22st Sunday after Pentecost, 10/20/2013

Sermon on Luke 18:1-8, by Carl A. Voges

The Passage

"And he (Jesus) told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, "Give me justice against my adversary." For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, "Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming."
And the Lord said, ‘ Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?' [English Standard Version]

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." [2 Timothy 3.16-17]

In the Name of Christ + Jesus our Lord

While the weather systems are moving one season of the year into another one, while people consider anxiously what may happen in Syria and Iran, while television programming celebrates writing and acting that reflects only the dark side of human nature, while people look dubiously at the economy in which they find themselves, the Lord God breaks into our lives today and pushes us to seriously look at the Life he has given us. He knows how persistent we are with what we want or need (we have learned that skill from birth!). This morning he transforms that natural persistence from wants and needs to the Life given us in his Scriptures and Sacraments. This Life is expressed fully in the Church's prayer (and worship) life. As we work through today's Gospel we will see how such a life can be filled with persistence.

Luke relates a parable of Jesus that encourages his followers to keep on praying and to not grow weary of it. The Greek sense of this encouragement does not mean to pray without interruption and without ceasing through all the days and nights of each week. Instead, this encouragement means to pray regularly and with persistence from the point of Jesus' crucifixion, resurrection and ascension to his return at the End-of-Time. His followers are not to become discouraged or give up if their prayers are not answered immediately!

In verses 2-5 we are introduced first to a judge who does not fear the Lord God or respect people. By saying the judge does not fear the Lord, Jesus is indicating that the judge is a pagan. The judge's lack of respect for people shows itself in a lack of shame in his relationships with others (he honestly does not care how he treats others!). These verses also introduce us to a persistent widow. Her behavior is almost as unusual as the judge's because she is going against the attitude of the culture by pestering him so much. The surprise in these verses is that the persistent widow wins! The judge waits a long time before he acts. Even though he does not fear the Lord God or respect people, he finally decides to make things right for this poor widow because of her persistence!

In verses 6-8 Jesus calls us to notice the judge's attitude and his subsequent actions. The difficulty is that this judge is a figure for the Lord God (this is similar to the difficulty we had when Jesus was praising a dishonest manager!). The judge, who does not fear the Lord or respect people, apparently does care about his reputation when he is pushed by a shameless, persistent widow! In a similar way the Lord God will be true to himself and to his Word - the time of making things right for his faithful saints will come! Even though the making right of such things may be delayed, it will occur because the Lord is patient and faithful.

If the judge in the parable, whose reputation is that of shamelessness, finally succumbs to a widow's persistence and makes things right for her, how much more will the Lord God, whose reputation is one of mercy and compassion, make things right for his baptized people? The Lord will do this because he has promised salvation to the baptized persons who cry to him day and night. The Lord will make things right for people who cry to him steadily in their suffering, not just because of their persistent prayers and cries, but also because he is merciful and compassionate. The Lord has every right to punish his people because of their sins, but he is patient and faithful as they journey from Baptism through this world's life to eternity.

The Lord's people are declared holy in the Son (they become his saints), but sin dwells in their minds, bodies and spirits, producing all kinds of transgressions. As these people wait for the Lord's coming at the End-of-Time, they cry out to him steadily because of the suffering they experience by living in a world that is still in slavery to the unholy trio of sin, Satan and death. Such people pray, confident that the Lord God will make things right for them and for all his faithful people.

Why do these people pray continually and confidently? So that when the Son of Man comes, he will find faith on earth. The persistent prayers of saints and sinners that the Lord's kingdom will come to relieve them from their suffering is a sign in the world of the faith that Jesus is describing. As we pull away from this passage to catch its full impact on our lives today, we see our Lord encouraging his people to pray continually and confidently in this long time between his Ascension to Father and his return at the End-of-Time.

What kind of prayer are we to use? The prayer that is evident in our culture? All of us have run into situations where our friends, because they do not believe in the Church's sacraments, basically turn prayer into a sacrament! For them, prayer is the way to inform the Lord God of what they want and need. They are eager, too, to involve more people in those prayers, believing that the Lord God will respond more quickly to eighty-seven prayers rather than just one or two! Such prayers tend to get blurted out whenever a situation calls for one. The weakness of such praying is that it tends to revolves only around what we need or want.

Our Lord, however, is speaking of the prayer that was evident in the Jewish tradition.

From biblical studies we know that the tradition provided seven periods of prayer in a twenty-four hour day (the periods are mentioned near the end of Psalm 119). Following Jesus' ministry after the Ascension, those periods were maintained and re-worked by the early Church. From liturgical studies we know that by the middle of the 200s these periods of prayer had become times in the day to remember the saving work of Jesus Christ, ranging from his condemnation to his resurrection (dawn to darkness). The practice of these prayer periods became more complicated and elaborate as the Church moved into the Middle Ages (prayer life, then, was essentially maintained in monastic communities). When the Lord God re-asserted his saving Gospel through the work of Martin Luther and his colleagues, the reformers simplified those prayer periods, opening them to parish use during mornings and evenings. This reforming activity picked up again nineteen years ago when a new Lutheran prayer-book, For All The Saints, was published by the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau. This four-volume book, in many healthy ways, runs against the culture in which we live. This occurs because the prayer-book reflects, not the needs and wants of this culture, but the Church's understanding and practice of prayer throughout its tradition.

Prayer understood from the Church's tradition serves to build up and encourage the Lord's people in this long time between the Ascension and the End-of-Time. It is more work than prayer from the culture, but notice its very different components. First, prayer is a response to what the Lord God has done in the Son's dying and rising for us and the world's people. Second, what best drives our prayers are the biblical readings, otherwise the unholy trio will see to it that the prayers are driven only by what we want or need, ignoring the faith that is to surface at the End-of-Time. Third, prayer permits us to surface the matters that burden us, re-stating the centrality and dominance of the Lord's Life in our own while exposing us to the Psalms and large portions of the Scriptures. Fourth, such prayer is ignored by people who are not being impacted with the Lord's holy realities, by people who are totally wrapped up in themselves, by people who think that prayer is just a good idea, by people who lean only on the habits of their culture.

This is why our Lord has broken into our lives today and pushed us take a serious look at the Life he has given us. He would transform our parish communities to faithfully reflect the Church's prayer (and worship) life. This will build up the persistence he is describing and it will strengthen his people to withstand the pushing around by the unholy trio, a trio that is determined to wreck the Life given the Lord's people at Baptism. There are a number of people within and outside our parishes who will be deeply grateful.

Now may the peace of the Lord God, which is beyond all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through Christ + Jesus our Lord.

Pr. Carl A. Voges
Columbia, SC;
E-Mail: carl.voges4@icloud.com

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