Delivered Sunday, September 2, 2018 at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Arlington, VA
Text: Luke 18:1-8
Manuscript:
This is one of my favorite parables, and I’m excited I get to share it with you as we close our summer of Stories Jesus Told, since I do think it tends to be underappreciated, and certainly lacks the attention given to, say, The Good Samaritan, or the Prodigal Son. It’s place, or lack thereof, in the collective consciousness was driven home for me when, after I mentioned I was preaching on this to a friend, realized I had to summarize it. My friend then characterized this parable as “Crazy always wins.”
There is some truth to that.
Some of you know I also work at the Trader Joe’s in Clarendon. When I started working there, I did some googling to find out more about the company. One of the better finds from those searches was a video of a comedian named Gary Gulman talking about a confrontation he had in a Trader Joe’s that he ultimately won when the other party realized that she had been “out-
Gulman’s conflict stemmed from what he perceived as a breach of line etiquette. The woman in front of him in the checkout line had left her shopping cart in line while she continued shopping. When the line moved forward before she returned, Gulman moved into the opening and, in his words, “prepared for a showdown.” I expect most of us have been in similar situations. I don’t necessarily mean this specific situation concerning line etiquette, but times where we respond to perceived injustices in ways that may appear, or perhaps even objectively are, somewhere on the scale between disproportionate and nuts.
For those of us who are relatively comfortable, often these occur over things that, like line etiquette, are objectively trivial even as they may, in the moment, feel essential. These moments, where the relatively comfortable go a little nuts over something small can be adapted into comedy routines once we have gained some distance.
The widow’s case is something different. We do not know what her specific complaint was, Luke doesn’t tell us, and it’s likely Jesus didn’t say either: the specific complaint isn’t important to the story.
Widows are a category of people repeatedly singled out in both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures for special care from the community. This is because, under the laws of the time, widows could not inherit from their late husbands. The estate, if there even was one, would pass to either sons or brothers of the deceased. Thus, widows were particularly likely to fall into poverty.
This adds another layer to the flippant characterization of her as “crazy.” Very often the protests of the powerless, especially against systemic injustice are called crazy. Very often, the comfortable, like the judge in this parable, like the unnamed person the widow was seeking judgement against, and, I suspect, like many others in this “certain city” would prefer this widow simply took her loss and went away, went back to being invisible to the community of the comfortable.
After all, this judge only has a finite amount of time, so it would be easy for others in the community to see this woman as a nuisance. Every time she went back to the judge over the same issue was time someone else had to wait to present their case.
I suspect this widow did not have many allies…but as the parable makes clear, she did have at least one: God.
Luke gives this parable a frame that points to the importance of persistent prayer. It is the widow’s persistence in her petitioning of the judge that ultimately wears him down. We even have the judge’s internal monologue confirming that fact. This framing invites us to place ourselves in the position of the widow, to take comfort and faith in the surety that even if our prayers appear unanswered, God hears them.
I could easily make that the sole focus of this sermon. I even have a great story for those times when we may feel like God fails to answer our prayers: the story of Monica, mother of Augustine.
Augustine, sometimes pronounced Augusteen, lived in the 4th and 5th centuries, was the bishop of Hippo, in Roman North Africa, and remains one of the Church’s most important theologians. Despite his later and lasting prominence in the Church, Augustine wasn’t always a Christian, but his mother, Monica, was.
Augustine grew up in North Africa, what is now Algeria, but as is true of many young people then and now, dreamed of life in the big city, which, at that time, meant Rome. Monica begged him not to go, and Augustine placated her by lying, telling her he was just going to see some of his friends off, and would not leave with the ship. Monica, likely suspecting the lie, went to a nearby chapel to pray that he wouldn’t go, but that he would stay, and might eventually become a Christian. Her prayers appeared unanswered, as Augustine left on that ship and headed toward Rome. Ultimately, however, her prayers were answered, Augustine’s experiences in Rome, and later Milan, led to his conversion. So, for you parents who recently dropped kids off at college, there is still hope.
I couldn’t resist telling that story, but it isn’t where I want us to focus today. I want to focus on the judge.
Jesus doesn’t beat around the bush with his description of this judge: Jesus introduces the judge as one who “neither feared God nor had respect for people” and then, a few sentences later, Jesus gives us a window into the judge’s internal monologue, in which the judge repeats that description. There is neither subtlety or ambiguity. It is abundantly clear that where this judge manages to do what is right, it’s motivated by either expedience or coincidence. We can safely assume this judge would have considered the widow crazy.
I love that lack of ambiguity because it lets me ask this question: how much does intent matter?
This is among the most significant questions in ethics, and one that has found repeated outlet in pop culture.
It’s a question neatly posed by Calvin…not John Calvin, but Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, who asks: “Hobbes, do you think our morality is defined by our actions, or by what’s in our hearts.” Hobbes responds with “I think our actions show what’s in our hearts.” This is an answer worthy of John Calvin.
It’s also a question posed by the show that has become my favorite TV comedy, The Good Place. It’s a show that I am eagerly, even impatiently waiting to resume. For those who are unfamiliar, the show is set in the afterlife, and, particularly for a network comedy, goes deep into questions of ethics and philosophy. They even have 2 philosophy professors from UCLA on the payroll to make sure they are getting it right.
One question the show does not particularly grapple with is the importance of intent. The show is very clear: intent matters a great deal. Good deeds only count as good if they were done with pure intent. You could end world hunger, but if you did it for the fame, it would not count as a moral action in this show.
This is a common position in both secular philosophy and in religious ethics. It’s also one which I struggle with, and I don’t think struggling with that question makes me a bad Christian, a bad Protestant, or even a bad Presbyterian.
I know that one of the key questions of the reformation was the relative weight of faith and works. It’s easy to simplify that into a question of intent, but we shouldn’t. Luther wasn’t arguing against a salvation based on works because good works done to check boxes or earn points for salvation didn’t count.
Neither did Calvin develop his doctrine of double predestination to get Christians out of doing good.
Both Luther and Calvin argued that Christian good works should be understood not as attempts to gain salvation, but as response to God’s grace.
This led Calvin to argue that, while we cannot know who is and is not saved, we can make educated guesses based on who is or isn’t doing good, this perpetuating a system where good works and adherence to received social norms gave one status.
Crucially though, Calvin also argued that we should treat all people as potentially saved. Ultimately, God gets to save who God wants, and redemption remains always possible.
Luke frames this parable with prayer but ends it by talking about faith. That faith may well be the faith of the widow and others who persist in faith and prayer despite not receiving immediate results.
I wonder if we can’t talk about that faith as being in the redemption of the judge.
It’s easy for pastors to preach sermons on the importance of prayer with this text.
It’s easy for us to put ourselves in the place of the widow in this story and walk away thinking about how we need to pray more.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t do that—you almost certainly should.
It’s easy for us to look at good things done by people we don’t like and argue they were done for the wrong reasons because unlike God, unlike the show The Good Place, and unlike Jesus in this parable, we do not have access to other people’s inner monologues.
I just think it’s more important, especially for those of us living relatively comfortable lives here in North Arlington, for those of us holding positions of influence in military, in government, in the NGOs and think-tanks that pervade our region to think of ourselves as the judge.
I hope that we don’t share the judge’s internal monologue of contempt for both God and humanity, but even if we have better intentions than the judge, all too often, our actions have the same outcome as his. We want to remain comfortable.
As we confessed earlier in this service, “We have ignored the pain of the world, and passed by the hungry, the poor, and the oppressed.”
This is why I wonder how much intent matters.
This is why I place my faith in the grace and forgiveness of God.