“Don’t Give Up on God” / Luke 18:1-8
Proper 24, Year C; Downsville Baptist Church; 21 October 2001
If Jesus is trying to teach us about the importance of persevering in our prayer lives, we wish he would have done it in a less confusing and puzzling manner. Perhaps his parable should have gone like this: Verily, verily I tell you that once upon a time there was a good lady who lived next door to an atheist. Everyday, when the lady prayed, the atheist guy could hear her. He thought to himself, "She sure is crazy, praying all the time like that. Doesn’t she know there is no GOD!" Many times while she was praying, he would go to her house and harass her, saying, "Lady, why do you pray all the time? Don’t you know there is no GOD!" But she kept on praying. One day, she ran out of groceries. As usual, she was praying to the Lord explaining her situation and thanking Him for what He was going to do. As usual, the atheist heard her praying and thought to himself, "Humph...I’ll fix her." He went to the grocery store, bought a whole bunch of groceries, took them to her house, dropped them off on the front porch, rang the door bell and then hid in the bushes to see what she would do. When she opened the door and saw the groceries, she begin to praise the Lord with all her heart, jumping, singing, and shouting everywhere! The atheist then jumped out of the bushes and told her, "You crazy old lady. God didn’t buy you those groceries, I bought those groceries!’ Well, she broke out and started running down the street, shouting and praising the Lord. When he finally caught her, he asked what her problem was... She said "I knew the Lord would provide me with some groceries, but I didn’t know he was going to make the devil pay for them!"
If Jesus’ has one parable that every preacher wishes wasn’t in the Bible it is this one. What should we call it? The parable of the annoying widow and the judge who acted like a jerk? On the surface the parable appears to be telling us that if we bug God long enough with our requests that eventually God will get tired of our pestering and give in to our whining. However, the point of the parable is missed entirely if we understand the unjust judge as representative of God. Jesus’ point is that God is very different from the judge who begrudgingly does what is right only after being harassed by the widow. God desires to give all good things to his children. God does not withhold blessings from us until we pray long enough for them. Our times of prayer are not intended to show God just how bad we want something. Instead the sweet hour of prayer is the moment in which we show God how much we want him and love him. Prayer is God’s gift to us through which we know and worship the Provider. The focus is always intended to be the Provider, not the provisions. Even the unjust judge eventually gives to the widow what she needs. Jesus is saying to us, “How much more confident can we be that our Father, a good faithful judge, will certainly take care of us!” God is not arbitrary. God does not view our prayers as annoying requests as did the unjust judge.
In God’s perfect goodness, he never deprives us of what we need unless there is some larger purpose for our good behind the deprivation. Often times, it is impossible to imagine what that greater good could be. Even if we can fathom a greater good, sometimes that greater good doesn’t seem worth the cost. However, as St. Paul declares, God is at all times working in all things for the good of those who love him. In this light, the parable seems to be communicating something to us about the way God works in our lives. Since the beginning humanity has been struggling with this question, “How does God work in our lives?” We often ere in one of two directions, neither of which is commensurate with our faith in Jesus Christ. Some of us believe in fate, an idea that began with the Greek philosophers but remains with us today. Fate is the belief that everything that will happen has already been determined. God’s creation is not free and dynamic. God is in no relationship with the world. For the one who believes in fate, God is like the watchmaker who winds the watch and simply lets it run its course. Another alternative that fails us is the belief that everything happens by random chance. Here again, God is far removed from his creation. With chance there is no purpose or reason behind anything that happens. Through Jesus Christ, the question of how God works in our lives has been answered for us. For the Christian, there is no fate; there is no random chance. There is only providence. God works in each of our lives through a particular providence. As the God who works for good in all things, God takes the pieces of our lives and, through Christ, God joins us in our lives providentially guiding us through the valleys and the mountaintops of our days until finally bringing us to an eternal home of bliss and glory. A construction crew was building a new road through a rural area, knocking down trees as it progressed. A superintendent noticed that one tree had a nest of birds who couldn’t yet fly and he marked the tree so that it would not be cut down. Several weeks later the superintendent came back to the tree. He got into a bucket truck and was lifted up so that he could peer into the nest. The fledglings were gone. They had obviously learned to fly. The superintendent ordered the tree cut down. As the tree crashed to the ground, the nest fell clear and some of the material that the birds had gathered to make the nest was scattered about. Part of it was a scrap torn from a Sunday school pamphlet. On the scrap of paper were these words: He careth for you.
God cares about you, and he cares about you particularly. God loves you, and he loves you particularly. The power and beauty of the gospel is that Jesus Christ comes to each and everyone of us announcing salvation. The good news of Jesus Christ is not an abstraction. The good news is not simply that God has redeemed people through Christ. The good news is that God has redeemed Melissa Rhodes, Tracy Lankford, Don Simons, Mikey King, and Jason Patrick. God has called each of us by name. Jesus did not die for people. He died for you. He died for me. This is the intensely personal and poignant gospel of truth and salvation, that we are not lost in a crowd of chaos, but we are found in a community of grace and love.
