Sermon For The Seventeenth Sunday Of Ordinary Time 2025

Luke 18:1-8

Last week, we saw Jesus healing 10 lepers, but only one responded with true faith and returned to praise Jesus as Lord. Immediately following that, Jesus gives a discourse about the Kingdom of God, and the end of the age when he will return again. He makes clear in that passage that first, the Kingdom is among them, brought by him, but the end of the age, however, is not here. Therefore, they should not concern themselves over when he will return, looking for signs, because the sign will be so obvious that it will be unmistakable. He warns them to focus on that which is to come and leave the rest to God, and then leads directly into this parable to tell them what to do in his absence.

And so we come to the parable of the persistent widow. Things will get bad at times, suffering and oppression may come, but their vocation is to pray and not to “lose heart.” Now, we start with a bad judge, “who neither feared God nor had respect for people.” So we shouldn’t draw a comparison between the judge and God, but rather be aware of a contrast. So this judge keeps being approached by this widow who is demanding justice. A widow was one of the most vulnerable members of this society. She may own property, but types of work were not readily available to women, at least, not unless they wanted to beg or become a sex worker. Added to that, the greater the age (which widow typically denotes unless it says otherwise), the greater the vulnerability. Of all the people in the Roman Empire, a widow ought to be prioritized when it came to ensuring justice. Since she was not receiving, she persistently demanded that the judge act.

So, this judge says, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” At this point I have to note the comical nature of the story. The line, “wear me out” is a rather clunky translation, because the Greek literally means “give me a black eye.” We might imagine this, in other words and in sketch comedy terms, as an elderly woman beating the judge over the head with her purse. The judge, therefore, in order to avoid this ignominious fate, grants her request.

“‘Listen to what the unjust judge says,” Jesus then says. “And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.” We who are persistent in prayer, in other words, will receive justice, for if an evil judge will give in to persistence grudgingly, how much more will God who loves us and who is justice answer our prayers?

At this point, we need to draw some distinctions though. First, prayer is not about bugging God to get what we want, and indeed, it is specifically here speaking of justice for those who are oppressed. We have to grapple with the fact that God is outside of time, and knows the beginning to the end. So why pray at all, if God has in some sense already decided what he will do? Because, second, those prayers are the means by which God brings many things to pass. God works through the world, through nature, and through us to accomplish his will. As 1 John 5:14 tells us, “And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” Prayer is less about bringing God into conformity with our desires, and is in fact about bringing ourselves into conformity with his desires. Think of God’s will as a river: we can either fight the current, or give in to it, and let it carry us where it will. That acceptance is prayer, the act of rowing with the current, not against it. Maximus the Confessor, a Christian in Syria in the 7th century, put it this way: “Prayer is higher than theology. For the one theologizes about the divine based on past events, whereas prayer joins the soul, in an unknowable and ineffable way, to God himself.”

That is why the Gospel passage today ends with, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’” Persistent prayer, then, is a sign of the faithful, the actions of those who trust God, and are confident in hope that God will bring justice. But, you may ask, why does it say that justice will come ‘quickly,’ and justice does not seem to have come to our world for God’s people? Well, I would ask, why would Jesus say we must exercise patience, and then say it will come quickly? Because quickly does not have to mean “right away” in the Greek, but can indeed mean “decisively,” in other words, when the justice does come, it will fall swiftly. For us, it is to wait, patiently, praying, conforming to God’s will as we tread the path towards Christ’s return.

Kids, when you get into a fight with one of your siblings or classmates, you want justice swiftly, don’t you? Especially if you are the victim, if they are the ones being mean or cruel to you. And so you call out to your parents, or teacher, or other authority figure, to bring justice, which means to “make things right.” But sometimes, a parent or teacher or other authority isn’t close by. Sometimes, you have to wait until you can tell them, and maybe even then justice, which means setting the thing right, won’t happen right away. If you are in class and someone does something mean to you, or maybe on the bus home, you may not get justice until days later. Sadly, kids, sometimes in this life justice never comes. But Jesus is telling us that when we trust God and call out to him, which is what prayer is, speaking to God, then God will respond. It may not happen today, or next year, or even during your life, but one day, God will make all things right.

Our job, my friends, is to be faithful. And we are faithful when we stop fighting the current of God’s love and let it carry us, trusting the current, and conforming to its direction, which is to say we pray. We call out to God. And God will answer, in his own time, to make all things just, right, and whole. In this we can trust. Amen.