A Sermon from First Church, Scarborough…
A sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship of the First Congregational Church of Scarborough, Maine on Sunday, October 21, 2007. The principal reading was Luke 18:1-8.
“And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly” (Luke 18:7 NIV).
“Faithful Persistence”
Many of the paradoxes of Christianity are front and center in today’s gospel reading: a God who cares yet often seems absent, a woman who is weak but who confounds the strong, a call to confront while knowing it is the meek who shall ultimately succeed. But most pointedly of all, we know the necessity of praying to God. Now we must ponder where prayer leaves off as the sole response to dilemmas, and where individual and congregational action must begin to accompany our prayers. The persistent widow is our model and our inspiration. Christ is our authority.
We begin with a favorite story about prayer from the late Catholic, spiritual sage, Tony DeMello:
A man left a brand-new bicycle unattended at the marketplace while he went about his shopping. He only remembered the bicycle the following day – and rushed to the marketplace, expecting it had been stolen. The bicycle was exactly where he had left it. Overwhelmed with joy, he rushed to a nearby temple to say a prayer of thanks to God for having kept his bicycle safe – only to find, when he got out of the temple, that the bicycle was gone!
The story does not make a very positive statement about prayer. Today we hear a parable that Luke tells us is about the need to “pray always and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). We are to be persistent. BUT…if we find ourselves in a position like the man with the bicycle, we would definitely lose heart. We might be better off if we did not pray at all! Or, leave the sanctuary immediately; make our way to the hardware store on Oak Hill, and purchase a steel wheel lock. At least, we would still have the bicycle.
The widow in the parable has something different to tell us. She is our model of perseverance. She has the courage and determination to keep coming after the judge and, eventually, she wears him down and wins her vindication.
In the first century world, a judge was a person of honor. He had what was called ascribed honor by reason of the fact that he was a male in that society. He had achieved honor by virtue of the fact that he had attained the impressive position of judge.
The widow, on the other hand, was nobody. Since her status was dependent upon her relationship to some man, the fact of widowhood meant that she was without honor; not only that, she was considered just the opposite – to be a person full of shame.
The Biblical Greek and Hebrew words for “widow” tell a sad tale. The Hebrew for widow is ALMANAH. It is derived from the root ALEM, which means “unable to speak.” It was expected that the widow would live in silence. The Greek word is CHERA, related to a preposition CHORIS, which means “without” or “apart from,” and the noun CHORA, which means “empty space.” Without her spouse, or a male child or relative, the woman was alone and on her own.
In Jesus’ time, a “judge” would often be used as a symbol to represent God. But Jesus depicts the judge as corrupt (that must have really surprised the first hearers of his story). Since the widow is without a protector to defend her lack of rights, the story should have abruptly ended there. BUT, Jesus continues.
By law, the judge should have been her protector. The widow decides that she will be her own advocate, to represent herself before the judge. This added feature would have been an additional “scandal” when first told to Jesus’ hearers.
For a woman, married or single, to challenge a man of rank and honor was to break all the rules, ignore the cultural practice of centuries, as well as bring shame and insult on the judge and the system that he represented. Jesus’ hearers shook their heads in disbelief.
And, that is exactly what she did “with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’” And not only did she do it once, she “kept on coming” back, over and over. She was determined to get redress and vindication.
She wore the judge down. In the end, she won. It is not because the judge had been converted to a more just jurisprudence or because he had decided to do the right thing. Rather, he gave in because he is afraid that she might injure him.
The English translation, “so that she won’t keep wearing me out,” does no justice to a literal rendering. In the Greek, the verb (HYPOPIAZEIN) for “wear me out,” means “to hit under the eye,” and is a term borrowed from Greek boxing. What the judge seems to fear is getting a black eye publicly from an angry woman.
Jesus’ hearers must have felt that this rabbi was flip-flopping the way the story was supposed to go. He gave honor to the shameful and dishonor to the respected. He was attempting to make them rethink the way they had ordered their world and understood their relationships. He was disorienting them and then asking them to use the parable as a model for their daily prayers.
Most of us fix our world and our living in it according to our comfortable understandings, our narrow definitions. We possess and hoard and, from time to time, exhume certain beliefs. They are neat and ordered and we know which ones are more important and more valuable than others.
Sometimes we are so rigid in the way that we cling to our beliefs that we miss the overall truth that the beliefs are supposed to point to. Rather than pointing the way, they become obsessions which control us and dominate others. We find that the motions and actions of our daily living become more dictated by habit and culture and expectations, less influenced by honesty and choice and Christian decision-making.
Jesus told parables and shattered world views. Our latter day hearing of them can be just as challenging. And Luke places this upside-down story before us in the context of our prayer life.
No wonder we might find ourselves like the dazed fellow without his bicycle, saying, “It’s not supposed to happen this way! In all the time I left the bicycle abandoned, it wasn’t touched. But I leave it for a minute to go say a prayer and it is taken! How unbelievable it all is!”
And yet, Jesus challenges us to question the degree of certainty that we can claim about every day reality. We must be careful just how sure we are about every day things.
The reality that we need to pay attention to is the world that God creates and presents to us – a reality that is not always predictable, where losers become winners, where honor and respect are based on human dignity and not on the level of achievement accumulated on the ladder of social success.
It is a world where God can be seen as a poor, seemingly defenseless widow who persisted. She just would not give up. And because of that perseverance, God’s kingdom remains in our midst.
There is a message here to look beyond self, not to fear to speak the truth, and call a sin a sin. The exercise of true authority, judicial or spiritual, belongs not to those in love with power or themselves or who respect neither God nor human beings, but to those with justice and the common good at heart.
Now we must ponder where persistent prayer leaves off as the sole response to dilemmas, and where individual and collective action must begin to accompany it. And, remember; say your prayers while you are pondering your next move.
I will give Tony DeMello the last word:
The Master asked, “What is it you seek?” “Peace,” said the visitor. “To those who seek to protect their ego,” said the Master, “true peace only brings disturbance.” And to a religious group that came to gawk at him and ask for a blessing, he said with a roguish smile, “May the peace of God disturb you always.”
