“1 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 about men. 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 about men, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!”
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?””
Math is wonderful because a two always does what you’d expect a two to do. Two of these twos always leads to four—every time. Five twos invariably lead to ten. Numbers are fixed states.
Relationships are not like that. A two might always do what you’d expect a two to do but a Sue doesn’t always do what you’d expect a Sue to do, and you don’t always do what even you would expect you to do.
Relationships are not easy to understand. It’s hard to explain what goes on between two people. Try to define a kiss. Graph a warm handshake. Flow chart the experience of taking your grandchild out for lunch. Relationships are not diagrammable and so it goes with our relationship with God—in tonight’s case the act of prayer. Attempts to diagram prayer into effectiveness is simply folly. Relationships don’t work that way. We’d be very wise to keep that in mind when we consider prayer. We are considering a relationship, not an equation.
Jesus is wiser than us all in these matters. He never gives equations for prayer. He teaches us prayer by way of stories about relationships—each designed to teach us a point. Tonight’s story has sone point. That’s how you eat an elephant—one bite at a time. That’s how you teach on something like prayer—one point at a time. Tonight’s point is the point of the parable: always pray; never give up praying. That’s the claim of this sermon.
We will study this in two points. First: the parable. Second: the purpose. First, in verses 2 through 5, the parable itself. Second, in verses 1 and 6-8, we see the purpose.
We see this call to persevere in story form in our first point: the parable. A relationship requires two and we see our two starting in verse 2, ‘In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary.”’
This judge was likely a Jew. The Romans were wise in leaving as much of politics to the locals as they safely could. This judge didn’t care much what anyone thought of him or his decisions. He was powerful enough to be insulated from any repercussions. He did he wanted and no one was able to leverage him.
This judge didn’t care what God thought. He was a law unto himself. This meant there was no appealing to his conscience and he felt no shame. That’s a disturbing individual in the ancient near east. Relationships are always delicate but the ancient near east turned this into an art. Giving and receiving honor, avoiding and removing shame was the oil which ran the machinery of social life. This judge didn’t care about playing nice.
The widow needs his help. She needs the help of a man who sees no point in helping. You are told about his indifference because this woman needs someone who will make a difference. She is being taken advantage of. She needs justice.
Widows were quite common in that day. Women usually married significantly older men. Given life expectancy, there were many young widows. Jewish stories of the day were filled with widows. These characters were usually in need—think Oliver Twist from Dickens. The Old Testament everywhere encourages caring for widows because they needed help. This one in Jesus’ story is no different, but the only one who can help her has no interest in doing so. He doesn’t care what God’s law said about widows. He didn’t care about her and him caring about her and her case was imperative to her survival. That’s the stakes at the beginning of the parable.
This widow is us. Jesus wants us to identify ourselves with her. Throughout our time in the parable, we’ve seen that our role is receiving. We are beggars. We are needy. We are to learn to be gracious receivers. We are to be receptive to God’s word. We are to receive whatever God gives.
Prayer is part of receiving and, here we are to see our cry for everything to be made right in her cry for everything to be made right. This world is an insensitive, inhumane system. It’s the same system we saw in the Exodus. I paired this series on the parables with the Exodus to contrast the system of the world with the kingdom of God. Our human situation in the world is, according to Jesus, like that of this vulnerable, needy widow. Life can strip any illusions we have that we aren’t like her away quite quickly. Jesus tells us this parable to teach us that the kingdom works differently from the world. The message of the parables is, “move! Move from the world to the kingdom.”
Back to the widow. There is no one above this judge to whom she can appeal. She has no leverage or persuasive power him. He doesn’t care if God curses him for not caring about her case. The only move she can make is—to use other language of Jesus on prayer—to ask, seek, and knock and then do it again and then do it again; that’s verse 3, she “kept coming.” He didn’t care; that’s verse 4, “For some time he refused.” He comes to work and asks, “who do we got today?” He’s told, “she’s here again.” He rolls his eyes and doesn’t care one way or the other.
