Sermon: Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Luke 18:1-8
October 19, 2025
Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church
Pastor Jonathan Linman
Jesus encouraged his followers to “pray always and not to lose heart.” Easier said than done, right? Every Sunday in worship and maybe every day in your personal devotions we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.”
And yet, as we hear, see, and read the daily news, it’s as if God’s kingdom of love, justice, peace, and well-being for all is almost nowhere in sight. In fact, current trends seem to be eroding gains made in recent generations. And we ask: does the arc of history really bend toward justice?
In the face of all of this, in spite of all of this, Jesus insists that we pray always and not to lose heart. What does it mean to not lose heart? The New Testament Greek words that translate ‘not losing heart’ can also mean to not faint or be despondent or to give in to that which is bad or evil, ill or wicked.
And a main Greek root word in the phrase is the word “kaka.” You may know how that translates in Spanish and also colloquial modern Greek! Poop. Or Crap! I won’t say it from the pulpit, but another word comes to mind…. So, when Jesus says that we should not lose heart, he’s telling us not to let ourselves be overtaken by crap. That’s certainly an edgier translation than not losing heart!
But here’s the thing: there are many, many people in our world today who have given themselves over to crap, in one form or another, people who are captive to the bad, ill-informed, even that which is wicked and evil. I could name names and suggest categories of leaders, office holders, entertainers, athletes, business tycoons, celebrities, even religious leaders, and more, who wallow in crap and bid others to join them there. As the apostle says in our second reading for today: “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but, having their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires….” I need not belabor the point. We even hear these days about kakistocracy – being ruled by the worst persons or government in which the crappiest persons are in power – on the right and the left of the political spectrum.
This is bad news that weighs us down and is throwing the whole world into chaos. Thus, daily, I fight the temptation to give myself over to “doom scrolling” the horrible headlines, and to become cynical about our sorry state. This is one of the common ways we – myself included – lose heart and give in to crap. How do we deal with this?
Jesus in Luke seems to suggest that praying always is the antidote to giving ourselves over to that which is crappy, bad, cynical, diabolical. If prayer is so crucial, how would Jesus have us pray?
Well, Jesus’ use of the parable about the widow and the unjust judge to illustrate praying always and not losing heart suggests that Jesus advocates for a manner of praying that is not all warm and fuzzy, nice and pious.
It’s a kind of praying that may better happen in the messy thick of things in the school of hard knocks, and not off in some quiet, candlelit chapel. The prayer Jesus in Luke seems to suggest is scrappy, in your face even.
Listen again to the unjust judge’s reaction to the widow who implored the judge for justice against her opponent. This will give you a sense of what I mean. The unjust judge says 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.” The widow came again and again to the judge, pestering him, not letting up, until she got her justice one way or another.
To drive this kind of point home further, the parable of the widow and the unjust judge is paired with the story from Genesis, today’s first reading, which tells the tale of Jacob wrestling all night with “the man” who may have represented God or an angel of God.
Listen again to portions in Genesis about Jacob wrestling: “When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then the man said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’” (Genesis 32:25-28) So it is that Jacob left that encounter blessed, but also wounded with a limp that he endured for the rest of his life.
This story of Jacob wrestling with God, wounded and blessed, thus also reveals the nature of the kind of prayer life to which we’re called. It’s more the kind of prayer that takes place in a boxing ring and not a chapel. It’s a kind of prayer that doesn’t take no for an answer.
Given our weak human nature, how on earth can we possibly undertake such a life of prayer with any consistency? The good news, of course, is that we have help.
I often say in my teaching that the parables in the gospels, from a Lutheran interpretive perspective, serve in large measure to reveal Jesus. So, we can ask, where does Jesus appear in the parable of the widow and unjust judge?
To cut to the chase: Christ can be seen, I believe, in the persistent widow, who does not give up on the cause of justice, even as Christ constantly offers priestly prayers for the chosen, beloved ones. And Christ offered this intercession on behalf of the world not just in his words, but in his prayerful, intercessory bodily actions.
