Invitation to a Life of Faith

17 October 2016 | Luke 18:1-8
The Importunate Widow

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 opponent.’ 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?”

We go to God because we have no control. He invites us to relationship in prayer. The life in prayer brings faith in action.

1. We go to God because we have no control.

In tonight’s Gospel, Jesus uses an adverse comparison to make us think – a method which he seems to have used fairly frequently. Here, in this story, we have a widow who is, she believes, being mistreated. She tries to get a judge to hear her case and decide in her favor, but he pays her no attention. The judge is described as an unprincipled public official – one who has “no fear of God (or) respect for anyone else.” Nonetheless, the widow keeps bothering him, knocking on his door, sending him e-mails, ambushing him on the way to his office. Finally, just to get her off his back, he does what she needs.

This judge is an unprincipled criminal, Jesus says. Yet even he will pay attention to the widow sooner or later.

And what, he asks, do you think God will do for those whom he loves – won’t he be at least as good, or better than that?

We all understand what feelings Jesus was speaking to. We pray for things, and we don’t see why God doesn’t take care of what we ask. If he loves us, we say, why don’t we get what we think we need or want? It’s a serious question – in fact, the entry question of prayer. A lot of people give up on God because they can’t answer the question. Many of the rest of us have a sinking feeling or a feeling of guilt because of it. We must be doing something wrong. We must not have enough faith. Otherwise what we want would be happening.

We go to God in prayer because so much of life that is important seems beyond our control and we need him to help us. Yet we feel that he does not hear our plea, — or worse, chooses not to act to make things right.

And Jesus says, “Of course he loves you. Of course he is acting. Do you think someone who loves you and cares for every hair on your head will not do at least as well as this crooked judge?” This answer may or may not feel satisfactory to us.

We go to God because we have no control.

2. He invites us to relationship in prayer.

So, Jesus, how am I to respond to this assertion? What I asked for – I don’t see it happening. You are inviting me to keep asking, to be as rigorous and persistent in my prayer as that widow was, even though I see no results.

And here is the crucial time. If I am praying to a God who loves me, and if I am doing that persistently, what can happen?

What is going on here is the development of a relationship in the spirit. My voice, my feelings, my intentions, my desires are no longer the only agenda. There is a kind of a conversation.

To be sure, Jesus says, judgement is immediately established. That is, God’s truth and accurate judgement are his nature and character. Whenever we speak with him we are speaking to fairness and truth itself. Fortunately for us, it is tempered by his love and kindness.

Still, if he’s on our side, why doesn’t he remedy the situation?

Are we condemned to live in continual disappointment?

Or are we to take the next step of relationship – to believe in his self-sacrificing love and begin to look and listen. Prayer now becomes a dialogue. God may not be doing what we have designed for him to do. But he is the god of true judgement and fairness. We have the choice – whether we take it or not – of looking and listening at what is happening and trying to understand what he is doing.

Several days ago I talked with a young man who had awakened ten days before to find that his left side seemed paralyzed. It was a terrifying event. He stumbled and fell. He could not move his left hand or fingers. It seemed like a tumor, a stroke. We all pray something like this will not happen, that it was not true. He was rushed to the emergency room, to surgery. It turned out to have been an abscess in his skull rather than a tumor, and the prognosis for recovery was good. I spoke to him days after the surgery in the hospital. He was thinking of the people who had cared for him, minute by minute; of the love which he and his wife had shared during the time; of the conversations and thoughts about how they wanted to be living their life that they had been given.   He wept as he finished his story: “In the hardest moment of a life changing event,” he said, “you see God show up everywhere.”

We began with misery and a sense that the situation must be reversed. We now are receiving God’s mercy in ways we had not imagined.

We go to God because we have no control.

He invites us to relationship in prayer.

3. The life in prayer brings faith in action

Jesus tells the tale of this insistent widow and this unjust judge. He suggests that we, praying persistently, should expect that God will be at least as responsive to us as the crooked judge was to the widow: “And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?”

Then he slips in this little question: “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

All the time we’ve been acting as if this were God’s problem. God is on trial in our psyches. He says he is good, but he isn’t responding. That means either he isn’t really there, or he isn’t a responding type God, or somehow we have asked or acted improperly and aren’t getting a response.

But Jesus asks – he just suggests – that there may be something else going on here. This whole thing may be about something else. The emerging question is, are we going to be involved in God’s enterprise, or are we just expecting him to be the hero in our drama?

We begin by asking God to help us in a situation that is beyond our control. He invites us into a deeper and more constant prayer and we begin to listen. Then, perhaps, we begin to see his mercy and even to see in advance where God is going. Our eyes are opened in faith.

And when our eyes are opened in faith, we may find ourselves acting in faith – in what we see God is doing. Our agenda becomes his and we become change agents, daily transformed and a part of the world’s transformation in hope.

Faith is not separate from action. Faith is manifested in action. It is not a mental exercise. It is seeing something that is not yet and walking into it – and in the process, helping it to become.

I’m thinking we prayed about the racial segregation of Richmond – thousands prayed, with thousands of ancestors, for decades and decades. God gave us Richmond Hill, a vision to walk into in faith. Not just prayer –——- a Place of prayer. Then more prayer. What action comes from this? Many actions? As we listen in prayer we look in faith and try to walk into God’s answer.

There is no such thing as faith without works or action. Action is the unleashing of faith into life. Faith is not a set of words – it is finding the path along the cliff and walking on it; it is looking for the door hidden in the wall and walking through it; it is hearing a song in the darkness and walking toward it; it is knowing there is a way and seeing it emerge.

We go to God because we have no control.

He invites us to relationship in prayer.

The life in prayer brings faith in action.

When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

AMEN

The Rev. B. P. Campbell
Richmond Hill, Richmond, Virginia