St. George's Episcopal Church Roseburg, Oregon Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 24, October 17, 2004 Go To St. George's Home Page

Jeremiah 31:27-34
Psalm 119:97-104
2 Timothy 3:14-17, 4:1-5
Luke 18:1-8
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 74^th General Convention of the ECUSA

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’“ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge 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? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  (Luke 18:1-8)

Pray for Compassion
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop, Rector

     Contrasts.  The writer of the Gospel of Luke loves to point out the contrasts in his society:  rich and poor; disease and health; starvation and nourishment.  In pointing out those contrasts, Luke’s Jesus constantly calls us to action; to do something about injustice.

     But in today’s reading, Luke uses his love of contrasts in a new way.  He uses comedy.  Up to now, we have had in our minds the familiar images of the very European looking, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, aquiline-nosed Jesus standing on the Temple grounds, engaged in one kind of verbal joust or another with the shorter, darker, more sinister-looking Pharisees.  Time and time again, Jesus has told those money loving hypocrites that they are not fulfilling God’s purposes.  And we’ve grown weary of hearing those stories.  Suddenly, today, Luke changes venue, and provides us with an unexpected parable:  the widow and the unjust judge. 

     The incongruity is that we expect the strong-armed tyrannical judge to win.  But in this little vignette – unique to the Gospel of Luke – a little widowed woman clobbers city hall and obtains justice from a buffoon of a judge. 

     We can imagine this judge to be a short, rotund man, who persistently wears yesterday’s meal in his beard.  He was appointed a judge by Herod or the Romans not because of his skill or knowledge, but because he was particularly unlearned.  His employers wanted somebody inept on the bench so that they could control him.  Such judges were notorious, and in the popular vernacular were called robber judges (Dayyaneh Gezeloth) because their judgments favored the plaintiff who could pay the largest bribe. [1]  

     Into this judge’s chambers comes a poor widow – a person so low as to not even reach the bottom rung on the social ladder.  As the text is translated in English, the widow seems defenseless, her only recourse being to repeatedly come before the judge and plead her case.  After hearing her case time and again, the judge says that he will grant her justice so that he will not be worn out.  But in the original Greek, the text can also mean lest she “give me a black eye.”  In my own mind, I see the widow a little like Ruth Buzzi as Gladys Ormphby from the old Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In T.V. show standing there with her black hair net on her head, wagging her umbrella under the chin of this magistrate day after day until he finally gives in, perhaps out of fear of being whacked with the umbrella, just like Gladys used to whack Tyrone, Laugh-In's dirty old man on the park bench.

     In the end, persistence won the day.  Note that this parable does not liken God to an unjust judge:  it contrasts God to such a person.  Jesus is telling his hearers that if in the end a corpulent, rather stupid, self-centered tyrannical judge will provide a person of low estate justice, then just imagine how much more that a loving God will give to his people in need. 

     A few days ago, I read an editorial in the New York Times that initially caught my eye like I imagine this story caught Luke’s hearers the first time they heard it.  The contrast in the Times headline was this “Juveniles and the Death Penalty.” [2]   Juveniles and the death penalty?  Talk about contrasts. 

     The issue here is that the State of Missouri is challenging a ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court that states that executing a person who had committed a murder when he was 17 would violate the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.  The state of Missouri wants to carry out the sentence originally handed down in a 1993 murder trial.  The case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court which must decide whether the death penalty should apply to those under the age of 18 who kill.  According to the New York Times, only the United States and Somalia have not repudiated the execution of juveniles.  According to Amnesty International, the United States is among only eight countries to have executed juvenile offenders since 1990. [3]  

     In the past fifteen years, there has been a steady national movement away from the juvenile death penalty.  Today, in thirty states, there is either no death penalty or the death penalty applies only to people 18 years of age or older when the crime is committed.  While only nineteen states nominally permit the execution of juveniles, only three have actually executed juvenile murderers in the last 10 years:  Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma. 

     In making its decision, the U.S. Supreme Court looks to “evolving standards of decency.”  It was clear from Thursday’s New York Times that there is no consensus among the justices themselves about what constitutes such emerging standards.  Four justices are in favor of invalidating the juvenile death penalty; three are opposed.  These are the same three judges who voted against barring the execution of mentally retarded offenders in 2002.

