Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24C)

October 16, 2022

Text: Luke 18:1-8

            You hurt.  And you pray, and you pray, day and night.  And it seems like God is ignoring you.  Can He hear you?  Does He even care?  You are sick.  Or a loved one is sick.  Your marriage is hurting.  A beloved child is wandering a destructive path, rejecting your advice, rejecting your love, rejecting you, rejecting God.  Your spouse has died, leaving you to struggle with loneliness and grief.  You are anxious about your job.  You are anxious about providing for your family, for yourself.  Inflation.  Lack of resources.  A nation of 24/7 alarmism, and us-against-them-ism.  Whatever your pain.  Whatever your worries.  Whatever it is that keeps you up at night.  The evil onslaughts of the devil, the pandemonium of a world hell-bent of self-destruction, your own rebellious heart of sinful flesh.  Night and day, you pray, and you pray.  And… all too often, nothing.  Seems like, anyway.  What will You do, God?  When will You do it, God?  How long, O Lord, how long?  “Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?” (Ps. 13:1; ESV). 

            This morning, Jesus tells you a parable to the effect that you “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1).  In this story, the widow stands in for you, for the elect (v. 7), for Jesus’ disciples, for His Church.  She cries out to the judge, day and night.  She pesters him, privately and publicly.  She keeps on coming to him, presenting her petition, “Give me justice against my adversary” (v. 3), or, we could render it, Justify me against my anti-justifier.  Do you see what Jesus is doing here?  On the face of it, this story is about a woman who is pleading for legal help against an oppressor.  But by careful use of language, you may read this, quite literally, as your plea to God for justification against the very devil, your anti-justifier, and by extension, all that is evil, all the things that hurt you, or deceive you, or mislead you into false belief, or despair, and other great shame and vice.  This story is about you praying the Lord’s Prayer, and the Kyrie, and the Psalms, and the other great prayers and hymns of the Church, and the pleadings and sighs and groans of your own mind and heart.

            The judge in the parable, well… who is he?  In this case, he is not exactly a figure for God.  Remember, he is unjust.  That is, unrighteous.  He doesn’t care about justice.  He doesn’t care about the widow, or the poor, or the fatherless, or the oppressed.  He fears neither God, nor man.  All he cares about is his prestige, and his own honor and reputation in the community.  In other words, he’s a politician.  And the only reason he finally gives this poor widow a hearing is so that she will not “beat me down,” literally, “beat me black and blue,” “by her continual coming” (v. 5); that is, make me look bad in front of my constituents.  After all, I want them to think that I fear God, and respect them, and care about widows and justice and babies and kittens and all that sort of thing.

            Well, that is not a picture of God.  This is actually a comparison of opposites.  Jesus’ point is, if even this unrighteous judge eventually relents and grants justice to this persistent, helpless widow, surely God, who is Justice in Himself, and the Justification of all who believe in His Son, Jesus Christ… surely He will give justice… justification… to His elect who cry out to Him day and night (v. 7).  It is unreasonable, and unfair, to expect that God will fail to provide for His people, what even this unrighteous judge provides for the widow.

            But there is another reason Jesus uses the figure of the unrighteous judge in His story.  It is true that in our finite flesh and concrete experience, as circumstances appear to our limited bodily senses… it seems like God is an unrighteous Judge, who doesn’t care about us, and isn’t particularly interested in hearing our petitions, or helping us, never mind justifying us, against our enemies.  I mean, we pray and we pray, and what?  Nothing.  Seems like.  Still sadness.  Still anxiety.  Still all the troubles in the world, and in the country, and in my life, and in my relationships.  “Truly, you are a God who hides himself,” Isaiah says (Is. 45:15).  “O LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived,” complains Jeremiah (Jer. 20:7); “you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed.  I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me.”  In any number of Psalms, King David and others cry out, “How long, O LORD?”  Will You forget me forever (Ps. 13:1)?  Why do You look on while my enemies afflict me?  How long until You rescue me from their destruction (35:17)?  Will You be angry forever?  Will Your jealousy burn like fire (79:5)?  Will You hide yourself forever?  How long will Your wrath burn (89:46)?  Like the disciples in the storm-tossed boat, we cry, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38).  Why are you sleeping while the sea swallows us whole?  Like Job, we lament, “For the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me” (Job 6:4).

