Sunday Service 6th October
Call to worship
What does the Lord require of you?
To do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with our God.
What does God command of us?
To love God with all our heart,
and all our soul,
and all our mind,
and all our strength,
and to love our neighbour as ourselves.
Let us worship the God who believes in us,
and trusts in us, and abides with us.
Let us worship the God who will ask much of us,
but will be beside us every step of the way.
Sermon
I remember one day when, after school, mum and my brother and sister and I were in Stirling. We were walking along Murray Place towards King Street. At every shop window, my brother announced “I want…” and name some item in the window. I want, I want, I want. His demands were relentless and highly annoying. As a big sister, it was my role to shut him up – to no avail. His demands became louder and more insistent.
Eventually, on the corner of King Street, outside Gavin’s clothes shop my mum stopped, bent down to his eye level and gave him the row of his life – “If I hear “I want” one more time, you’ll…”.
And then she went nuclear. “Just wait til you get home, and dad hears about your behaviour.” Silence.
We walked about 10 steps up King Street, when a voice said, “Mum, can I get….”
It reminds me of today’s passage where we read the parable of the persistent widow from the gospel of Luke.
The poor widow just wants justice.
To be a widow in the ancient Near East was to be among the most vulnerable of society. As a widow, this woman would have had no advocate, no social standing upon which to plead her case. She had not only lost her husband, but evidently there was no family left to support or to sustain her. She was helpless. She had no voice, no influence, no future.
She was one of far too many who were living on the edge of society, overlooked, ignored, forgotten. She turns to the one person who might have helped her but instead found more rejection.
The judge is a bad man. He doesn’t fear God or respect people. He admits it.
He actually says, “I don’t fear God or respect people.” He gives her what she wants in the end but only because she keeps bothering him and he wants to be done with her.
This is not an easy parable. It makes me uncomfortable. Is God the judge? I can imagine God as a fair judge—a kind judge.
In Exodus we are told “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth” Exodus 34:6 or from the Psalms “Good and upright is the Lord, Psalm 25:8 and so on.
But the judge in this story is not good. He tells us himself he has no fear of God and no respect for anyone and that he will give the widow justice to stop her from annoying her rather than because it is the right thing to do.
He recognises the justice in her case, but only gives her it to stop her annoying him, not because it is the just thing.
This does not sound at all like God. But it does sound a bit like people I know. In fact, I can recognise myself a bit – doing something to stop an annoyance rather than because it is the right thing to do. Perhaps this resonates – uncomfortably – with you too?
Perhaps the unjust judge is inside each of us, waiting for a persistent widow to wear us down, to force us to do the right thing?
It is something for us to think about.
So what is this parable about?
Luke tells us in verse 1. He tells us how important it is to pray and to not give up.
Well, yes. We know that. We’ve been told that since Adam was a boy – in a manner of speaking. And we agree. But….
But there is a little niggle there, isn’t there? What about all the times when our earnest, heartfelt prayers have not been answered?
Sometimes it’s easy to see, especially in hindsight, why God doesn’t give us all the things we pray for. God is not going to give you anything that is bad for you, even if you ask for it, even if you ask for it 100 times a day for 100 days.
But what about the prayers for things that are reasonable? What about hungry people who are just praying for something to eat? What about people who are being abused and they want it to stop? What about praying for peace? And so on.
The unrighteous judge eventually does what is right, but only because this nagging woman has made him feel trapped. He does not respond out of a changed heart.