She cares, though. She cares about justice; that’s her plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” It’s worth considering that nearly all our prayers have to do with justice—perhaps not justice as narrowly defined as her situation—but justice nonetheless. We pray because something isn’t right in our world and we want it right. That’s justice at its broadest. When you really pray for what seems truly needful to make life right, you are like this widow crying out.
You are doing so because you care. You can decide to stop caring and so stop praying. This parable tells you giving up would be unwise. It would be spiritual death. The widow kept coming. The judge didn’t care. The widow kept coming. The judge didn’t care. ‘But finally,’ Jesus tells us, ‘[the judge] said to himself, “Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!” That judge didn’t care about that widow’s situation. He didn’t care about her being in the right. He didn’t care what others would think at seeing this widow come back time and time again. He didn’t care what God thought about it. He gave her what was right because, and only because, she kept coming.
It’s like the second Rocky movie. In the first film, Rocky—as hopeless as this widow—fights the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Apollo Creed. Creed knocks Rocky down again and again but Rocky keeps getting back up. Rocky only loses narrowly by decision. In the second film, boxing fans demand a rematch. Apollo wants it, but his manager warns him, “I saw you beat that man like I never saw no man get beat before but the man kept coming after you. We don’t need that type of man in our life.” This judge operates on that same logic. “I don’t need that type of widow in my life,” and so he gives her what she wants to get rid of her.
She kept causing him trouble if you want to translate verse 5 literally. She kept coming after him. That’s the correspondence Jesus advocates in prayer. You keep coming. You always pray and you never give up and then you do it again and again. That’s the correspondence.
The correspondence between the judge and God the Father is that no one can make Him do anything. The Father is far more un-leverageable than that judge. If God doesn’t want to do something, it won’t happen and there is nothing anyone can do to change that. “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” as Romans 11:35 puts it. We saw that last week regarding mercy. If God didn’t want to give it, you’d never get it. God gives what God will give and the wise will be eternally grateful to receive what He gives. That’s the correspondence between the judge and God the Father.
The contrast has to do with caring. The judge didn’t care about that widow. The Father cares about us more than we can understand. The judge didn’t care about what was right. The Father is the standard of what’s right. The judge was bothered to see her again. The Father loves to us whenever we approach with sensible motives. The point is that if this uncaring judge responds to persistence, how much more will our Father in heaven respond to our prayers?
The point isn’t learning how to badger God. The point isn’t that God didn’t act because you only prayed 999 times and not 1,000. The point is the contrast between this un-leverageable judge who needs to be badgered and our un-leverageable who is just delighted to give better than we ask. The point isn’t to get God to finally get to work on our honey-do list. The point is that God knows and cares about what we need even before we do. It’s Daniel praying and then finding that God had already sent help before he started praying. It’s Moses asking for a helper when God had already sent Aaron. The point of this judge is to show you that the Father might be as un-leveragable but that’s fine because what the Father loves to do is give.
That needs to be said because Jesus only includes such a character in this cast because he knows that we secretly fear that his Father is like that judge. We secretly fear that God needs to be leveraged and we know we can’t pin Him down by anything we do. We secretly fear that God won’t do us good unless we nag Him. Jesus is telling us what his Father is like because he knows we don’t. We can dismiss his thoughts or we can change ours. That’s what we are doing when we open God’s word together—we are listening to God tell us about Himself and learning to believe what He says about Himself over what our fears say He’s like. That’s the point of the parable and we see more in our second point: why the parable was told.
There were many stories about widows in the ancient near east and many of these stories had to do with judges. Jesus was playing around with these themes to teach his listeners something about his Father who could be their Father too. He’s teaching them, and us, about the kingdom—the only viable alternative to this fallen, hostile, uncaring world.
Living in the kingdom isn’t like living under an uncaring judge. It’s like living with a giving Father. You see the contrast in verse 6-7, ‘And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?” What the unjust judge does begrudgingly, the Father does eagerly.
