WEARING GOD OUT
Luke 18:1-8
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C
Analysis by Chris Repp
1Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ 4For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” 6And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
“And there was a widow in that city, and she came unto him saying “Avenge me of mine adversary.” Anonymous artists by Pacific Press Publishing Company, 1900
From Wikimedia Commons
“When that news of God’s persistent love is heard, something new happens.”
Author’s note: Underneath the hood, this passage is more volatile than it seems in translation. The word for the justice that the widow demands (ἐκδίκησις, not δικαιοσύνη) implies retribution or revenge. The widow has been wronged, we know not how (though we can imagine), and making it right means punishing others. “Avenge me” is what she is saying. The judge finally gives in maybe not just to stop being bothered, but to prevent her from resorting to violence. “Wear me out” can mean “give me a black eye.”
DIAGNOSIS: Wearing Out
Step 1: Initial Diagnosis (External Problem) – Losing Heart
If Jesus was encouraging his disciples not to lose heart, it must mean that they were losing heart. Why would that have been? Was the reality of Jesus’ intentions finally beginning to sink in? Were they catching on that he really did mean to go to his death, as he said twice back in chapter nine? They’re still on the road to Jerusalem nine chapters later. He must really mean it.
We too are discouraged. These are discouraging times we are living through. Here in the United States the future of our way of life seems to be at stake. That can mean different things to different people, depending upon how one imagines what that way of life is or ought to be. We are weary and worn, even worn out.
Step 2: Advanced Diagnosis (Internal Problem) – Losing Faith
For the disciples, their loss of heart stems from losing faith in Jesus. He has not turned out to be who they had hoped he would be. They would be happy to be on the road to Jerusalem with Jesus if he were going there as the conquering hero they had expected. Isn’t that who the Messiah is supposed to be? But going to die? That does not compute.
Our discouragement has similar roots. Our country is not turning out to be what we thought it was. And at the moment of this writing, that seems to be a non-partisan sentiment, even if the vision of what we hope for remains divided. And God does not seem to be in the picture. Where is God as injustice runs rampant and our national legacy is tarnished? Will God do anything about our present trouble? Does God even care?
Step 3: Final Diagnosis (Eternal Problem) – Losing God
The disciples will end up abandoning Jesus at the end of this road. One will deny him, another will betray him, and all of them will flee, except the women who watch at a distance. They had hoped that Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel. They don’t hope that any more. They’ve given up.
As for us, we too are tempted to turn elsewhere, or nowhere. We become like the judge in Jesus’ parable, left without fear (reverence) of God or regard for our fellow human beings. We either make a god in our own image, a deity who blesses our personal agendas and hates those whom we hate, and cry out for justice (revenge) against those who have wronged us, real or imagined, or we turn away from God altogether. And as for our fellow human beings, we divide into camps with like-minded folks, lobbing memes at outsiders on the battlefields of social media, all the while wearing out the social fabric that once undergirded our common life. And like a worn-out garment, we are destined for the rag heap or the burn pile.
PROGNOSIS: Wearing God Out
Step 4: Initial Prognosis (Eternal Solution) – Gaining God
Though we give up on God, God does not give up on us. Into the battlefields of our lives, God sends the Son. He hears our cries for vengeance, but knows that down that road lies only endless escalation and recrimination. And so he stands in the breach and takes our mutual assaults upon himself. “If anyone’s eye is to be blackened, let it be mine,” he says. Worn out by our version of justice on the cross, he is rewoven into new life on the third day, having conquered for us the powers of sin, death and evil.
Step 5: Advanced Prognosis (Internal Solution) – Gaining Faith
When that news of God’s persistent love is heard, something new happens. Scattered disciples are gathered back into community by living word and broken bread. Across the ages by that same gospel the Holy Spirit creates faith in us, “where and when the Spirit wills,” say our Confessions.* In Holy Baptism the worn garment of our former life is cast off, and we are swaddled in resurrection life.
“*What do we do when our proclamation or our hearing of the gospel does not, immediately or obviously, result in faith? That’s a reality we encounter all the time, and just what the “escape clause” in article five of the Augsburg Confession addresses. The gospel, like prayer, is not a magic spell that automatically works when the right words are said. The Spirit does the Spirit’s work in God’s own time. And delay can feel to us like refusal. So what do we do when it feels like the Spirit does not “will” to create faith? We “wear out” the Spirit like the widow did the judge by continuing to proclaim the gospel, the only thing we’re given to do!”
Step 6: Final Prognosis (External Solution) – Gaining Heart
In Baptism we have put on Christ (see Galatians 3:27), and having put him on, we now wear him out, out into the world. His compassion becomes our compassion, his mercy our mercy, his persistent love our persistent love. Our trust in the gospel’s promises gives us a confident hope in the source of our new life. And so we turn to him in prayer in good times and in bad, and we don’t lose heart. And that’s because the one we wear out never wears out, and never gives up.
