A typical morning for me starts with me saying “brush your
teeth, get dressed, eat your breakfast, get your shoes on …” and repeating this
many, many times. The truth is, parenting
requires a lot of trying to get people to do stuff: chores, manners, cleaning
up, homework, going to bed. Occasionally
I get to intersperse some permission giving which feels good: “yes, you can
have candy” “no, you don’t have to go”
“sure have a water balloon fight in the backyard in 60 degrees with your
new shoes on.”
These persuasive efforts do not end with parenting. “Would you like to join the PTA?” “Are you able to volunteer Friday morning at
7:30 am to put together tiny buildings and streets for kindergartners to ride
tricycles through and learn about safety?” or “I think you would really like
confirmation class” “you should try youth group it’s really fun” “I hope you
had a good visit and will come back to our church.” Some days I feel exhausted from trying to get
people to do stuff. I try my best to be
likable, sincere and kind to help the causes I believe in, yet I still hear,
receive, and feel rejection. What makes
it difficult is that these are things I really believe in. I’m not trying to persuade people to try the
cookies I made, I’m trying to raise good humans, help the public school my
children attend, help young people connect with each other and God and grow
this wonderful church where I have experienced the grace and love of God. And
some days it all feels like I have a tiny little fork and am chipping away at a
huge mountain.
As I hear this Gospel story about the widow, I wonder if
that is how she ever felt. Over and over
again she asked the judge to vindicate her.
Did she too get tired of trying to get people to do stuff? Did she get sick of the judge who has no
regard for anyone? Did she go to bed and
say “enough is enough. I’m out?” Did her friends tease her for wasting her
time? We don’t know. We don’t even know
if she tried to be likable, charming and sincere. It actually sounds like she was not that likable. The judge eventually says yes because he is
afraid she will “wear him out.” One translation I read says he is afraid she
will give him a black eye. I think it’s
meant to be a little comical. The
important and powerful judge who doesn’t care about anyone, and the widow, who
at that time is seen as lowly, weak and powerless. And she annoys him to the point of
concession.
While we may not know if she ever thought of quitting or
why she persisted or even if her cause was just (incidentally the text never
says whether she or her opponent is right or wrong in their disagreement), one
thing that is clear and we know for sure is that she is a widow. Which means she has been through some
stuff. She knows struggle, she knows
pain, life has not been easy and probably not at all like she planned or
hoped.
I think this is important.
When I read this scripture sometimes I get a little uncomfortable. It could be seen as a magical formula, a
roadmap to get God to give you what you want.
“If you want your prayers answered just keep at it and God will give
in.” Then, if you don’t get what you want it’s your fault for not being
persistent. Sometimes people do that
with faith, they try to sell it as a formula for having all of your wishes
granted, and they may even point to scriptures like this and say “see, you just
keep asking and it will happen.” I think
that is overly simplistic and not at all a feeder of hope but rather of
hopelessness.
Well-known author and researcher Brene Brown says “Men and
women who self-report as hopeful put considerable value on persistence and hard
work. The new cultural belief that
everything should be fun, fast, and easy is inconsistent with hopeful
thinking. It also sets us up for
hopelessness. When we experience
something that is difficult and requires significant time and effort, we are
quick to think, “This is supposed to be easy; it’s not worth the effort, or,
this should be easier: it’s only hard and slow because I’m not good at it. Hopeful self-talk sounds more like, this is
tough, but I can do it.[1]” So,
yes, this woman is a widow and she has been through some stuff. She isn’t expecting quick and easy answers,
she is prepared to persist. This judge
is tough, but she knows she can do it. Rather than a magical formula for easy
faith, this is about hanging on to hope when faith isn’t so easy.
After describing the widow and the judge, Jesus goes on to
tell us about God. God is
long-suffering, tolerant, justice-favoring, merciful and listening. God is with us in the frustration, the
darkness, the unknown, the crying out in the night. The judge who doesn’t have any regard for
others is the contrast to God who cares.
This isn’t a magical wish-granting God but rather a persisting and
eternal God who sticks with us, our God who does have regard for others and in
fact loves us no matter our circumstance.
In her book, Kate Bowler intimately shares her experience
of being a seminary professor, lifelong Christian, mother of a toddler, wife
and finding out she had stage 4 cancer throughout her body. She says “At a time when I should have felt
abandoned by God, I was not reduced to ashes.
I felt like I was floating, floating on the love and prayers of all
those who hummed around me like worker bees … They came in like priests and
mirrored back to me the face of Jesus.
When they sat beside me, my hand in their hands, my own suffering began
to feel like it had revealed to me the suffering of others, a world of those
who, like me, are stumbling in the debris of dreams they thought they were
entitled to and plans they didn’t realize they had made. That floating feeling stayed with me for
months. . . I began to ask friends, theologians, historians, and pastors I knew,
What am I going to do when it’s gone? … all said yes, it will go. The feelings will go. The sense of God’s presence will go … but
they will leave an imprint. I would
somehow be marked by the presence of an unbidden God … I suppose I am like the
man who wrote to me to say he had seen a friend [die] and felt the presence of
God in the same long, dark night. Yes.
That is the God I believe in.”[2]
This is the God we hear about today in the scriptures. The God who in the darkest of times is with
us. The God of the widows, the God of
those up against struggles, those who have been through pain, those without
power, those who have seen some stuff. Our
persistent hope that plows through the frustrations comes from knowing who our
God is- justice-favoring, merciful, long-suffering … persistent in loving
us.
So we keep at it. We
try hope and fight for what we believe in.
We try hope and teach the next generation. We try hope and pray through our darkest of
nights. We try hope and confront systems
of oppression, injustices as big and as insurmountable as mountains. We try hope and keep kneeling Sunday after
Sunday with hearts open and gratitude on our lips. We try hope and let others rest their weight
on us when they feel defeated. Not
because we believe it will be easy or because we believe it’s a magical
formula, but because we believe in a God who is long-suffering, merciful,
justice-favoring and persistent in loving us.
At the end of this parable Jesus poses a question to the
disciples which cuts through the pages, passes through the years and comes to
us today “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” …What do you
think? After the wars, the pain, the
health complications, the broken relationships, the oppression, the
frustrations, exhaustion, despair, peer pressure … will Jesus find faith on
earth?”
So … I guess I’ll keep trying to get people to do
stuff. I’ll keep trying to get the kids
to be good humans, to help schools meet the needs of all children, to encourage
sometimes reluctant teens to keep their hearts open, to get a skeptical world
to give a church with ancient rituals and old hymns a fair shot and I’ll keep
chipping away at the mountains before me with my tiny fork. But not because I believe I can do any of
this based on my own likability or persuasive skills, but because I believe in
a God who persistently loves us. So I’ll
keep coming here and kneeling, persisting in prayer next to you, sustained by
the body and blood of Christ.
“Will Jesus find faith on earth?” I hope so …
[2]
Bowler, Kate. Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved. Random House: 2018. Pgs. 121-122
