Persistence

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

October 20, 2019

24 Proper C 

          Since becoming a grandmother back in May, May 22 at 1:17am to be exact, I have found a new dimension of persistence in my life.  First, of course, is baby Evelyn’s persistence even though she is, for the most part, a very good-natured baby.  But when she is hungry, or wet, or wants to be held, she does not stop asking until she gets what she wants.  She is oblivious to the time of day, or what else her parents might be trying to get done, including sleep.  Babies have an intuitive understanding of the unrelenting persistence sometimes required to get what they need.  Babies are all about spontaneous persistence.

          And then there is my own persistence.  While Cincinnati is hardly the other side of the world, the city is not next door, either.  So, we have to think about and plan our visits.  Hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about the next time I will get to see baby Evelyn, how much she will have grown, what she will be doing.  This kind of persistence requires being deliberate, making plans, always being vigilant and watching for a hole in the calendar that would allow a quick trip to Cincinnati.  This is intentional persistence.  Then there is my persistent hounding of our son for photos.  A photo a day does not seem unreasonable to me, but I try to keep my hounding down to every few days.  That type of persistence probably falls into the category better known as maternal nagging, which is a form of persistence all its own. 

          My hunch is that most of us have some experience with persistence. Like baby Evelyn, we learn from a young age that to get whatever we want in life, we have to keep trying, and we move from spontaneous persistence-saying “I want it right now” over and over again, to intentional persistence.  If we want the job, or a spot on the team, or the A on the test, or to learn to play an instrument, we have to be intentionally persistent in our efforts.  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 and persisted just a little longer. But in my experience, and perhaps yours, prayer is the one area where persistence, whether spontaneous or intentional, just does not always seem to reap the results I ask for. Did my loved one not get well 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 been healed? 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 repeats, 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 invites us to use the fullness of Scripture to understand what God is calling us to be and do, 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 God’s call on our lives. So, perhaps thinking about widows and judges throughout scripture would be helpful here.                        

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 Scripture, perhaps there is different way to understand the parable of the unjust judge. Perhaps God is the one knocking so persistently, demanding justice. 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, perhaps. 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 an intentional 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 just about being persistent in asking God to heal our loved ones, ourselves, and all that is broken in the world.  Perhaps prayer is, at least in part, our listening for God to tell us all that is broken in this world and to teach us how to be intentionally persistent in working on God’s behalf to bring about justice, healing, and peace.  When we respond to God’s persistence with intentional prayerful persistence of our own, the answer to the question “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” will be a resounding “yes.”

                                                                                      Amen