Scripture: Luke 18:1-8
I was listening to a favorite podcast recently—Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History—and he had an episode about the crisis facing the citizens of Toronto… They’re being invaded… by raccoons. Cute and cuddly raccoons. I mean, they may have rabies. So don’t actually try to cuddle one!
Toronto is sometimes called the “raccoon capitol of the world.” In 2016 the city rolled out new raccoon-resistant garbage cans, part of a program that cost about 31 million Canadian dollars. The cans had a locking mechanism specifically intended to thwart raccoons. And then reports started coming in that raccoons were getting into them anyway.
And this wasn’t just garbage cans. The episode describes Toronto raccoons getting into houses, opening doors and refrigerators, invading attics, and generally defeating all human attempts to keep them out. That naturally raises the question:
Are raccoons secretly brilliant?
Scientists were suddenly curious… So they studied the question.
It turns out that they are not brilliant… at all. In fact, in terms of intelligence they rank near the bottom of the animal kingdom. So they don’t encounter some clever lock on garbage can, study the mechanism, formulate a hypothesis, and figure out how to open it.
Turns out they just like breaking things! And they won’t stop until that thing is broken. Push it, pull it, grab it, twist it, bite it, knock it over… until eventually one of those actions opens the thing. As one scientist said, “They are all action, very little thought.”
But you gotta give them credit. They are persistent.
Speaking of which, today’s parable—the seventh in our current sermon series—is usually called “The Parable of the Persistent Widow,” or “The Unjust Judge,” depending on which of the two characters you choose to emphasize.
And to say the least, the parable is difficult… But the good news is, unlike every other parable Jesus tells, we are told up front the main point: Verse 1: “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” So whatever else the parable means, it at least means that. We Christians are always to pray and not lose heart.
So today’s sermon encourages us to do that in three ways. If we want to “pray always and not lose heart,” we need to, one, avoid misinterpreting the parable; two, understand ways in which God is not like the unjust judge; and three, be like the persistent widow.
But first, number one…
Even though Luke tells us up front what the parable’s main point is, it is still so easy to misinterpret.
Your mileage may vary, but the popular misinterpretation goes something like this: “When you pray for God to dosomething, or give you something, or give someone you love something—whatever it may be—you will often have to keep asking God for the same thing, over and over—even when it takes a long time, even when it seems like God is telling you ‘no,’ even when it seems like all hope is lost. If you don’t pray hard enough, if you don’t keep on keeping on, well… you only have yourself to blame when God doesn’t give it to you.”
I’m not blaming you, by the way, if you’ve interpreted it this way…
In a sermon many years ago… I talked about that old cliché, “God always answers prayer. And he either says ‘Yes,’ ‘No,’ or what? ‘Wait.’”
And I think I said in this sermon that I never found this rule to be helpful because after all, Jesus gives us the Parable of the Persistent Widow, whose point is not to give up on the thing you’re praying for… like the widow in the parable.
And if that were true, how do you distinguish between God saying “no” and God saying, “Keep on praying for it… Be persistent… Don’t give up… Because if you’re persistent, I will give you this thing you’re praying for”?
See what I mean?
I wish I hadn’t said that now…
Because, as I now understand, this interpretation of the parable is almost opposite of Jesus’ main point about the widow and the judge!
But first some background…
Widows in the first century were in vulnerable, precarious positions. After their husbands died, they were often at the mercy of their husbands’ family—unless they had grown children who could care for them.
This woman apparently didn’t have children, or perhaps only young ones. Therefore, it’s likely that the widow is in a dispute with her in-laws. Maybe they’re defrauding her or taking advantage of her in some way. Regardless, she’s being mistreated by somebody, and she demands that justice be done.
And this judge has the power to make that happen.
The only problem is, he couldn’t care less about justice; he couldn’t care less about this woman; he couldn’t care less about God—and what God would have him do. He certainly wasn’t worried about what will happen when he dies and faces God in final judgment.
In fact, the judge will probably give his version of “justice” to whichever party bribes him for it. And we know this widow didn’t have the money for that!
But she won’t take “no” for an answer. And she shows up every day—she’s waiting around every corner—demanding that the judge give her the justice she so desperately seeks.
She’s persistent. She doesn’t give up.
But if that’s the case, what’s wrong with the popular interpretation—that we’re supposed to pray and pray and pray for something, even when circumstances are against us, even when it seems like God is telling us no, until he finally rewards our faith and gives it to us…?
What’s wrong with it?
For one thing, it would contradict what Jesus has already taught about prayer…
In the Sermon on the Mount, for instance: “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words… your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”[1]
And then, immediately after Jesus speaks those words, he shows us what a perfectly good prayer looks like… It’s called the Lord’s Prayer, and it’s a prayer he wants us to imitate as much as possible. He wants that prayer to serve as a template to guide our own prayers. And it’s short, please notice! It takes about 30 seconds to pray.
