Persistence for Justice
Sermon by: Rev. Mary Alice Mulligan, Ph.D.
Scripture: Psalm 37:21-28a, Luke 18:1-8
Sometimes Jesus offers very difficult teachings, especially as he and his closest followers get closer and closer to Jerusalem. They are traveling in the shadow of the cross. Other times Jesus’ teachings appear to be simple parables, except we remember that parables are designed to blow up our preconceived notions of the world. Today’s parable seems simple, as if persistence in prayer just means pray more. But true prayer is not an easy behavior to habituate. Most of us are not very good at it. Remember that cartoon with the woman standing in the Gathering Area before worship, with the thought bubble: “Oh no, here comes Bob. I promised him I’d pray for him. Ok. God bless Bob.” And then as the man gets next to her she says, “Hi Bob. I’ve been praying for you.”
When Jesus tries to teach us about prayer, we already know we aren’t very good at it, but Jesus wants us to learn that our prayers must not try to turn God into Santa Claus, like when we ask God to protect us from the approaching hurricane, then assume it’s God’s job to keep us safe. Such a notion of prayer, one scholar notes, “turns religion into a service station for self-gratification…” (1) We are to learn persistence, but not persistence in asking for what we want. We are to learn “holy persistence,” in praying and living for what God wants. Take a break now and read Luke 18:1-8.
The truth is, a lot of the time, we feel like the widow. Don’t we? She knows what is just, so she appeals to the one who can bring it about. Can’t we see her, showing up at court, day after day, waiting her turn to be heard? And every day the judge ignores her, listening to more important cases, perhaps cases of people who know how to grease the wheels of the court with a bribe or two. But the next day, there she is again, perhaps calling out to him to be heard. Calling out for some justice, to set things right. Until finally, maybe she shows up at his country club or telephones him in the middle of the night, making a nuisance of herself, we might say. Persistently pounding on the door of his attention, demanding justice.
Isn’t that similar to our life when we hit some crisis? Suddenly we are hanging on to God’s coattail, begging for help, like when someone we feel we can’t live without gets critically ill. Or the weather radio reports 100 mile/hour gusts as Hurricane Ian makes landfall. Or a child moves out too early and we aren’t sure where she is living or how she’s paying rent. Crises tend to ramp up our prayer life. President Abraham Lincoln admitted. “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” (2) In crisis moments, there we are, pounding on heaven’s door, asking God to “fix” it. Protect my house; heal my lover; bring my daughter home. Day after day; week after week. No matter what else is going on, somewhere in the back of our minds, we are pounding on the judge’s door. Which seems to be what Jesus is directing. Be persistent in prayer.
But of course, we know the parable can’t be taken quite so directly. We know God isn’t an unjust judge. Deuteronomy tells us: Yahweh is “the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.” (3) We know God is not the unjust judge, even when we feel like we are the widow.
But actually, God is like the widow. The one persistently crying out for justice, is God. If we stop to consider what we know about the Almighty, we know God is the one pounding on the door of the world, calling for justice. In ancient society, a widow was about the most vulnerable person around. She couldn’t work for wages; she couldn’t just go out in public to interact with men to get what she needed. Widows had no power; no husband to protect her; no way to acquire wealth or even keep what she had. Sounds like characteristics we hear in the Christ hymn reproduced in Philippians 2, that Christ Jesus disregarded his equality with God, “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” (4) God, who gives up divine fullness to walk in absolute vulnerability on the earth among humanity is like the widow, petitioning anyone who will listen to help bring justice. God is the one who knows what is right, and like the widow is looking for the one who can make it happen.
Such ideas turn the parable a little bit on its head. We more easily think of God as the powerful one who can grant our petitions, if we just pray right. But God is not the unjust judge and does not usually interact in the world by sticking divine fingers into the pot to fix things. God is much more like our nagging conscience, when we know what is supposed to be done but we just don’t want to. Yet there she is, persistently knocking on the door of injustice, calling us to pay attention to righteousness, to work for justice. It’s God who is like the widow.
Which means, our job is to join the widow. We can put our energy at the widow’s disposal. Perhaps this is where Jesus’ lesson about persistence best comes into play. We aren’t supposed to be persistently banging on God’s door demanding justice; instead, we are told to get with God’s purposes and persistently put our energy into getting the justice God wants. Persistence does require praying without ceasing, but not expecting God to open his Santa sack to give us what we want. Instead, the parable calls us to persist in getting closer to God, which we do by getting regular in prayer, by paying attention to what God is calling us to do, and by being involved financially and physically in God’s purposes.
We listen to God’s persistence in calling us to justice work, but we also are called as a congregation. Many church people are eager for new people to join their congregation but are inclined to resist changes they may bring. Think of the early church. Things became more complicated when gentiles joined in. The book of Acts reports gentiles complaining that their widows were not being cared for as well as the Jewish widows were. So the leaders chose 7 gentiles to be deacons in charge of making sure all widows were cared for. Although we don’t think much of that decision today, it was a controversial one. Typically, only the leadership would have been responsible for control of money and resources, but here the leadership passed that responsibility to very new church members. Which meant things changed. Ministry expanded. And the church grew.
Lots of us are tempted to tighten our grip when disagreements arise, or new people raise an issue. But when we take a chance, releasing people to do ministry in new ways, amazing growth can happen. Growth can be spiritual, numeric, or even growth in understanding God’s will for the church. But any growth can be messy. Churches get to decide whether to embrace or reject changes. One of the images we used during Covid was that we had to be light on our feet. We had to be willing to try new things. Admit when new things didn’t work. Choosing to embrace them when they did work. We had to be willing to change old patterns, find new ways for people to serve. It was scary maybe, but exciting, too. If we imagine God as the persistent widow, when we put our energy in her hands, we can feel divine justice breaking in all around. We can sense the Beloved Community breaking out among us and spilling beyond us, flowing with the energy of the Holy Spirit. We get to join the holy widow.
1 Huston Smith, Why Religion Matters (2001), 45.
2 Abraham Lincoln, quoted in Chalice Hymnal, 563.
3 Deuteronomy 10:17-18.
4 Philippians 2:6-8.