     Let me make one thing absolutely clear.  The Episcopal Church opposes the death penalty, and has formally held that position since 1958. [4]   And when it has been appropriate or the need particularly acute, the church has formally reiterated its opposition to the death penalty.  Many of us have also given witness to our opposition to the death penalty by death watch vigils outside prisons on the eves of executions. 

     Like the widow, the church has been persistent in its prayers about this issue.  And our text today tells us that persistence is important when we petition God.  But that raises important questions about prayer:  Does God always hear our prayers?  Does God answer our prayers?  What is the value of prayer?

     Prayer, whether it takes the form of highly stylized verbal petitions such as we find in the pages of the prayer book, or whether it consists of spontaneous thoughts about a person or a situation, is first and foremost a conscious reminder that we are not at the center of the universe.  Something or someone else matters to us – a lot.  We care.  And when we pray or think hopeful thoughts about something or someone, we acknowledge our dependence on that which is outside ourselves, beyond our control.  We express our helplessness.  But more important than that, we express a profound sense of hopefulness. 

     The parable that Luke provides us tells us that if we are going to make a mistake about prayer, it will be in not praying enough.  But the purpose of being persistent in prayer is not to win some sort of contest.  The purpose of prayer is not to put a headlock on God, forcing God to cry Uncle and give us what we want.  Prayer is an activity that allows us to give up one’s self for a greater good.  And that has the profound capacity to change our lives.  It opens us up to the possibility of something different. 

     I believe that God hears each and every prayer uttered, whether it is a complex Anglican prayer sprinkled with colons and semi colons, or the sincere thoughts of a loving person thinking good thoughts about a loved one.  God hears them all.  And in ways that I do not understand, the power of the divine, blended with our willingness to engage in this simple act of selflessness, produces a positive outcome in the pray-er as well as in the thing or person prayed for.  Indeed, there was a study conducted in 1999 showing that intercessory prayer had a significant positive outcome on patients treated in a coronary care unit at Duke Medical Center. [5]   Similar findings have been made with depression and high blood pressure.

     Can prayer magically produce results?  I do not believe so.  I think that that is why we are reminded in today’s gospel that persistence is the key.  Not persistence to persuade, but persistence to transform us into beings who can pray effectively.  Prayer is like any other skill – it takes practice to get it right. 

     For decades, many people have worked tirelessly to change the attitude toward the death penalty in this country for religious, scientific, psychiatric, philosophical, and political reasons.  I believe that these people are all engaged in one kind of prayer or another.  I personally believe the death penalty for anyone is not supportable on theological, moral, or ethical grounds. 

     We cannot petition the U.S. Supreme Court on this issue.  That is not the way our system of government works.  But what we can do is petition God, asking for God’s compassion.  Compassion is the ultimate sharing of the joy and the pain of others, and the willingness to embrace that all inclusive Kingdom of God of which Luke’s Jesus has spoken.  Compassion for others is what leads us into that Kingdom and complete conversion to God.  Henri Nouwen wrote that “Conversion to God means a simultaneous conversion to the other persons who live with you on this earth.  The farmer, the worker, the student, the prisoner, the sick, the black man, the weak, the strong, the oppressed, and the oppressor, the patient, and the one who heals, the tortured and the torturer, the boss and the flunky.  Compassion removes all pretension and false modesty.” [6]  

All of this comes about through prayer for the other, and implementing actions we sincerely believe are inspired by the Holy Spirit.  Prayer primarily allows us to step out of our own worlds and into the worlds of the others who share this planet with us.  And they allow us to tap into the mind and heart of God to bring about something better and nobler than what existed before. 

As we leave this place today, let us remember that as Episcopalians we are primarily a people defined by what we pray.  Lets us pray persistently and fervently for compassion – especially for the U.S. Supreme Court Justices who must weigh the profoundly important issue of justice for juvenile offenders, their victims, and their families.

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Jeremiah 31:27-34

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the LORD. In those days they shall no longer say: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge. The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Psalm 119:97-104

97 Oh, how I love your law!
      It is my meditation all day long.

98 Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,
      for it is always with me.

99 I have more understanding than all my teachers,
      for your decrees are my meditation.

100 I understand more than the aged,
      for I keep your precepts.

101 I hold back my feet from every evil way,
      in order to keep your word.

102 I do not turn away from your ordinances,
      for you have taught me.

103 How sweet are your words to my taste,
      sweeter than honey to my mouth!

104 Through your precepts I get understanding;
      therefore I hate every false way.

2 Timothy 3:14-17, 4:1-5

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.  

Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’“ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge 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? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”