I’m not saying we should always pray short prayers. I am saying our Father doesn’t need a lot of words to answer our prayers and give us what we pray for!
In fact, one important point of Jesus’ discussion of prayer in the Sermon on the Mount is to encourage us to do it more… to make it easier and less complicated… Not to scold us and say, “You didn’t get what you prayed for because you didn’t pray hard enough or long enough—or you didn’t pray for it often enough! You gave up on the prayer request before God was ready to grant it.”
The popular misinterpretation also contradicts the apostle Paul’s experience with his mysterious “thorn in his flesh” in 2 Corinthians 12.
Whatever that painful thorn in his life represented, it agonized him, he said. It brought great anguish and suffering. He said he prayed to the Lord three times to remove it. “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’…”
Please notice: he only prayed three times before he stopped praying for it. Did he give up too soon? Would God have removed his thorn if only he’d prayed dozens of more times?
Apparently not… What happened is, he discerned God’s answer—which was no. And once Paul discerned that answer, he didn’t have to keep praying. In other words, Paul moved on.
And “moving on” was not a failure to be “persistent” like the widow.
It is, instead, being willing to accept God’s will when we discern what it is. And to keep on praying… See the point of persistence is not to keep praying for one specific thing, but to keep praying in general, keep trusting our Father—even when, as in Paul’s case, our Lord tells us no.
Back in 2019, there was a heartbreaking, and frankly disturbing, national news story involving Bethel Church in Redding, California. Bethel Church, in case you don’t know, is the home of Bethel Music, which has produced some of the most popular praise and worship songs in recent years—“Raise a Hallelujah,” “Reckless Love of God,” “Goodness of God”… which is probably why it garnered national headlines.
But a worship leader at the church named Kalley suddenly lost her two-year-old daughter, Olive. And in the days that followed, Kalley and many people associated with the church began praying publicly and persistently that God would raise Olive from the dead.
The church held a prayer vigil for days. And as they did so, they surely thought of this persistent widow… Just keep praying… Just keep trusting… Don’t give up… Even though it seems hopeless.
Long story short… Olive was not raised from the dead.
And listen: It’s not that God doesn’t perform dramatic miracles sometimes, and I am not criticizing this grieving mother who cries out to God for a miracle. I might be critical of her pastor… for failing to exercise discernment. After all, many days passed as this strange prayer vigil continued.
The fact is, our Father—as we probably all know from painful personal experience—sometimes tells us no when we pray. And we may never know why on this side of eternity.
But this brings us to Point Number Two… even when we don’t know why, we always know something better than why… We know Who… By which I mean, who our heavenly Father is…
So Point Number Two: If we want to pray always and not lose heart, we need to understand that God Our Father Is NotLike the Unjust Judge…
See, Jesus doesn’t only want us to learn something from the persistent widow… He also wants us to learn something from the unjust judge. Otherwise, why does Jesus say, in verse 6: “Hear what the unrighteous judge says.”
We can apparently learn something from him…
And what is the main thing we’re supposed to learn? That God our Father is not like this unjust judge.
Notice what this means for this popular misinterpretation of the parable: Jesus can’t be saying, “Be like this widow and keep pestering God until you finally wear him down and persuade him to give you what you want.”
Because if that’s the point, we’ve just turned God into the unjust judge!
We’ve made God into someone who is reluctant to help us… someone who has to be persuaded or cajoled or harangued or manipulated into doing something good for us.
And that cannot be what Jesus means…
Why?
Because Jesus is making one of those “how much more” arguments that he loves to make. If you were here last fall, for instance, you heard me preach on the Parable of the Friend at Midnight, from Luke chapter 11. I said, “God is not like that grumpy second neighbor who’s reluctant to give the first neighbor his bread.”
So Jesus wants us to contrast the grumpy neighbor and the unjust judge with our Father… who is not like them!
We see this “how much more” contrast, for instance, in Matthew chapter 7 when Jesus says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”[2]
So in the case of today’s parable, if even an unjust judge will finally give justice to this widow, how much more will our perfectly good and loving Father give his children everything they truly need?
Because God our Father is not like this unjust judge!
And here’s why it matters: Remember the main point of the parable? “Pray always and don’t lose heart.”
If God so often tells his beloved children “no” when we pray, I mean… that’s pretty discouraging, right? How many times does he tell us “no” before we start to think, Why bother praying?
But it’s not so much that our Father tells us no when we pray… It’s more like he says “yes” to an even deeper prayer… a deeper need that we may not even be conscious of. But our Father knows the deeper need. Our Father, in fact, always hears the prayer underneath our prayer.
We can be confident that our Father will always answer that deeper prayer with a resounding “yes.”
