(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The Meaning Justice”, originally shared on October 12, 2022. It was the 237th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Jesus once told a parable about the “need to
pray always and not to lose heart”, and it’s called the parable of the unjust
judge. How do those two things go together, and how do they point us to the
redevelopment of the Christian Church? Today, we’re going to find out.
Bazooka Bubblegum was sold by the piece when
I was growing up. Inside the outer wrap, each piece was enclosed in waxy white
paper with a graphic comic printed on it.
One of the first jokes I ever read was
wrapped around that pink gum.
The comic showed a police car pulling up to
a cartoonishly drunk man. He was standing near the curb, under a streetlight.
“What’s the trouble, buddy?” asked the
policeman.
“I’m looking for my house keys,” said the
drunk.
“Where did you lose them?” asked the policeman,
getting out of his car to help him look.
“Down the street,” answered the drunk,
waving his arm.
“Well,” said the policeman, “if you lost
them down the street, why are you looking for them here?”
“Because the light’s so much better here,” answered
the drunk.
That joke could be read as a parable, and the
lesson of that parable would be pretty close to the one that Jesus tells in Luke18:1-8.
This section of the gospel of Luke takes
place in the small towns and villages just north of Jerusalem toward the end of
Jesus’ public ministry. The 12 disciples were following Jesus, along with
thousands of others. Jesus was preparing them for his death, and the life they
would experience after his resurrection and ascension into heaven.
Here’s the story, in Luke 18:1-5,
18 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 opponent.’ 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.’”
This judge was a bad judge. The requirement
to care for widows and orphans and resident aliens was a significant part of
Old Testament religious law. The judge didn’t care.
When Jesus was asked to name the greatest
commandments in the law and the prophets (what we would call the Old Testament
and what Jesus would then call “The Bible”) Jesus answered, in Matthew 22:37-40,
37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the
prophets.”
God and people. The judge didn’t care about
either one.
Nevertheless, the judge agrees to “grant her
justice” because she bothered him.
Then comes what appears to be the point of
the parable, but isn’t, in Luke 18:6-8a,
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? 8aI tell you, he will quickly grant
justice to them.
So, is the message, “the squeaky wheel gets
the grease”? Whiners win? God answers prayers based on volume?
Not exactly. Let’s look at why.
First, let’s look at what it means to
be “his chosen ones who cry to him day and night”.
When we pray, we aren’t telling God anything
that God doesn’t already know. Prayer is an expression of a living relationship
with the one true living God, that is, of faith.
Faith is received, it’s not achieved. It’s a
gift that is given by God.
Paul says, in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18,
16Rejoice always, 17pray without ceasing, 18give
thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for
you.
How do we pray without ceasing? He is not
telling us to be unfocused when we’re driving, or not really present when we’re
with our families. He is saying that
prayer is the expression of a relationship with God, of the faith that
is a gift to us from God.
So, when we live from our true selves in
faith, when our faith defines everything about us because it defines the new
Creation that we have become, that faith is the substance of our prayer. That
prayer is lived “day and night”.
Second, let’s look at what it means
to receive “justice”.
Justice, in the Bible, means to do God’s
will.
This takes “justice” out of the coercive
political realm and places it into a question of how God reigns.
There is no delay in God’s help because God
is always present, and what we seek is what we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer
when we say, “thy will be done, on earth as in heaven”. Evil enters the world through rebellion
against God, through people like the unjust judge and through people like us.
We struggle for justice. We pray in that living relationship of faith 24/7 and
we struggle to do God’s will, to make this world more like the world God
intended it to be, more like the life of faith for which we were created. And
ultimately, God’s will will be done. But now, we struggle for justice, for God’s
will to be done in the world.
And then comes what appears to be an
unrelated tag on the parable, but is the point of it, in Luke 18: 8b,
8bAnd
yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
That's a chilling question, isn’t
it? But is that now a fair question?
There is no question that
Christianity, measured by numbers, is in decline in the Western world.
It’s been said that even what
is widely believed to be Christianity in the United States is, in fact, just politics
by another name both on the right and on the left.
Some believe that the primary
religion in the U.S. is in fact Moralistic (good people go to heaven),
Therapeutic (feeling good about oneself is the primary purpose of life and
should be protected at all costs) Deism (God exists to serve my needs, but only
when called upon).
MTD is a form of belief that is
tempting even to our struggling churches.
Every church wants to grow but,
I believe that, like the cartoonish drunk in the comic, we are often looking in
the wrong places for the key to do so.
We are looking for what we have
lost because we are familiar with where we are now in history, with our comfortable
institutional terrain.
