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October 17, 2004
A Pattern of Persistence
Luke 18:1-8
Hello Friends:
I am your Vita-meata-vegamin girl.
Are you tired, run-down, listless?
Do you leave parties early only to go home to catch up on sleep?
Are you unpopular?
The answer to all your problems is in this little bottle. Yes, with Vita-meata-vegamin, you can spoon your way to good health. All you do is take a great big spoonful after every meal.
Vita-meata-vegamin contains
Vitamins
Meat
Vegetables
And Minerals.
Mmmmm….. It's so tasty, too! Tastes just like candy! So, why don't you join all the happy, peppy people and get a big bottle of Vita-meata-vegamin today? (wink)
How many of you recognize this dialogue from an episode of the TV show "I Love Lucy?" In Episode #30 Ricky makes arrangements for Lucy to act in a TV commercial. The episode aired on May 5, 1952 during the show's first season.
It is easy for us to chuckle at Lucy's skit even as she becomes drunk from taking too much medicine in take after take. But each of us are aware of the real pain we face in our personal lives and that which we hear from our friends, see on our wide screen televisions, and read about in our weekly news magazines. What is the remedy for these kinds of illness for which there seems to be no vaccine?
"Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart." In this introductory sentence to the parable of the widow and the unjust judge Jesus tells the disciples to be persistent in prayer. In the parable that follows, Jesus shows the disciples the form or pattern by which to persist in prayer. In the story a widow stands up against an unjust judge who doesn't care about God and could care even less about the woman. "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people." "In that city there was also a widow who kept coming to [the judge] and saying, 'Grant me justice against my opponent.'"
The Hebrew word for widow translates as "One who is silent, one unable to speak." But this woman continually hurls her petitions against long periods of silence from a judge who refuses to listen to her case. While the judge remains silently resistant and wishes to keep the woman in her place, the widow is boldly persistent and refuses to remain silent. "Such persistence [Jesus calls] faith."
Quoting an elderly black preacher who spoke in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, the famed Rev. Dr. Fred Craddock writes, "Until you have stood for years knocking at a locked door, your knuckles bleeding, you do not really know what prayer is." Jesus knew what such persistent prayer is like; for Luke wrote that on the night of his betrayal Jesus prayed all night for deliverance from his own death. "In his anguish [Jesus] prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground."
The widow in the parable is in a Herculean struggle against a judge with the power to oppress her and to keep her in emotional pain. Each of us is in a persistent struggle against a judge of one kind or another. The elderly black preacher struggled against the judge of prejudice. Some are in a struggle with the indiscriminate judge of cancer. Others sit waiting in the courtroom of a judge who rules their bouts of depression.
Many have a child who is struggling with the judge of a crippling disease. Others cower under the judge of an abusive parent. Families across our world wrestle with the unfair judge of war, a war that will not listen to the cry for mercy. These are just a few examples of unjust judges that do not care about God and could care even less about us.
As feminist theologian Rita Brock writes, "To be alive today is to live with pain. For some of us, our pain is the daily struggle to survive and to find a safe place to live. Others of us work to lift oppressive barriers that silence us and batter us into submission." Brock continues by saying that, "For those unable to hope or to find one sustaining, [loving] relationship, a quiet, desolate loneliness defines the center of our existence, a center sometimes hidden by intense, aimless activity or hollow friendships." Furthermore she writes, "To live with our pain without some comprehension is to exist in the denial of pain or in the overwhelming, intractable presence of it. Both lead to despair… Our very survival depends on how we come to terms with our pain."
Reflecting on the words of Rita Brock, Jesus demonstrates in the telling of the parable how the widow's survival depends on the way she chooses to come to terms with her pain. How is she going to save herself before she can save others? Jesus holds up the widow as an example. "This is what you do to combat your pain. This is what you do to seek justice for yourself and others. It is not Lucy's medicine of Vita-meata-vegamin or any other kind of remedy that will ease your pain. The medicine you need to strengthen you and to keep you from 'losing heart' is persistence in prayer."
Once when I was in need of persistence because I was "losing heart." A friend recommended this book to me — Ten Poems that can change Your Life by Mary Oliver. The first poem speaks to the persistence we sometimes need to when we are going through a painful time. The poem is called The Journey.
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff cold fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
As the parable unfolds we discover that due to the woman's persistence in pursuing justice to save herself, the shameless and unjust judge says to himself, "Because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by her continually coming." Here, the literal translation of the Greek phrase is "she keeps bothering me," and is a boxing term that means "this person keeps coming at me." Coming at me. Coming at me. Steady persistence. The widow could only do what was within her power to do and she used her power to persist in her quest for justice.
One commentator of this parable wrote, "In this world it is easy to lose heart, but through a steady interaction with God we are able to overcome or resist the discouraging fare of daily life. [Many] critics call Christianity 'wishful-thinking,' but wishful-thinking is not necessarily unreal. A religion that holds a crucified suffering Messiah at its center is a long way from fantasy and permanent denial." According to Paul Achtemeier, "Persistence is being about the things of God.
Persistence continues to pray for God's kingdom… even when things seem to be heading resolutely in the wrong direction. In other words persistence in times like these." When the parable is finished in the closing verses of our scripture reading for today, Jesus reminds his hearers of the thoughts of the unjust judge by saying, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will God not grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?" A friend once told me "God is never early."
My brothers and sisters in Christ, the God in whom we have placed our faith is our only true judge. It is this God who sweat drops of blood in his persistent prayer on his way to the cross. Having every opportunity to resist he chose to persist; for God in Christ knew what he had to do, although "it was a wild night, and the road to the cross was full of fallen branches and stones." When Christ returns will he find faith on earth? Will such persistent faith be found in us today?
Amen.
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Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org
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