August 8, 2010
The Unjust Judge - Luke 18:1-8
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadMy oldest and very cute daughter, Julia, is at the point in her life where she is asking a lot of questions. They’re normally very simple questions where she asks for something. For example, “Can I go outside and play?” is a persistent question that she often asks. Much of the time, I’ll say no. I tell her that it’s too hot right now, or we’re about to eat supper, or it’s raining. Yet regardless of the reason, she just keeps asking, and asking, and asking, until normally I give in. Sometimes, though, I cannot give in. For example, “Make the thunder stop!” she demanded of me on Thursday afternoon. Even though I told her that I literally could not, she kept on asking. “Can we play in the ocean?” is another one of her questions. Well the problem with that, I’ll explain to her, is that we’re not at the ocean. The ocean is two hundred miles away, and I can’t get us there right now. I’ve got to work, and there’s no place for us to stay anyway. And I obviously cannot just pull the ocean back over Florence and McBee and Monroe right up to Charlotte, where Julia can play in it. A reasonable person would just accept that and move on. But children – who are not known for their reasoning abilities – honestly think that their parents can do anything. It gets annoying, I’ll have to admit, but I am more than flattered that she thinks that I can do the impossible. I love that she has the faith in me to ask.
This particular parable is of a widow who goes to a judge for justice. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? Are judges not supposed to specifically grant justice? Well, not this one. This particular judge had other things on his mind that day, and justice was not one of them. None of that, though, stopped the widow. She knew, you see, that he had the ability to grant her justice. And so, very much like my oldest child, she just kept asking, and asking, and asking. Had the judge been powerless to grant her wish, then she obviously would have stopped asking. But he could grant it, and she knew that, and so she asked. Finally, just to get her off his case, the judge gave her justice. The million dollar question is, according to Jesus, do we have that kind of faith in God? Do we have the faith to ask? And ask, and ask?
I was out of town last weekend serving as a chaplain to my old college fraternity in Austin, Texas. I had a very meaningful time. I know that it may come as a surprise, but being the national chaplain of a college fraternity has tremendous potential for the Gospel. I had a great trip until I got back home. Miriam Snyder died last Saturday morning. Many of you knew Miriam. She had been a member here since 1972. She was a very fine woman, as are her daughters, especially Susan. Anyway, Miriam’s was the ninth funeral that I have conducted this year alone. All but three of those have been for people outside this congregation, but every one of those has been hard. They have all been different, of course. Miriam’s health had declined for a very long time. In fact, she and Coelle moved to Florida two years ago for health reasons. There were a number of times that we thought she was approaching the end, and then she would bounce back. In fact, she seemed to be doing well last Friday night, but her health declined very rapidly and she died that morning. The last two years have been brutal for Miriam and her family.
I know you remember Charles Blackwelder. His health declined over a long period of time, too. And he, and his family, went through a lot of pain, especially with his breathing. He just never could get on top of his breathing. And then there was Buck Newsome. Buck was in excellent health for his age, but his last ten or so days were awful. And then there was Fred Robertson, Leah’s father. He was in excellent health, and somehow had a massive heart attack in the middle of the night before Mother’s Day and he died. I know that we all die. I accept that fact. Sometimes I think modern medicine gives us the illusion that we’re supposed to live forever. We as Christians, though, know better. We also have an idea as to what’s on the other side of death. Jesus himself told us that he went to prepare a place for us and that he would come again and take us unto himself that where he is, we would be also. That is enormously comforting. What more can you ask for than that? So, we’re all going to die and we are at peace about what’s on the other side. But I’ll never understand for the life of me why death itself has to be so painful. When Leah’s father died, some people commented that “at least it was quick.” And it was. But he’s missing his grandbabies. He’s actually going to have one more. Leah’s brother is expecting a little girl over Christmas. He’s going to miss that. He’s going to miss seeing my children grow up and they will miss him. That just breaks my heart. And yet, at least his death was quick, and he was spared the hell that so many other people endure in their last days. I just don’t see why there can’t be a happy medium somewhere. I knew a lady in Matthews whose husband of sixty-five years had died, and she was completely devastated. She just didn’t understand, she said, since they had done everything else together for all those years, why they couldn’t have died together. Death is just so hard, and so is life sometimes.
The foolish side of us says that we can solve our own problems. No, the world is not as it should be, and I am not as I should be either, but I can change all that. At the very least, we can change all that. And so we work, and work, and work. If we can just get this promotion, or if we can just get our political party elected. If we can just convince the world that we’re right. If we can just make some more money, or achieve a higher level of success (however we define success). “If, if, ifŔ And then “I.” Those are the common ingredients with the egomaniacs. Sometimes we even succeed, for a little while
But then one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, we fail. So then the cynical side comes out. Who cares? We ask. The world was messed up when we got here and it’ll be messed up when we leave it. And, by the way, we’re really messed up, too, and we always have been, at least as far back as we can remember, and we always will be, so what’s the point? When I was little, I honestly thought that I would play basketball one day for the Clemson Tigers. I obviously had very low aspirations, because Clemson has always been horrible in basketball. And I was horrible in basketball, too, I found out, when I never so much as got my new uniform dirty on the Junior High basketball team. I was just bad at it, and I’m bad at a lot of things. I have learned a long time ago, then, that I am not the solution to my problems, so I could just quit trying altogether. I could just get a pay-check, enough to get by and maybe even have a little left over for fun stuff, and then die and not give a flip about either my problems or the mess that I leave behind. That’s the cynical side, which is very attractive in many ways.
But then there’s the faithful side that Jesus presents to us in this nameless, persistent widow, who just kept asking. Widows were the most powerless people in 1st Century Palestine. So you have this powerless widow trying to get justice out of a crooked judge who could possibly not have cared less about her or justice. But she kept asking, and asking, and asking, because she knew, even if he was crooked, that he had the ability to grant her justice. Now, God is just, and God knows us very well and cares about us very much. In fact, God made us. You did not happen without God spending a lot of time thinking about you. And, God is active in our lives. And, God is good. And, finally, God is sovereign. Now, if that old widow woman could get that crooked judge to listen to her, don’t you think that we can get our God to listen to us? The psalmist says that God has made us just a little lower than the angels. So don’t you think that God will hear us when we pray? And don’t you think that God might answer us when we ask? Maybe he doesn’t give us a new corvette, but God is faithful to respond to our cries.
The question that Jesus asks us is do we have the faith to cry out to God in the first place? The way of the egomaniac is to say that I can solve all my problems, so who needs God? The way of the cynic is to say that we’re helpless, and so is everybody else including God, so why bother? But the way of faith, the hard, and sometimes uncertain, and sometimes frightening, yet always fruitful way of faith is to cry out to God. The Psalms have been described as the “Prayer Book of the Bible.” If you’re ever having problems praying, or if you don’t know how to pray, then go read, go pray a few Psalms. If you do, you’ll read as many questions as you will statements. You probably won’t get those questions answered tomorrow, and maybe not even next year, and maybe not even in your lifetime. But do you have the faith to still ask? That’s what it is to be a Christian, isn’t it?
When I go home today, I promise you that I will be pelted with questions from my oldest daughter. She still believes in me, and I love that about her. Well, I have a million questions for God. I think we all do. I just hope that we have the faith and the diligence to ask those questions. I don’t know how God will answer those questions, but if an old widow can get justice from a crooked judge, then I’ll bet we can get some wisdom from our good and sovereign God.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
