“Worn Out”

(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 accuser.’  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.”

            Rick and I have been watching the most recent season of This Old House, the 47^th, if you can believe that.  I have loved that show from the minute I discovered it.  Anyway, this season they have been in Asheville, NC, filming as they helped several families rebuild after the debilitating floods that happened over a year ago.

            You may remember that Hurricane Helene had such strong winds and was so full of moisture that it brought all that as far north as the mountains of Western North Carolina and nearby Tennessee.  The rivers rose to like 30 feet above what anyone had ever seen.  The soil had been so soaked from earlier heavy rains that hundreds of large trees came down on homes.  The flooding was absolutely devastating to so many towns along the rivers. 

            …Now, before the reading that you heard today, Jesus was having a discussion with the Pharisees about what will happen when the Son of Man comes.  Jesus said, “You will be told, ‘Look here or look there.’  But you shouldn’t chase after all these voices and opinions because the Son of Man is going to have to endure much suffering.  There will be floods as in the days of Noah.  In fact, people will be on their rooftops waiting to be rescued.”

            And those ancient words resonate with us.  There is so much suffering in our time: the natural disasters like the flooding in the mountains of NC and Tennessee, and the recent flooding on the East Coast, the wild fires in the west; the terrible loss of life as a conservative estimate of 50,000 Gazans have died because they were not sent food and water and were attacked in order to destroy Hamas, as we have been told; the Ukrainians and Russians who are dying in a foolish, needless war; the immigrants in our own country who are being rounded up without cause: children and/or parents incarcerated or shipped back to countries that are ruled by cruel dictators.  There they will undoubtedly receive even worse treatment.  Who knows if they will ever be reunited with their families? 

            So, when the Son of Man comes, it may not be this wonderful re-ordering of life here on earth that we hope for.  Will the Son of Man really find faith here on earth? 

            In preparing for today, I read a commentary by a District Superintendent in the New England Conference who had just been moved to Montpelier, Vermont.  Now, we may think of Vermont as a kind, caring place, but the truth is, like many places, it is full of unhoused people who are without shelter.  There have been floods there which make it even harder to find a place for them to live. 

            In this context, the writer of the article attempts to make some sense out of today’s scripture reading that you heard Mark read.  Before Jesus told this parable he instructs us to keep praying and to not lose heart.  That seems to me to be really hard as we are plopped into the midst of today’s verses.  But in it we hear about how a widow came before a judge who never gave God a thought and had no regard for people.  She was asking for justice against her accuser.  We don’t know what she’s accused of.  What we do know is that widows in that time were a marginalized group.  Their living was completely dependent on their sons, if they had them.  They were not respected or paid attention to, although many places in our Bible remind all men (and it was men) to care for the widows and to make sure that justice is done.

            The job of the judge in the parable was to advocate for this woman, but he repeatedly denied her request—because he had no regard for her.  But she was relentless, begging over and over for justice.  Finally the judge gave up, not because he admitted he was wrong (which he undoubtedly was), but because the widow had worn him out.

How often in our United States has such a scenario played itself out?  Those in power use their positions of privilege to deny justice to people without power.  And it is very hard in our world to continue over and over to go up against those in power. 

            Yet, we people of faith continue to sing songs of justice.  I know many of you attended rallies yesterday singing for justice.  People who have been bruised over and over by racism, sexism and classism continue to sing the songs of freedom.  We continue to tell Jesus that what we want is justice and freedom. 

…There is some discussion about who deserves credit for the hopeful quote you are about to hear, but Dr. Martin Luther King used it several times in his sermons and speeches.  “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

            Friends, I know that we get worn out these days working for justice and peace, believing it can happen.  The thing is there is no magic wand.  There is no perfect scripture quote that will guarantee that in our lifetimes, we will see justice roll down like waters, but we may see the trend begin to move in the right direction.  We may notice that someone in power gets worn out by our continual work for peace and justice.

We may notice that when it is made known how inhumanely treated are our immigrants and other people of color, our poor and incarcerated, how we have looked the other way as women and children receive such little care and advantage even in a civilized nation such as ours—if this is shown to the world, the world may demand that it stop. 

            Should the Son of Man come today, would he find faith in Akron, in Ohio, in the United States of America, in our world?  This is the question that should always drive us to be relentless in our seeking.  To quote President Obama in one of his speeches in which he quoted the aforementioned Martin Luther King quote: He said, “So I hope that you will stand up and do what you can to serve your community, to shape our history and to enrich both your own life and the lives of others across this country.”  Let us not give up hope because maybe, just maybe, we can wear out the perpetrators of injustice.

I know.  It’s hard to not feel worn out these days, when we don’t see citizens come out to vote.  When all that is happening around us feels so hopeless. Maybe, just maybe, we Christians will persist in standing up to witness to God’s love in Christ—today and everyday.  May it be so.

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