Last time I spoke to you it was about the parable of the shrewd manager that seemed open to many interpretations, and the obvious one was not what Jesus was talking about. Preparing this sermon, I wondered if God were trying to test the faith of this congregation, by listening to me once more struggle through a very difficult parable. But let’s flip that over. I should be humbled and honoured that God has faith in me and is opening my heart and my mind to try to bring an interpretation of His word to you.
Again with the parable of the hateful the most obvious interpretation is not what Jesus is suggesting. The first impression one gets of the judge is that he isn’t remotely interested in the widow and her pleas for justice. Again we must think of the time in which the story is set. Women had few rights and appearing in court was not one of them. Usually the husband would speak on her behalf but the widow does not have that privilege. This woman comes to court every day badgering the judge until he finally gives in. Taking this parable at face value without exploring it deeply might give one to think that Jesus tells us God is really not interested in us or our problems. He’d rather we just stayed away and left him alone. But if we badger him and pester Him, He will finally say Enough! and give us what we want just so we don’t bother him anymore. I think we all understand that is not what Jesus is saying at all.
Commentators on this passage from Luke suggest there are two very different interpretations of what Jesus is saying in this parable. Those who see it as the parable of the hateful manager consider us to be the widow and God is the judge. After all are we not supposed to appeal to God to intercede in our lives. In Matthew 7:7, Jesus says “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
But what does persistent prayer mean? Obviously not that we browbeat God into giving in to what we want. When we pray we sometimes only see in the moment. We ask for a “quick fix” for the problem at hand and don’t always see the big picture. We might be stressed out or crying out in pain with raw emotions, not even knowing what we really want. C. S. Lewis describes this as being like a child knocking on the door and yelling and screaming to be let in. God is likely going to say “come back later when you cool off and you are ready to listen to what I have to say. “Be careful what you pray for, you might get it,” may sound like a very frivolous statement, but it bears serious thought. God hears our prayers but He answers them in his time and in his way. What frustrates us is that God’s ways are not our ways and God’s time certainly isn’t ours.
In 1988 when we brought Evelyn to Canada from the Philippines we believed she was answered prayer. She had been our Foster Child through Plan Canada but now she was going to be our real daughter. We were going to adopt her and become a real family at last. But she turned out not to be a person we wanted in our family. She had very different values from ours. The relationship ended very bitterly and we were badly hurt. Did God answer our prayers just to set us up to get hurt? In anger we might have thought that but we all know our God is love and would never do that. But what He did intend is harder to understand and perhaps we may never total understand His ways. We know coming to Canada gave her a better lie and she was able to supply help to her family back home. I also know it made my wife and me much more compassionate towards people from Third World Countries who struggle with the language and culture of our country. My wife and I have been very active in adult literacy and tutoring others struggling with English and adapting themselves to life in Canada.
Did God intend this experience not to make us a family but to use us as His instrument to help others adapt to life in this great country of ours? Perhaps sometime if we have a chance to chat beyond the pearly gates I can ask Him.Or maybe He has already told me but I was not of the right mindset to hear his answers. Sometimes we can become swallowed in self-pity, guilt or even focussed on what we want for us or the problem that might be at hand and become deaf to anything else.
We can pray sometimes for healing especially for someone who is terminally ill or for someone whose body has been worn down by the ravages of disease or old age. If they die does that mean prayer was not answered? As Christians we believe death frees us from all diseases and ailments of our physical body and releases our souls for eternal life. Death is a form of healing even if not the kind we might pray for.
I don’t think Jesus is asking us to make our list of demands again and again focussing on the “I want”. Sometimes we want something today but with sober reflection know this isn’t really what we want at all. Or we ask for something that is not realistic. I remember as a child wanting to do something very badly on a Saturday or Sunday. I would pray the night before “please God let the sun shine tomorrow. Well if it rained the next day did that mean God was some mean old man who ignored a child’s prayer?
This is not to suggest that some are not answered nor is it wrong to pray for others keeping in mind that it is God’s will how that prayer might be answered. We can witness in Flin Flon the wonderful healing of Pastor Jim Christianson after his bout with leukemia and I sure that others can share stories of healing that seems borne on the wings of prayer.
But we must remember that prayer should be simple. The widow does not come with a long list of requests. She asks simply.” Grant me justice against my opponent.” We must be faithful and as Paul writes to Timothy be “persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable.”
Persistence in faith means that we must say that we must accept God’s will be done. That way we will not be disappointed or give up on Him when we don’t get our way.” In these case we need to ask for strength and guidance to overcome our disappointments or hurts and be persistent in our determination that God will not forsake us and answer prayer.
Let’s now flip this parable around. It can be read that God is the widow and we are the judge. This parable has even been called The Parable of the Persistent widow. Justice is frequently elusive and takes years and even decades to come about. We must be like the widow and be relentless in bringing God’s justice. “Thy kingdom come” are words we repeat weekly in the Lord’s Prayer, but what are we doing to see this comes about? We certainly can make excuses. “The problem is too big. I’m only one person. What can I do? But individuals can respond realizing that some issues of justice take time and the foundations laid today make many years to come about.
I recently watched a movie on Pope John Paul II. The movie chronicles the time in July 1983 when he was given permission to visit Poland. The Communist regime was very repressive at this time and the country was living under martial law. Ironically no one to this day really understands why the government even allowed this visit to take place. But the results changed history. The Pope spoke about the importance of freedom and how this was impossible without Solidarity. The birth of the Solidarity movement began and just six years later free elections were held in Poland for the first time since the Second World War. Pope John Paul was credited with inspiring the Solidarity movement which changed the entire political climate of Poland. He is credited with having a major impact on the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991.
Unfortunately today the Church per se has gotten a bad name. We read of how clergy have abused vulnerable people left in their care. Many who are ignorant of the work of the Christian Church to condemn churches outright without understanding the major role they have played in crying out against injustice and in fact bringing about change. The Christian Church organized the first hospitals and orphanages. They founded schools so that education could become universal and not just belong to a privileged few.
Some of the earliest proponents of the abolition of slavery were Christians – some of them clergy who were going against the tide of their times. The Christian church is far from perfect but this doesn’t mean we should condemn the entire work of our church because of the actions of a few. Jesus is correct when He instructs his followers that persistence is necessary to bring about important changes. English parliamentary democracy which we enjoy took almost five hundred years to evolve.
While much has been done more is required and we Christians are called upon to be advocates for change. Recently a United Nations fact finding mission noted the status of Canada’s relationship with our Aboriginal people was in a state of crisis and cited examples of treaties that have been violated, the high rate of suicide amongst First Nations people and the squalid condition that many families live in. Here in Flin Flon we need not be complacent. We have many homeless people and numbers using our food banks are on the rise.
Certainly giving short term help as we did last Sunday by donating to the food bank is important but Jesus calls us to do more than that. We need to be advocates for change. We cannot deny this is what Jesus would have us do. In Matthew 25:35 Jesus says “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me.” It is clear how Jesus sees what our mission is.
The parable of the hateful judge, or the persistent widow is not about pestering God with meaningless prayers that may not be well thought out or what we want at the moment and are not what God plans for us. But Jesus is reminding us that we must be faithful and never give up on God who will offer us strength and comfort if what we ask of Him is not his will.
But the flip side of the parable is probably more important and it pricks our conscience. We have a duty to see God’s justice is done. Maybe all we can do at the time is offer love and strength to those who seem to be unfairly treated and defend them if necessary by people who gossip without understanding any of the facts. Being a Christian means we cannot turn our backs on the needy and we are required to search for justice knowing that God is with us and in the end His good will prevail.
