June 21, 2009 Sermon

The Widow and the Judge
Luke 18:1-8

Quick quiz: who said, “Where the corpse is, the vultures will gather”? Confucius? Mark Twain? It was Jesus. And he said it just before telling the parable we read today. Jesus had begun to frighten his followers. He had warned against causing others to fall away from Him. He had claimed that if they had even a grain of true faith they could perform miracles. He had told them that they had to become slaves. A group of his enemies asked him when the kingdom of God would arrive. Jesus replied that nobody would see it coming. For one thing, he said, the kingdom was already working its way into this world. To speak of it as coming therefore did not make sense. And when the Messiah did appear to bring the kingdom to fullness he would arrive as quickly as lightning flashing from one end of the sky to the other.

But before the Messiah appeared, his followers would have to endure much suffering. Then, when his kingdom came, friends would get separated: one going into the kingdom, the other into eternal punishment. Ditto for married couples. When his followers, aghast at the harshness of these sayings, pleaded for him to give them some indication of when the kingdom would come, he gave them his vultures saying. This is not the Jesus of whom we usually speak. But it is the Jesus who helps us survive the suffering we experience in real life.

Luke wrote the Gospel from which we read these things. He gave us the meaning of today's parable. We find it at the start of our chapter: “Then Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray always and not to lose heart.” Have you ever been tempted to lose heart? This church contains people who endure terrible, daily suffering. A few bear obvious, public burdens. More carry their pain in secret. Have you ever been tempted to lose heart? Pray always. Prayer gets us through.

Luke tells us what Jesus' parable about the judge and the widow means. Still, it is less clear-cut than other parables we have studied. The judge character is not God. Jesus said he “neither feared God nor had respect for people.” Later, Jesus labels him “unjust”. Yet this judge had god-like power. A widow came before him seeking justice against her enemy. At first he refused, but when she just would not shut up about it he caved. He told himself, “I will grant her justice, so that she will not wear me out by continually petitioning me.” Jesus concluded by urging his followers to cry out to God for justice. God would not delay in granting it.

Do not lose heart. Pray. God will grant you “justice”. When the Tuesday morning Bible group studied this passage they found it raised a couple of the eternal questions: Do our prayers change God's mind? If God is just, why is there so much suffering? But Jesus did not actually address these questions in his parable. If you will permit me to get away with it, I do not intend to address them either—until this fall, when I plan to give a series of sermons on great issues before the church: on prayer, music, money and more. Today we focus on what Jesus said—and on what Luke tells us he meant. We have before us a call to pray and never to lose heart.

A woman ran youth programs at a Christian camp. Those who knew her a little saw only her wacky outer shell. She wore a different crazy hat each day of the week. She knew all the alternate words to all the songs. She could play the guitar right-handed and upside down and left-handed. She had an endless supply of corny jokes. Only those who knew her life story knew she had lost her beloved seventeen year-old daughter two summers before. The girl had dived into the lake at another Christian camp, forgetting the drought that had lowered the water level. She broke her neck and drowned immediately. Twenty-one months later her mother was leading camp with all the daffiness she could muster. Sitting on the staff house porch late one evening, another woman discovered what she was enduring. She asked, “How can you do this?” The mourning mom replied, “If I couldn't pray I would die.”

If I couldn't pray I would die. Prayer can help us not to lose heart. The widow in Jesus' parable did not quit petitioning the judge until he gave her justice. When we pray and pray and pray God will grant us the peace of Christ. For two summers I led camps with the woman who had lost her daughter. Dealing with homesick little children; with youth from the inner city who do not know how to handle the freedom of camp and poison ivy and the sounds of a country night; with arrogant children of the privileged suburbs: these things can cause even the most seasoned youth leader to lose heart. My partner was not perfect. She was not a saint. I do not recall ever overhearing her pray about her daughter, but I have no doubt that she prayed many times daily in that way. She did not lose heart.

If I couldn't pray I would die. Prayer gets us through. What burdens do you carry that you need to pray about?

Our burdens can make us too angry to pray. When this happens we need to pray all the more. Last March a man killed an Illinois pastor while he led worship. His widow told ABC news that her anger kept her from praying for the first time she could remember. But her friends and her church prayed for her and she reached the point where her prayers took away her anger and led her to reach out to the gunman's parents. The things we dread can choke off our prayers. When this happens we need to pray all the more. Dwight Eisenhower, in the terrible days before he sent nineteen year-old soldiers to invade Europe on D-Day, disappeared each morning for a few minutes. His staff did not know what he was doing. By accident an aide discovered him on his knees in the officer's toilet, praying. Our busy lives can crowd out prayer. When this happens we need to pray all the more. Martin Luther famously said that when the world pressed in on him with extra demands he prayed twice as long.

Prayer gets us through. Prayer changes us. Prisoner 23226 could testify to that. Born a Jew, brilliantly educated, he became a powerful lawyer But as John Acton observed, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Prisoner 23226 abetted a massive obstruction of justice that, when discovered, led to the death of a presidency. While awaiting arrest he received from a friend a copy of C.S. Lewis' great book, Mere Christianity. He read it and, in due course, became a Christian. Though mocked by the secular world for his faith, he has fiercely defended it for thirty years. During his imprisonment at the Maxwell Federal Penitentiary in Alabama he read his Bible and prayed. The spiritual desert of prison appalled him. He sought out other Christians and started a small group. They prayed together daily—despite the jeers of other prisoners.

Prisoner 23226 is Charles Colson. After his conversion to Christianity he refused legal deals that would have diminished his sentence. He felt convicted that he must be convicted and serve his penalty. He is one of two Watergate casualties to experience the power of the Holy Spirit of Jesus in prayer while in prison. (The other is Jeb Stuart Magruder, who after his release from prison became a Presbyterian minister.) Colson started the immensely effective Prison Fellowship Ministries. He has tirelessly worked to start Prison Fellowship groups in correctional facilities around the world. Recently he has focused on Columbia, where the drug warlords lead rival gangs from behind bars. Colson goes right into even the most hellish places, testifying to the power of praying together. His spiritual sincerity and power have thus far kept him from harm. Prayer gets us through.

Colson has written and spoken thousands of times about prayer. One of his first testimonies describes his moment of conversion. A friend asked him to pray. Colson replied that he was not ready. The friend read him a couple of Psalms and then asked if he could pray for him. Colson agreed, and “felt the room come alive” while his friend prayed. But that was all, for the moment. He took his leave, got in his car, drove about a hundred feet, and started weeping. His eyes filled with tears and he could not drive. He thought about getting out and walking back to his friend's house, but they had put out the lights. Alone and awaiting trial, broken down so completely he finally had to admit he could not exist any longer without spiritual help, he asked Jesus to come into his heart. Jesus did, and Jesus has never yet left that heart. Charles Colson has become a living, breathing testimony to the power of prayer.

Prayer gets us through. Whatever injustice you face, prayer gets you through. Whatever you dread, prayer gets you through. And you need not even know how or what to pray. God's Spirit prays with us. Prayer is nothing more than speaking intentionally with God. But prayer is nothing less than God communicating with us. Praise God for prayer! If we couldn't pray, we'd die. But pray we can—and must. Prayer gets us through. Just pray.