Persistence

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

October 16, 2016

24 Proper C

          The model of dogged persistence in our household is, indeed, our dog.  Fang is a 125 pound Italian mastiff, so his sheer size makes him a formidable opponent when he wants something.  However, his persistence does not begin with his size.  Fang starts with The Look.  He gets very still and stares at us with a pleading look.  When The Look does not work, he sits. Years ago, Fang had both of his ACLs repaired within a few months, so he could not sit for a long time.  Don and I were so excited when he could finally sit, that we rewarded him every time.  Fang remembers that.  When sitting does not work, Fang moves to nudging, still gently, but annoyingly.  By now the drool is pouring out of his mouth, so being nudged, even gently by that great. slobbery muzzle does begin to wear us down.  At this point, Fang is usually asked to go to his mat.  After a brief time on his mat, measured in something close to nano seconds, Fang returns to try again, this time skipping steps one and two and going straight back to nudging.  By this time, Don and I have almost finished supper, and Fang usually wins some morsel of food.  Fang is nothing if not persistent.

          My hunch is that most of us have some experience of our own with persistence. We learn from a young age that to get whatever we want in life, we have to keep trying.  Many times, but not always, our persistence pays off.   When we do not succeed, we often wonder whether we should have tried just a little bit harder. But in my experience, and perhaps yours, prayer is the one area where persistence just does not always seem to reap the results I ask for. Did my loved one die because I was not persistent enough in prayer?  Do I believe that if I had just prayed a little harder, or gotten just a few more people to pray, she would have lived? I don’t think so, but today’s gospel lesson certainly seems to tell us that if we are persistent enough in prayer, we will get whatever we want from God.

          In Jesus’ parable this morning, the widow wants the judge to grant her justice against her opponent. In Jesus’ time, judges were entrusted with protecting the poor, the widows and the orphans. This judge ignores the widow’s request, and, because the widow is not willing to take "no" for an answer, she repeats it. This cycle occurs over and over again, until finally worn down, the judge grants the widow justice so that she will go away. At the end of the parable, Jesus says "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." Jesus seems to be telling us that if we pray long enough and hard enough, if we are persistent enough and if we refuse to take "no" for an answer, eventually we will wear God down and God will give us what we want, just to get us to go away.  

            How are we to understand this parable?

            The reading from 2 Timothy reminds us that all Scripture is given to us for our learning. We tend to shy away from such passages because we wonder if God really wants us to stone our children when they talk back to us, as Deuteronomy 21 suggests, or refrain from wearing blended fabric as Leviticus 19 and Deuteronomy 22 suggest, or hate our mother and father, brothers and sisters, or even life itself as Jesus suggests in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. But the writer of 2 Timothy is not talking about every individual verse of Scripture, nor is 2 Timothy talking about taking one verse of Scripture and using that single verse to interpret all of Scripture. 2 Timothy is telling us that the whole of Scripture is inspired by God and given to us for our learning. God invites us to use the fullness of Scripture to understand a single difficult passage, so that we don’t have to rely on just our own experience and the words of a single passage of Scripture to figure out what God is calling us to do and be. 

         So, in this morning’s parable, we have a widow and an unjust judge. When we think about all of Scripture, we remember that over and over again in the gospels, especially Luke’s gospel, we see Jesus identify himself with the poor and the outcast, the widows and the orphans. In Matthew’s gospel, we hear Jesus say that whenever we minister to the hungry and the thirsty, to those on the margins of society, we minister to him. We watch Jesus care for those who have been cast aside, which would certainly include the widows of Jesus’ time. We hear Jesus say in the Book of Revelation "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." In the Hebrew Scriptures, the one who cares passionately about justice is God. And, through out Scripture, typically the ones who act unjustly and exploit other people, are people, not God. In the parables, typically, the bad king, the rude guest, the corrupt manager, or the stingy farmer represent people, not God. So, in the context of all of Scripture, perhaps there is different way to understand the parable of the unjust judge. Perhaps God is the one knocking so persistently, demanding justice, and perhaps WE are the judge. Perhaps the persistence in this parable is God’s persistence, the knocking that will not stop until justice has been served. And in this parable, suppose that we are the judge, the ones empowered by God to bring about justice, to care for the poor and the oppressed, the outcasts and the victims of injustice. The persistent knocking is knocking on the door of our hearts so that we may see and hear and feel the injustice of the world and be inspired by God to do something about it. Perhaps prayer is not about continually pestering God to do something about all that is wrong with our lives and the world until God gives in just so we will go away. Perhaps prayer is, at least in part, our listening for God to tell us all that is broken in this world and how we are to work on God’s behalf to bring about justice, healing, and peace.

             In the end, the story of Scripture, and the parable of the unjust judge, is not the story of human persistence at all. The story of Scripture, including our parable this morning, is the story of the persistence of God and how we respond to God’s persistent knocking.
                                                                                           Amen.