Which is to say, we might also see Christ in Jacob who wrestled with God in the days leading up to the cross. “Let this cup pass from me,” he prayed in the Garden, “but not my will but yours be done, O God.” And from the cross, Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is Jesus wrestling with God on our behalf, taking onto his shoulders the burdens of the whole world.
And Jesus came out of that ordeal, that cosmic wrestling match between life and death, wounded – dead even – but blessed in having been raised by God to glorified life anew. This is gospel! This is good news indeed.
After telling his followers the parable, Luke reports that Jesus offered these words: “And will not God grant justice to God’s own elect who are crying out day and night? Will God delay long in helping them? I tell you, God will quickly grant justice to them.”
On the face of it, according to our experience and expectations, this is simply not true. Again, we’ve been praying for justice for years – decades, centuries even. And justice in human communities, in nations, and among peoples as we understand it and as we desire it, has not prevailed in any consistent way ever.
Yet, if we see the widow as Christ, who in Luke’s telling is on his way to Jerusalem for his last days of earthly, public ministry, then we can see how God in fact did not delay in helping those crying out day and night and how God did indeed grant justice and quickly – on the cross and at the empty tomb. What Christ accomplished on the cross and at the empty tomb is the ultimate expression of God’s justice, and it’s a justice that was accomplished without delay just days after the telling of the parable of the widow and the unjust judge in the trajectory and timeline of Luke’s gospel account.
We might therefore say that this parable foreshadows the death and resurrection in Luke’s narrative logic which makes for God’s justice in justifying us sinners by love, grace, mercy and forgiveness on the life-giving tree of the cross. “Father, forgive them,” Jesus says from the cross, “For they know not what they do.”
Thus, with Christ as our scrappy widow who pestered the unjust judges of the Roman, imperial world, and with Christ our priestly intercessor who prays for us without ceasing, we can pray as Jesus’ taught us, going and doing likewise as we intercede for a world still and forever crying out for justice.
In word and sacraments, Christ continues to enter the boxing rings of our broken, wounded lives right here in this room, interceding for justice, continuing the persistent coming that wears out unjust, corrupt judges of this world. In word and sacraments, in the water, amidst the bread and wine, Christ as a priestly Jacob wrestles on our behalf anew. In Christ, and by Christ’s intervention on our behalf, we are then grace-fully empowered by the Spirit with our faith renewed to resist giving ourselves over to that which is crappy, bad, evil in the world. For at baptism, and when we renew our baptismal covenant, we renounce all of that.
And we renounce the crappy forces of evil so that we can enter into the fray of the world to wrestle in scrappy ways in our own intercessions – prayers which at their best and most profound lead to our actions in the world, as our prayers which we pray every Sunday set the agenda and establish our “to do” lists for the church’s mission.
When we pray for justice, we are beckoned to work for justice. When we pray for peace, we offer ourselves as peacemakers. When we pray for the well-being of creation, we then seek to do our part in caring for the planet and its beloved, vulnerable, endangered creatures. When we pray for mercy, we are called to be merciful. And on and on it goes with our praying and acting, our prayers at their best driving us into the world for its healing and encouragement, so that others do not lose heart and give themselves into the world’s lesser angels, and worse.
And so we persist Sunday after Sunday, year after year, decade after decade, praying always, not losing heart, not giving ourselves over to crap.
So it is that we hear the apostle’s instruction to Timothy, from today’s second reading, as words directed to us as well: “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…. Always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.” (2 Timothy 4:1b-2, 5)
Thus, with Christ joining us on the way in the power of the Spirit, ever renewing our faith in word and sacraments, let’s go and pester some of the unjust judges of this world, pleading God’s justice, resisting the seduction of losing heart, and prevailing against all of that which is crappy in our sorry world. God in Christ help us in the power of the Spirit. Amen.
