Year C
Luke 18:1-8
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Perseverance in Faith and Justice
Author John H. Westerhoff III in his 1976 book titled ‘Will Our Children Have Faith?’ asked the question in order to discuss how we would pass the faith on to the next generation. Jesus asked this same challenging question over 2,000 years earlier, when he concluded a parable with this:” When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? This question is still a very challenging and pertinent question for us today. Our texts today all speak to this question of faithfulness and perseverance in faith and prayer. Our example of perseverance of faith Jesus leads us to believe is demonstrated by the widow in our gospel. She exercises her passionate faith against an unrighteous judge, and gets what she needs to solve her problem. This is the kind of faith the Son of Man wants to find on earth when he returns.
Those who first heard Jesus tell this parable may well have laughed at the image of the widow pestering the judge. A widow had no power in that day not only because she was not a man, but also because she had no connection to a man either her husband or possibly a son. She is powerless, yet she persists in seeking justice anyway. Eventually, she “wears down” the powers to be and they give up. Luke likes to use parables. He has 24 that he records in his gospel. Scholars have commented that although these imagery filled parables may seem simple, the messages they convey are deep.
They all teach a lesson for our daily lives and are central to the teachings of Jesus. Jesus used parables to describe the kingdom of God, the expectations God has of people as well as the character of God. Parable interpretation gets in trouble when it departs from the point or points that the parable intends to make. For example, in our parable today, Jesus does not indicate that God is like an unrighteous judge. The earthly judge does not stand for God. It is simply a story involving heroic perseverance for justice with the focus of the story on the widow, a completely powerless individual who will not give up.
Jesus in telling this parable is encouraging his disciples to persevere in prayer and not lose heart and to perseverance in seeking justice. The point is not that they will eventually wear God down to the point that God finally gives in and answers their prayers. The point is that through our perseverance of faith, the forces of injustice eventually give way, so that faithful persistence pays off. Yet, unlike the widow in the story, we might not always see wrong addressed in this life. Ultimately, God must grant justice and this will come when the Son of Man one day returns. When this justice finally comes, the real question is whether anyone will still be seeking it. Will the Son of Man find faith among his followers when he comes?
This faithfulness among the believers is the hallmark of Timothy’s ministry. The tradition of right belief into which he was born is to be the thread that holds his community together. The central focus of this text is found in its first verse: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it.” As Timothy stands firm in his faith, informed by “the sacred writings,” he becomes “proficient and equipped for every good work so that everyone in the community of believers will be also. The scriptures “inspired by God “are able to instruct one about the salvation that comes through faith in Christ Jesus.” The ultimate point and goal of these sacred writings is Jesus himself, who faithfully carried out God’s mission to the cross, accomplishing our salvation.
Paul affirms the purpose of the sacred writings to instruct the faithful in the saving ways of God and calls for persistence in proclaiming the gospel because false teachers and scandalous con artists abound. The time was coming that people will listen to self-appointed authorities who tell them what they want to hear instead of the truth. They will create their own myths and cling to those rather than what God has revealed. In the face of these dangers, Paul calls Timothy, the church of his day and us today to endure and continue in our calling. Paul encourages Timothy to remind and keep on reminding his people of the faithfulness of God to his Word. God is love and will not ever act contrary to that nature of love.
We endure and remain strong in our faithfulness to God through worship, prayer, service and study. We are followers of Jesus and it is nice to know what he said so we can follow his teachings. The more we study the scriptures, the more we learn to love the bible and the more we learn to love God who is always faithful to the promises God has made to us. Through the Word, God writes the law of his love on our hearts and we discover that above all we are outmatched by the love and grace of God who has given us his word and given us his Son, that we might know life eternal here and for evermore.
God’s persistence in faithfulness resulted in changing the basis of the covenant for the people of Jeremiah’s day. Jeremiah anticipates the time when God will write the law on the hearts of the people, and reminds his readers that at the core of “the law” is the covenant relation God establishes: “I will be their God and they shall be my people.” This concluding text today from Jeremiah is perhaps the most hopeful passage to be found in the entire book. Not only does it remind one that Jeremiah was not simply a prophet of destruction and death, but it looks forward to the restoration of the people to the land and an even more radiant future, in which the life of the people will be characterized by a profound knowledge of the presence of God.
God has been Israel’s partner in marriage all along, but until now the people have spurned God’s love and have failed to remain faithful. But in “the days that are surely coming,” God and the people will be “one flesh.” Sin and judgment will be a thing of the past. So important is this image of the new covenant that, it has become for Christians a symbol of our encounter with Jesus Christ. In this sense, Jeremiah looks forward to the celebration in the distant future of the birth of Him who is the embodiment of the promise of the New Covenant. But this passage also looks beyond Christmas and, indeed, beyond all human history to the Second Coming of the Son of Man, and when the promise will be realized.
Until that day is realized, we are to continue, to abide and dwell in what we have heard in the scriptures, in our prayers, in our worship and in our service. We are to persevere with hope even when injustice and suffering seem to go on and on. Even when the doors of this world’s courtrooms seem hardly to open and the judges have not heard our cries. The blessing and justice of God has come in the resurrection, spoken in Christ. And the resurrection is the victory of Israel.
The resurrection is God’s final judgment and we come together on Sunday’s to remember that final merciful judgment, to hear it spoken in all its strength again, and to encourage each other to live on the grounds of that judgment. Hear that mercy in this world. Keep beating at the heavenly doors for the sake of our neighbor. We can be bold in faith and in perseverance because we already know what the answer is.