            What is He doing?  Why can’t things just be easier?  We cry to God for help, and bam, He delivers a miracle, and we both go on our merry way?  Well, it sounds nice, but if God worked that way, like a miraculous vending machine, just plug your prayer into the little slot, what kind of relationship do you think we would have with Him?  How long do you think we selfish sinners would continue to depend on Him in any real way, other than when the really bad stuff happens?  Most of the world already lives that way, calling upon God when things get really bad, but otherwise living as though He doesn’t exist.  They depend on themselves and their own pantheon of false gods to get them through.  God sends you crosses and suffering to bring you to the end of all that.  He sends you crosses and suffering to drive you to Himself in faith and in prayer, as though He is all you have left, because He is all you have left, and all you’ve really ever had.  And He is the only One who can help you and save you.  Suffering is not a sadistic exercise for God’s enjoyment.  It is a concrete preaching of the Law that rips away your idols.  It leaves you naked, bleeding, dying, and dead.  That He may resurrect you!  And He alone can do it.  For He is the risen One.  He was crucified, but now He is risen from the dead.

            And so, like Job, in the very midst of the pain and sorrow, even as your prayers seemingly go unheard and unanswered, you confess, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (19:25-27).  You cry out and lament to God, precisely because you know this.  In spite of all appearances.  In spite of your fleshly knowledge and experience.  The Holy Spirit has given you to know and believe this.  By the Scriptures.  By the preaching of the Gospel.  In Baptism and Supper.  Jesus died for you, to redeem you from sin, death, and the devil.  From all that hurts you and oppresses you.  He died, to redeem you from hell itself.  And He is risen from the dead.  Your Redeemer lives!  And that is your justification against your anti-justifier and all his hellish horde.  And one day, after your skin has been thus destroyed, after you’ve decomposed and returned to the dust from whence you came… the Risen One will raise you.  And you shall see Him for yourself, and your eyes shall behold Him, and not another.  And that will be the final revelation and realization of the verdict from on high: You are justified.  And your adversary, your anti-justifier, can go to hell, with every evil thing that deigned to rob you of your faith and life in Jesus Christ.

            And that is the point of the parable.  Keep praying.  Keep hoping.  Real hope that places all confidence in Jesus Christ who is risen from the dead.  Trust the Promise.  Do not lose heart.  For things are not as they appear.  God does love you.  He does hear your prayers.  And He does answer.  He delivers you.  He justifies you.  And that, speedily, Jesus says.  Well, you have to deal with at least three things with regard to that word.  First of all, God’s perspective on time is quite different than yours.  To Him, “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).  In comparison with eternity, a thousand years are a drop in the ocean, never mind the few years of your life.  So it seems like forever, from your perspective, before God acts, but from His perspective (which is the true and unskewed perspective), His answer is immediate.  Second, you know well and good that God’s timing is not your timing, and God’s ways are not your ways.  His timing and ways are so much better than yours.  And third, just as important, but perhaps most comforting: God already has provided your justification against your anti-justifier, and all his works, and all his ways.  His answer is Christ.  And, in fact, that is true in the past, in the present, and in the future.  Christ died for your redemption on the cross, and He has been raised for your justification.  That is accomplished fact, what objectively happened in the past.  And now, presently, He comes to you, in the flesh, in His Word, and in His Sacraments.  He baptizes you into Himself.  He absolves you of your sins.  And He feeds you with His true body and blood, given and shed for your forgiveness, risen and living for your life and salvation.  He consoles you by the means, and gives you His Holy Spirit, and faith, and peace, and joy, in the sure confidence that God is for you against all your enemies.  And in the future, at a time known only to God, Jesus will come again visibly, to deliver you finally and fully from all your oppressors.  He will raise you and all the dead, and what will He do then?  He will judge.  And that, justly.  The unrighteous judge, and all who would not fear God and who trampled on widows, the persecutors of the Church, sickness and pain, death and demons, and the anti-justifier-in-chief, Satan, will be cast eternally into the Lake of Fire.  But you, and all whose sins have been washed away by the blood of Jesus… You, and all who are baptized and believe in the Son of God who became flesh to be the Sacrifice of atonement for your sins… You, who know that your Redeemer lives, and so cry out to Him day and night for justification… You will be given a home and place in the New Creation, the new heavens and the new earth, in your risen and, for the first time, whole and healthy body.  With your loved ones who died in Christ, in their risen and, for the first time, whole and healthy bodies.  To live with Jesus forever.  With your Father.  With His Spirit.  In fact, God will take away all your pain, once and for all.  He will wipe every tear from your eye (Rev. 7:17; 21:4).  That you may see clearly, with your own risen eyeballs, your Redeemer, who lives, standing upon the earth.

            When that future answer comes to pass… When “the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (v. 8).  It’s a rhetorical question.  He will.  He will find you, whom He has preserved by His Word and Spirit.  He will find you… hurting, but praying!  Crying out, lamenting, but commending all things to God.  He will find you waiting.  Trusting.  Hoping.  Sometimes patiently.  Sometimes not so patiently.  But not losing heart.  Persistently making your petitions before our Father, who art in heaven.  Because you know Christ is risen.  So it is only a matter of time.  God will deliver you.  Speedily.  How long, O Lord, how long?  Soon, My child.  Soon.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.