Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church

The Widow and the Unjust Judge:

Which One Are We?

Prayer is hope.  Prayer is faith.  Prayer engages both the personal and the political.  Prayer enables us to listen to God, to know God’s love and grace, and to help create change.

Jeremiah, or the author of this addition to Jeremiah, the postexilic Deuteronomist, as scholars call him, envisioned a new day of prosperity for what had been a suffering and exiled people of Israel.  It helps to get a little historical context to understand.

The history of Israel in scripture is the history of a little nation caught between the powerful civilizations that rose and fell along the two major river valleys, the Nile in Egypt, and the Tigris and the Euphrates in Babylon.  In 745 BCE, Assyria became prominent, and from that time on Israel had experienced difficulty.  There were a few brief periods with good Israelite kings and a vacuum of power, which allowed Israel to retain some control over its own destiny.  But more frequently, the small nation of Israel was a pawn between the superpowers. 

Israelite Kings jockeyed back and forth, attempting to secure its wealth and security by playing rival powers against each other.  Yet the prophets warned this strategy would not work.  By 587 Jerusalem was sacked and the leaders taken into exile. Early, in Jeremiah 2:17-18 he says, “Have you not brought this on yourselves by forsaking the Lord your God when he led you in the way?  Now why go to Egypt and drink water from the Shihor?  And why go to Assyria to drink water from the River?” Allowing greed and fear to shift focus from faithfulness to God toward whichever king was a violation of their covenant with the God of peace and justice, and ultimately led to the suffering of generations.

In this morning's passage, Jeremiah quotes a popular saying, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”  The consequences of the unfaithfulness and sin of the fathers is felt by the children and grandchildren.  In this morning's passage, Jeremiah says the time is coming when this will no longer be the case.  There will be a new beginning, a new covenant, a time and place where all people will know God’s ways.  I will be their God and they will be my people.

We might be tempted to reject such a notion that children would suffer the consequences of sin of the parents.  Why would God punish children for something they had nothing to do with?  But sin is sin because it has negative consequences.  The suffering is a consequence of sin, not of God.  The suffering comes not from acknowledging God as judge, but from just the opposite, from ignoring God’s principals. 

          For instance, our abuse of the environment over the last century, our recent actions in Iraq, and our nation's legacy of slavery are sour grapes, which will set our children’s teeth on edge.  Greed and fear have driven our environmental and foreign policy away from our grounding in the God given principles of equality, peace and justice.  We have planted oil wells and not headed warnings about Global warming, and our children will reap the harvest of floods and hurricanes, desertification and species extinction.  We have reacted in fear and thrown our weight around the globe, invading countries and killing 100’s of thousands, and our children will surely reap the harvest of more people who hate us enough to strap a bomb to their chest.

This is not to say that our use of oil has been all bad, or that our enemies are the faithful who should not be resisted.  The leaders of Assyria and Babylon couldn’t care less about the God of Israel, and fundamentalist Islam may be just as far off base, but that doesn’t mean that our suffering at their hands cannot in part be the consequence of our sins.

And the Bible expands the metaphor of parent and children to apply to the leaders of the nation and its common people.  The leaders sin, and the common people suffer. The leaders are righteous, and the children of the nation prosper.  Fathers eat sour grapes, and their children’s teeth are set on edge.  Ask the victims of Katrina about sour grapes.

On a personal level there are certainly some here today who know very well that children can suffer unjustly for the sins of their parents. To some degree we all know, parents and children alike, that good and bad parents do affect children. The sad thing about children in personal relationships is they tend to take what happens to them personally.  Someone said that guilt is feeling bad because we have done something wrong.  Shame is when we feel we are bad. 

Unfortunately, because of certain acts of parents, children may feel shame, as if their very being somehow deserves punishment. Feeling we are bad, even after we are out from under our parents' roof, we may feel abandoned and lost. We may give ourselves over to hopeless living, over to other relationships and personal behavior that confirms our worst impression of ourselves.

But Jeremiah and our Gospel story tell us hope is not lost.  Even if it takes a while, we can have a new covenant, a new life.  Clearly the reality of life is that reversing the effects of sin is not easy.  We will not get out of the quagmire of Iraq and the fire it has fueled easily.  It is not easy to change our own nation's God forsaken perspective.  But the message today is never give up hope; never give up praying. God loves you and forgives you and calls you toward a new day. This is the day we begin anew, when we take responsibility for our own action, and by the grace of God, work for a world where our children will not know our sin or the sins of our fathers.

Prayer gives us hope. Prayer reminds us of the way things ought to be.  Prayer reminds us that the unjust judge is not the only judge, and that even the unjust judge may eventually have a change of heart.

Speaking of parents eating sour grapes and the children’s teeth being set on edge, speaking of the perseverance of faith in intercessory prayer, because of the sins of the leaders of this nation, African American children were enslaved for generations.  Nevertheless, we learn much about prayer and being the church from you, our African American brothers and sisters.

It is known that African American spirituals often had a double function of music in worship and secret messages for the singer and hearer.  For instance, the song, "Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray:"

Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray
Couldn’t hear nobody pray,
Couldn’t hear nobody pray,
Way down yonder by myself,
Couldn’t hear nobody pray. 

According to an article entitled Sweet Chariot: the story of the Spirituals, this song signaled that: “An escape attempt has failed. We’re all trying to re-group, emotionally and spiritually.”  http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals/Freedom/coded.cfm

The song also signals something else, that when we are way down yonder by ourselves: it is tough to hear anyone praying; it is tough to keep hope alive. 

By using the widow as an example, one who has lost family and property rights and is therefore easily taken advantage of, Jesus is identifying with her cause and with her prayer.  And so from its very inception, the church has always been about making a place where the poor and powerless can voice their prayer to God in community.

Even when the unjust judge disregards your petition, the God of heaven knows what is just. Whether you are an Israelite peasant oppressed by Babylon, a widow having a tough time getting a just hearing, a slave oppressed by slavery, or someone here today struggling with the pain of the sin of your parents and the life that unfolded from it, there is a sovereign God of heaven who hears your cries and will set you free.  Through the grace of Jesus Christ, you have been given a new covenant.

So while this passage is about keeping faith in intercessory prayer, it is also about yearning for change. And it is about listening to the prayers of the people, lest we be like the unjust judge.

Being the Church of prayer means being in touch with the struggles, with sickness, hunger, poverty and injustice, with all that makes people cry out.  It also means affirming a God who cares, even though the answer does not always come as quickly as we would hope.

It is interesting that when we assume the privilege of listening as the judge, then the parable gets flipped.  Father Gerry Pierse notes that God may become the widow who pleads with us. Think about it:  the widow in Iraq, the woman clinging to her mattress in New Orleans! She knows so many Americans go to church, but still can’t hear nobody prayin.  Are we dominated by fear of losing our own place, or by what is in it for us?  Still, God, the persistent woman, wears us down by graciously pursuing us.  “Eventually, we yield and let God enter our lives and guide us to do the right thing.”  In this light, prayer becomes our way of listening to God.  Certainly, even as we have our petitions, a significant portion of our prayer life should be in silent meditation, listening to God.

Whether our concern is our own personal being and relationships, our own sickness or tight situation, or a concern and fear for our nation and the world, we the people, the living recipients of the new covenant, those pursued and welcomed by the grace of Jesus Christ, are to be a people of prayer: intentional, passionate, compassionate, persistent and hope filled prayer.  You don’t have to believe, just keep the faith and it will be, it is, true.