The Father is more interested in justice than me or you or Gandhi. That’s hard for us to understand because we don’t know why the Father doesn’t make it right, right now. We don’t understand why we need to plead our case to Him in the first place let alone keep asking, seeking, and knocking. We can approach an answer by way of the fall into sin, we could talk about the providence of God, we could talk about the hundreds of others purposes God is up to at any given moment, but let’s just return to our introduction to this sermon and remember that relationships are not like equations. We want a two plus two is four sort of answer to these questions but that’s not how relationships with anyone, including God, work.
Ask Job. Job is an ideal example because James connects him to the meaning of this parable about persevering in prayer; “will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?” James writes, “As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about.” Consider Job as the widow coming and continuing to come asking for justice.
That’s the sort of person this parable is for. It’s not for people who would rather consider the effectiveness of prayer on a graph than get down to praying. It’s not for people who are looking for ways to get God on board with their agenda. The parable is for people who are actually crying out to God as if their life depends on it—because it does—and need to be told that their praying matters.
God will act and their prayers will be seen to be part of it. What we’ve seen in the parables regarding warning for the wicked is true regarding waiting for the righteous. In the warning parables, life goes warning, warning, warning, and then seemingly without warning judgment is upon the wicked. In the waiting parables like this one, life goes waiting, waiting, waiting, and then with no wait fulfillment is upon the righteous. In hell, the wicked will say, “we had plenty of warning and then without warning judgment was upon us.” In glory, the righteous will say, “we had plenty of waiting and then with no wait at all fulfillment is upon us.”
That’s how it will seem looking back. That’s not how it seems now for Job, for that widow, or for us. That’s why Jesus tells us this parable so we will keep on praying; we will keep on relating to the Father because if we stop that, we’ve given up. The point of praying here in this parable isn’t so much about the object of your prayer as it is entering the kingdom. It’s about praying so that you look back on this life not from hell but from glory; that’s the end of the parable, “However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
That, in Jesus’ mind, is the only matter up for debate—whether you will have faith. The Father’s generosity, justice, or willingness—even eagerness—to give what’s needful is not, in Jesus’ mind, up for debate. That’s the certainty. We might question that, but my hope is that twenty-three weeks into the parables we see that Jesus knows the Father and everything in life better than we who are by nature ignorant and arrogant. That’s what we will recognize when we see God face to face. Like Job, we will consider our doubts as nonsense and even blasphemous. “How can I reply to you?” Job asks the Lord. “I put my hand over my mouth… Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” Jesus in this parable is telling us things to wonderful for us to know. Dismissing his urge to keep praying like Rocky getting back up from the mat is as ignorant and arrogant as you can get. Don’t go that route. “There is no doubting [the Father’s] power, goodness, and help,” as Jeremias puts it. “That is the final certainty. Your concern should be with a different matter: when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
You should be much more concerned about whether you’ll have faith at the end than you are with whether God will make it all come out right in the end. He’ll certainly make it all right. Whether you’ll have faith is not certain so make it your business to pray. That’s why should “pray and always pray and not give up” in the words of verse 1. Prayer is perhaps the pre-eminent expression of relationship with God. It is “the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us,” as the Catechism teaches. Prayer is relationship in action.
If you aren’t praying, you aren’t relating. Jesus doesn’t ask, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find people praying on the earth?” but rather, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” because prayer is the expression of faith just like song in this morning’s text. When you don’t relate with faith in the other, any relationship erodes. What Jesus is warning against here is the final indifference to relationship which stops relating at all. That can happen in marriage. That can happen in friendship. That can happen with God.
That’s why it is necessary for us to pray—always pray and never stop. That language in verse 1 is as emphatic as you can imagine. Woodenly translated, it says “it is necessary always to pray and never to lose heart.” You keep at it the way Rocky kept coming after Apollo Creed and then you get up and do it again. The question isn’t whether the Father cares. The question is whether I do. The question is whether you do. The application is obvious. Pray and don’t give up praying. Amen.