The key, however, is in
Another’s hand. It’s in the pierced hands of Jesus Christ who invites us to
find our way home by following Him. That is not always a popular message,
especially when we might be being led the historic faith that may now be unfamiliar
terrain.
Where is Jesus taking us? I
think to the place where we lost the key.
First, as it has been
said, Jesus taught adults and played with children and we do just the opposite.
We need to refocus on teaching adults as a means for the Holy Spirit to make
disciples, of increasing expectations, and for life transformation.
It used to be said that the
best way to grow a youth group was to focus on the football players and the
cheerleaders. When the popular kids start to come, the rest would follow.
Many churches, filled with the
entrepreneurial spirit, believed the same.
Focus on community leaders, professionals, and
the affluent. When the successful people start to come, the rest would follow.
Does that sound even remotely
like how Jesus operated?
We have a path to new life to
offer. Jesus is the Way.
Second, the world needs
robust Christian communities. It needs people who can point to a path forward
for the lost, the outcast, the unpopular, the needy, and the alone, for the
emotionally drained, the invisible, society’s lepers, the unwanted, and for those
who cry to God because they have nowhere else to go, who are beloved by God.
For those who know they need to
be saved, we have an answer. Jesus is the Truth.
Third, there is nowhere
in the Bible that says, “Go build some churches.” The command from Jesus is to
go make disciples.
We are starting from scratch
with many, if not most people in our country. They aren’t really interested in
maintaining our buildings, or our human traditions, or our personal legacies.
They don’t need more committees. They aren’t looking for political or social
service groups thinly disguised as religions. We seek those who are seeking new
life. We have good news for them. Jesus is the Life.
We don’t have all the answers.
But I think that we have one great question that our increasingly secular
country could benefit from hearing: “Have you heard about Jesus?”
The churches of the Lutheran
denomination of which I am a part took a survey of clergy and congregational
leaders in our area about five years ago. It asked them to identify the Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats they were facing, a SWOT analysis.
The responses covered 60 pages,
and there were four 4-6 page summary reports produced, one on each part of the
acronym. I poured over the 60-pages and read the summaries closely and I could
not find one mention of “evangelism”, or “outreach”, or of anything like
calling people to receive the gift of new life in Jesus Christ. Not one. And, I
don’t think that we are alone among American Christians.
Asking people the question “Have
you heard about Jesus?” offers an antidote. It's open-ended, it allows
people to reply with the doubts and misinformation they have received. It
doesn't say join my church, it says we are all beggars and we all come before
God separated from God by our sin, and we all are reconciled to God in the same
way in the gift given by the cross of Jesus Christ. It suggests that there is something good in
Jesus, something for them.
It opens the door to our
witness that we are all called to new life in Jesus Christ, that the Holy
Spirit gives it to all who will receive it and we live it and we all fail and
we all get up again after we stumble. God lifts us to our feet.
Christ will come again and,
when he does, will He find faith on earth? We have a message to proclaim.
What do we have to offer the
world that it can't get better someplace else? Jesus.
How do we re-covert our church
organizations into being Christian communities? Jesus.
How will people be attracted to
someone who is real, someone who speaks to their real needs and not to others’
desires for them? How do we open our lives to people who are not interested in
reconstituting someone else’s past but in partnering to receive God’s future?
How can we re-convert our
churches into Christian communities?
That is the work of the Holy
Spirit and it begins with our own reconstruction. We don’t bring Jesus to
people. He’s already there. All we can do is to name the name, His essential
reality revealed in the Holy Spirit. All we can do is to make an opening with
the question of our time, “Have you heard about Jesus?”
The challenge is great, but we
follow a great God.
We struggle with all that would
hold people back from living as the new Creation we have been reconciled with
God to be. We are not alone, and one day God will put all things right, and it
will come not because of who we are or what we’ve done. It will come because of
who God is and what God has done.
Meanwhile we contend with our
broken world to make it more like what God intended it to be from the Creation,
longing for the day of ultimate justice that is coming.
One of my favorite sports quotes
comes from comedian Garry Shandling, who once reflected on Leo Durocher, the
ruthless coach of the Dodgers when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers, and who
said, “Nice guys finish last.”
Garry Shandling said, “Nice
guys finish first, and anyone who doesn’t know that doesn’t know where the
finish line is.”
Justice is doing God’s will.
And doing God’s will is an act of tenacious, trusting faith. May it grow and
bring Life to all. May God’s justice be made manifest to all people, and may we
be God’s instruments for all.
Come, Holy Spirit. Come.
