1 Thessalonians 4:16-18: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
This Sunday we will be looking at the parable of the Persistent Widow.
Luke 18.1 – 8, NIVUK
The parable of the persistent widow
Luke 18 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: ‘In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary.”
4 ‘For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, “Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!”’
6 And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 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? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?’
The Obvious Parable: The Persistent Widow and her Prayer
Introduction and Story
Steve Coneys introduced himself to the congregation and online viewers
I don’t generally pray with lists or prayer diaries…Do any of you?
But I do pray for Open Doors, so I hear the very often the raw cry from the heart of our persecuted Christian brothers and sisters around the world. But that cry really lands when you know someone. Recently a friend of mine told me of his own experience. When as a teenager he was on a bus:
Steve told a story of a young person surviving the massacre of Christians on a bus, where any Muslims had been told to get off before the remaining Christians were killed. At each stage of this dreadful process his friend said, ‘No one said anything’….
I suppose when we pray for people with stories like that we are saying something about their suffering. And standing with them in prayer.
That is almost certainly the context for this parable. By the time Luke wrote his gospel, Christians were experiencing persecution. So, the parable emphasises the need to pray always and not give up, and the widow’s persistent demand for justice.
Paul Worledge tells me you are near the end of series of straightforwardly wonderful parables from Luke like the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Also, some less straightforward ones like The Parable of the Shrewd Manager (who does wrong but is commended by Jesus).
You’ll have seen that usually with parables there is an element of surprise where things are shown to be not what we would expect (like in Luke’s story of The Good Samaritan in chapter 10, where the surprise is that the Samaritan is the righteous neighbour, not the priest or the Levite.
Next week is the final one in the series: the great Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector – one which definitely works in the classic way.
This one, I have called The Obvious Parable: The Persistent Widow and her Prayer
Obvious? Because the very first verse says:
18:1 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.
The cat is out the bag. Surely there is nothing more to say!
The potential trap with that is where someone like me comes along and so emphasises that we should always pray and not give up that it guilt trips us. Because so many of us struggle with prayer – don’t we?
So we go home feeling worse than when we got here. And that helps no one.
Because church is the Grace Zone. Where we experience God’s mercy and overflowing love, which makes us better people than we were before. So we go home feeling better than when we arrived, not worse. Even when God’s mercy and love – being so radical – is challenging.
I’ll say something practical about how we can learn to be even more faithful and persistent in prayer at the end, as a take away.)
What else can we find in this parable?
As well as the teaching that we should always pray and not give up?
Justice is emphasised
3 “Grant me justice against my adversary.”
7 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? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.
If, by the time Luke is writing this up, the church is experiencing persecution, this is why fairness or justice is emphasised. But
The parable is like a Cartoon
But finally (the judge) said to himself, “Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!”’ (Peter emphasised ‘bothering’ beautifully in the reading. 😊)
Or it could be translated she might come and slap me in the face!
Our Rabbi Jesus is telling us is: if persistence pays off in this cartoonish story, where this disgraceful and pathetic judge isn’t interested in serving justice, how much more is persistence due in prayer when we come before our loving and compassionate God?
Indeed, God’s character is implied
7 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? (’Will he not delay long?’ NRSV)
That very last phrase (‘keep putting them off’) is hard to translate. The word used by Luke is often translated ‘patience’ or ‘longsuffering’. It is a compound word, with two parts. It literally means: ‘He pushes anger far away’. This tells us something important about who God is. (This insight comes from Kenneth Bailey.)
Just because we are being treated badly – let’s imagine we are being bullied – and we feel angry – and it’s not an ego-driven anger, but a right-thinking anger – that doesn’t mean that in the rest of life we are as pure as the driven snow either. For us, who are in Christ, God is love and only love because he pushes his anger far away in Jesus – who dies for our sins and rises again that we may have new life in him.
In that way this parable is very clear. God is our faithful God of love and justice.
Isaiah 61.8 says ‘I, the LORD, love justice. This like saying ‘God is justice, like we often say, ‘God is love’.
61.1 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor
These are no random verses because in this same gospel (in chapter 4) they are the verses Jesus adopts to describe his own mission.
And, a little bit more below the surface…
A woman is the hero
- Middle Eastern culture was then, as it is now, in certain respects, one of deference and respect towards women. (I am not saying in all respects.)
- Who are then protected – and can get away with more than men.
- In the parable, a persistent man would have been removed at once, possibly very forcibly.
- But not a woman.
This is why it was the women who gathered around the cross of Jesus at the end. Any men would have been arrested. (John, the beloved disciple in John’s gospel, got a free pass, as he was both known to the High Priest (Jn 18.15) and younger.)
So, this woman models for all of us confident, persistent prayer.
(My then vicar said to me, 40 years ago, ‘The church will be renewed through the prayers of faithful women’. I have not seen anything to counter that claim. A challenge to some of us men. 😊)
So persistence in prayer is often needed
Keeping praying about the same thing is the thing to do, right up to the point there is an answer. If God says ‘no’ or provides a way forward different from the one we were planning on, as faithful pray-ers we say ‘Thank you Lord, your will be done’. But up to that point persisting in prayer is part of being faithful.
Unlike in the parable, we pray from within that relationship of love – covenanted loving-kindness – with our heavenly Father.
The final note of this parable: we have hope
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Martin Luther King could easily have added, ‘And towards the Kingdom of God’. History is not random and it has an end goal, in the Kingdom of justice and love. God will bring about justice for his chosen ones (‘putting his anger far away’) as he reaches out to us in love. But:
We need to stay on our toes
Because of that wistful final sentence, ‘When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?’
Will he find faith here, among us?
Here’s the practical thing, the take away
Which works for Prayer and any spiritual practice (such as Bible reading, coming to church, serving, being in a small group, etc.)
To be faithful in prayer, and persistent, and to be changed in the process, our prayer needs to become our daily habit. Like brushing your teeth is a daily habit…and you feel bad if you forget. ☹
So how does prayer become habitual, so that it changes us and becomes part pf us? The 80% rule.
Let’s say your hope is to pray for 10 minutes every day.
If in practice you pull it off 80% of the time:
- that plan is right for you
- it will become your habit, so that when you miss it you feel you’re missing out
- it will change you as a person so that it becomes deeply part of who you are
- In that way the Spirit is at work in you
If in practice you don’t pull it off 80% of the time:
- that plan – 10 minutes a day, every day – is not right for you at this time
- There’s no guilt about this. You just need to set a more modest target which does work for you 80% of the time. 5 minutes? 2 minutes?
- This this means that we change with the reality and rhythm of our lives. What I can do now is very different from when I was the Dad of 3 children under 5 – let alone what my wife could do then! So we change.
When we do hit our target 80% of the time, the habit grows, prayer becomes more ‘us’, who we are, and we become more thirsty for God. The godly habit then can flex and grow as you are led by the Spirit.
Then we will be those who are faithful and persist in prayer, as the parable says.
That way, when the Son of Man comes…he will find faith on earth.
St. George's Church Ramsgate 