Will He Find Faith on the Earth?

Luke 18: 1-8, page 742
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.
He said: In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about people. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘grant me justice against my adversary.’
For some time he refused, but finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about people, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’
And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for the chosen ones, who cry out day and night? Will God keep putting them off? I tell you, God will see that they get justice and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?’
Sermon
I’ve told you before that I used to work lawn maintenance for a company downtown. That I had a college degree didn’t really mean anything, but that I could speak English and had a driver’s license did and I was on my way up the ladder as far as lawn maintenance was concerned. Unfortunately though, I still had to pay my dues, and that meant being trained by Loco Lee.
Loco Lee, that’s what the Hispanic guys called him behind his back, and he was just that. Like me, he could speak English, had a driver’s license, and even a college degree from the Citadel of all places, but unlike me, he was crazy.
He would get mad and fly off the handle over the smallest things. His leaf blower wouldn’t start, so he’d throw it into the street. The truck’s transmission fell out, so he walked around it kicking and cussing it for a solid 15 minutes while I tried to keep the customers from seeing.
That kind of behavior shocked me, and certainly shocked poor Jorge who couldn’t understand what Lee was saying but knew it was bad. But what really made me afraid of Lee was the stuff he’d say while he was perfectly calm.
He lived in one of those pay by the week hotels, just like the ones on the other side of 78 from us, and while he had a driver’s license he didn’t have a car. One day I was giving him a ride home and he said to me, out of no-where: “You shouldn’t brush your teeth Joe. It’s a losing battle.”
“What do you mean Lee?” I asked.
“Our life spans are now longer than our teeth were built to last. Your teeth will make it, 40, 50 years max. Then they’ll just fall out. I don’t see any reason to fight it. I’m just going to let them go. I’ll have to get them all replaced anyway, why not give up now?”
Lee taught me a lot of things about lawn maintenance, but you’ll be relieved to know I haven’t taken any of his advice on dental hygiene.
Some people think this way though – knowing what the end will be, resistance seems futile. Fighting against tooth decay will eventually end in tooth loss sooner or later – you can’t win so why not quit now.
But that’s like saying – I’m eventually going to die – why should I fight it.
And that’s true. We are, all of us, going to die eventually. But life is in the resistance to this truth – and I refuse to give up any earlier than I have to.
Our scripture lesson begins: “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” To make any sense out of this introduction we have to deal with what came before it – we have to know why it was that the disciples were even thinking of giving up.
In the verses leading up to our scripture lesson for today is a section titled by your pew Bibles as: “the coming of the kingdom of God.” Our lesson, verses 1 through 8 of chapter 18 may well end the section titled “the coming of the kingdom of God” considering verse 8: “However, when the son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Jesus had been talking to them about what the end – the end of all things – was going to be like. As anyone who believes that the end is imminent, they were tempted to hole up in a cave with as many gold bars and canned goods as they could find until whatever was going to happen happened.
This kind of knowledge, knowledge about the end, is dangerous then – because faith isn’t just about waiting and watching, sitting back while God does what God is going to do. While faith is certainly about trusting that at the end of all things God is there, for sure, but it’s also about what we do in the meantime.
So “Jesus told them a parable to show them that they should always pray and never give up.”
In this parable there is a widow with no help in the world. Her husband is gone, no children are mentioned, and she goes appealing to a faithless judge who might at least be shamed into feeling sorry for her, but this judge doesn’t even care what anyone thinks of him.
Just the same, she goes to this judge while he’s walking from the golf course to dinner. She hassles him as he walks from his house to his girlfriend’s house (I’m filing in between the lines a little bit). She finds him wherever he hides, she’s on the steps at his office waiting as he pulls up – there’s no escaping her so appeasing her becomes easier than trying to ignore her.
This is what faith looks like according to Christ. This widow is who we are to emulate.
While we know that the end is coming, while we know where we will be and what will happen when it does, we aren’t to sit back and wait, but are called to go on harassing the judges of this earth – demanding from them justice.
Justice will certainly come when the Son of Man returns – but the faithful will not be lazily waiting for his arrival. The faithful will be busy doing the work of the kingdom.
This parable is certainly an important one – not just because it assures us that the unjust judges of our world – the faithless hierarchies of power, the bureaucracies and systems that care nothing for you or I – they’re days are numbered.
But this parable is even more important, because in addition to letting us know how the great cosmic story will end – we are instructed on how we are to conduct ourselves until he comes.
Knowing that Christ is coming is no reason to stop pursuing justice, just as knowing that your teeth are eventually going to fall out is no reason to put off dental hygiene.
In this time in between right now and the end – we are called to go on praying, go on fighting for justice – as there is life to be lived between now and then.
Ours is the time of widows who demand justice – and like the wives, girlfriends, and children camped out on top of the mine in Chile – we have no excuse for packing up and heading home. They all could have so easily rushed to the end. How many must have considered them widows already, but they refused to give in to the end though they knew in whom those miner’s fates rested. Rather than give into death, like widows at the door of a faithless judge they were relentless in their pursuit for justice, relentless in their belief that those miners were worth saving.
So many would have let a collapsed mind end the story – and trusted those minors fates’ to God – but like a widow demanding justice those women persisted.
One of the greatest works of the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, was written for his dying father. I’ll share this poem with you now:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
We Christians know how all of this is going to end – if our faith is sure than we are given the gift of easy sleep, trusting our destiny to the Son of Man, the one who was with us in the beginning and will be with us in the end. But such knowledge leaves us no excuse for not living today. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Amen.