Because God works in our lives through this particular providence, we must see just how different God is from the unjust judge in Jesus’ parable. The God who has providentially joined himself to you through Jesus Christ does not consider your prayers a nuisance. God treasures our prayers because it is through prayer that we recognize and worship our Provider. We pray because we must. It doesn’t matter whether or not we think we pray well or pray correctly. The only entirely inadequate prayer is the lack of prayer. God teaches us to pray even while we are praying. God resounds through the heavens with the words of his Son every day, “Come unto me, Come unto me, Come unto me!” Rev. Tom Erickson told a story about the public Library having a system called "Dial-A-Tale." Anytime a young child wants to hear a fairy tale, he can call the number and a voice comes on reading a short fairy tale to the listening young ear. However, the number is only one digit different from Rev. Tom Erickson. Because the small fingers often make a mistake, Tom gets frequent calls from a child listening for a fairy tale. After several unsuccessful attempts to explain a wrong number to the small child, Tom felt he had only one alternative. He obtained a copy of Three Little Pigs, and set it by the phone. Now, whenever a child calls, he simply reads them the tale. A beautiful illustration of yielding personal rights. he didn’t, as you might have thought, change his telephone number to avoid the "invasion of his privacy." God waits for us to call. God longs for us to call. God never considers our beckoning an invasion of privacy. God loves to read us the story. God is willing to listen to our complaining. God weeps with us in tragedy. God rejoices with us in triumph. You’ll never get a busy signal, and it’s not even long distance. God wants you to call.
Jesus concludes his parable with a commission that we should trust God and endure. Jesus is, in fact, admitting that though God is always just and righteous that God might appear unjust to us at times. There will be many days God just doesn’t make sense to us. We will have moments in which we wonder if God’s providence has taken a leave of absence. We might have seasons where we quit calling upon God because all our prayers and crying out to God day and night appear useless and futile. Jesus is challenging us to hold on to faith and to trust God always. Jesus knows there will be many obstacles that will drive us close to giving up. Jesus says, “Don’t give up!” Why not? Because there is a guaranteed future hope. The Son of Man will come again, and Jesus asks his listeners, “When he returns will he find faith on the earth?” When Christ returns will he find us faithful or will he find us in a state of sore disappointment, having given up on the hope that was secure all along?
Imagine that you are a world-class concert pianist at the peak of your career, someone who has spent years studying and practicing to develop your art. Your fingers respond instantly to your mental commands, flitting along the keyboard with grace and speed. Then one day you feel a stiffness that wasn’t there before. You go to a doctor, tests are done, and the diagnosis comes back: Arthritis. Your fingers are destined to become wooden and crippled. From the heights of success and acclaim you will plunge to oblivion. It happened to Byron Janis. Within a short time this concert pianist saw arthritis quickly spread to all his fingers, and the joints of nine of them fused. Some people would have never recovered from such a blow, but Janis decided to fight back. He kept his ailment a secret from all but his wife and two close friends. He worked long hours to change his technique. He learned how to use what strengths he had instead of concentrating on his weaknesses. He also used a regimen of medications, acupuncture, ultrasound, and even hypnosis to deal with the pain. His wife learned how to give him therapeutic massages to loosen his stiff joints. Through hard work and sheer determination, Janis was able to continue his career. He maintained a full concert schedule for 12 years without anyone suspecting his condition. Finally, he told the world at a White House concert in 1985. These days, he is active in fund-raising for the Arthritis Foundation and still plays the piano. He credits faith, and hope, and determination for his success and says, "I have arthritis, but it doesn’t have me."
Trusting in God, believing in God’s never ceasing particular providence in our lives is sometimes quite difficult. We have troubling times, but we don’t have to let troubling times have us. Perhaps no biblical character inspires us with this truth more than Job. He lost almost everything: his wealth, his children, and his health. The one thing he did not lose proved to be most important. He never lost faith. He cried out to God. He cursed the day he was born. He prayed for death. He asked God, “Why me?” in a hundred different ways. But he believed even when he could point to no reason to believe. He trusted in God at a time when it looked as though God had turned his back on him.
There might be days when the only thing we have is our faith. On those days it will prove to be the most invaluable treasure we have ever been given, a treasure to which we must cling. Our faith will not let us give up on God when everything else in our lives is screaming to us that we should curse God and die. God never gives up on us even though we often fail to be faithful. Don’t give up on God. He is ever-faithful. The widow came to the judge requesting justice against an opponent. She had to come to him several times before justice was given. I wonder who her opponent was. I wonder what it was that was trying to overcome her. Was it the death of her husband? Was it a stack of bills she couldn’t pay? Was it arthritis? Was it kids and grandkids who seemed to have forgotten about her? I don’t know, but each of us knows who are many opponents are we face today, and the Righteous Judge of heaven and earth beckons us to come unto him and not to lose heart. He has made a promise of his providential care for us all, and that is a promise that shall remain unbroken into eternity. Let us never give up on God.
