning because I’m alluding to the hope that is found for us in the reading from Jeremiah. The prophet tells us that God says, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” In the midst of our knocking, perpetual longings, we find that God has written on our hearts the things that are needed to give us a glimpse into what life together with God and one another can really be. And that glimpse into what things could be could be and should be, in our current reality if we were not bound by the forces that keep us from seeing the image of God in one another.
While in prison for participating in a non-violent demonstration, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter from his prison cell in Birmingham jail. A part of that letter that still speaks to us and to this parable from the Gospel According to Luke says this:
Moreover, I am cognizant of the inter-relatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly…
Our lives are intricately connected to one another. The injustice that the widow experienced impacts all of us, whether we know it or not. It may not have an explicit result, but it reflects on our spiritual well-being when we let the cries of persistent prayers go unanswered. You and I, the hands and feet of Christ, those of us who are “God fearing,” have the power to answer those prayers, to bring justice, to answer the prayers of one another as our perpetual work goes on. The immediate reward may not be grand, but we would surely feel confident in knowing then what Christ would find when he returns.
So who or what are the unjust judges in your lives? Who or what needs relentless pleading for justice and restoration? And in what ways can we answer God’s question of how much more? In what ways can our lives more faithfully co-labor with God in the pursuit of justice and wholeness? Justice, God’s justice of wholeness, in the here and now shouldn’t be a dream, but a reality. It all comes down to whether our lives willing to endure and persist for the sake of love and faith that one day our work will bring healing to those here in this church, this community, and beyond. Amen.