Don’t misunderstand: I’ve already pointed out that God often says no to specific prayer requests, by all means… What I’m saying here is that our Father says something more than merely “no.”
The apostle Paul describes how this works beginning in Romans 8:26: “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.”[3]
Think about it… We all know the painful experience of unanswered prayer—of not getting what we pray for… And this happens when our prayers are often out of alignment with God’s will. As we grow in our faith, and grow in holiness, and pray more faithfully, we will begin to discern God’s will more readily, and pray for those things that are consistent with his will.
But do you know whose prayers for us will always be perfectly aligned with the will of God our Father? The prayers of God the Holy Spirit. And consequently the Spirit’s prayers are always answered with a resounding “yes.” Because remember, God is one God in three persons. So the Holy Spirit is God, the Third Person of the Trinity—living within us, praying through our prayers, Paul says, to God the Father. With groanings too deep for words. And when God the Spirit prays to the God the Father for us, we can be sure that God the Father always gives God the Spirit what he prays for!
I hope that’s not too confusing… Paul’s point, however, is straightforward enough: if we only knew what God knows—including what we truly need, what our loved ones truly need, what our world truly needs—then we ourselves would pray those same prayers that the Spirit prays… and our human prayers would be answered yes every time!
That’s why the the late pastor Tim Keller’s famous quotation rings true: Keller said, “When we pray, God will either give us what we ask for or what we would have asked for if we knew everything that God knows.”
The Holy Spirit, according to Romans 8, is praying for what we would have asked for if we knew everything that God knows!
Isn’t that encouraging? Shouldn’t that motivate us to pray more often and more faithfully?
Remember earlier when I mentioned that cliché: “God always answers our prayers with a ‘Yes,’ or ‘No,’ or ‘Wait’”?
That’s true to some extent, I guess, but maybe an even better way of saying it is this: “God always answers our prayers with “Yes”… or “Wait”… or “Trust me… I’ve got something better for you than what you’re asking for.”
That will surely help us to “always pray and not lose heart”…
… So long as we understand that God’s word does not teach us the following: that when we pray, God will either give us what we ask for, or what we would have asked for if we knew everything that God knows, or… what we would have asked for if we had bothered to ask in the first place!
In other words, God’s promise of the Spirit’s intercessory prayer only happens as we ourselves pray!
Point Number Three… If we want to pray always and not lose heart, We Need to Be Like the Persistent Widow…
Do you know that Canadian rock band Rush? One of the greatest bands ever! They reunited this year and are currently setting the rock music world on fire. My friend Mike has two tickets to one of their shows in Atlanta in November. With great optimism, Mike bought two tickets hoping he’d find a date… but he’s often unsuccessful at finding these dates, at which point I’m hoping he’ll offer his extra ticket to me. We’ll see…
But one of my favorite Rush songs is called “Limelight.” It’s about the spiritual emptiness of celebrity, fame, and fortune. The lyrics include this clever couplet: “Living in the limelight the universal dream/ For those who wish to seem.”
Celebrities live in a world of seeming, the song says. It looks real, it seems real, but it’s not. And the singer wants to be part of something real for a change.
What about us?
Even we Christians, who ought to know better, often put way too much stock in the way things “seem,” rather than in the way things really are. What usually makes us afraid, after all, is not the way things really are, but the way things seem.
Remember Israel on the border of the Promised Land. Ten of the twelve spies come back: “The land is great, just like God said. But the people there are giants. They make us look like grasshoppers!” Yet God had already promised to give them the land.
It seemed like the giants were stronger than Israel. The reality was, God was stronger than the giants.
Remember the servant of Elisha? He wakes up one morning and discovers that a Syrian army has surrounded the city. He panics: “Alas, my master! What shall we do?”
Elisha says, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then he prays, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” And suddenly the servant sees the mountain filled with horses and chariots of fire.
What seemed to be true? They were surrounded by the enemy.
What was really true? The enemy was surrounded by God.
Remember the disciples in the storm on the Sea of Galilee? Jesus is asleep in the stern while they’re convinced they’re about to die. “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
Jesus gets up, calms the storm, and asks them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”
It seemed like the storm was going to destroy them.
The reality was, the Lord of the storm was in the boat.
Do you see the pattern?
It’s easier to trust the way things seem than the way things really are.
And what about us? The company is downsizing… Our child is sick… We can’t make ends meet… The diagnosis isn’t good… The relationship is over… There’s been an accident… We’re losing the house… losing the client… losing the business…
I’ll admit that all these things seem frightening…
… if God weren’t real, and on our side, and working all things for our good.
Our picture of reality—the way we see the world—often isn’t real because we leave God out of the picture!
A favorite verse of mine about prayer is Isaiah 59:1. In its original context, it’s actually a word of judgment against Israel: God hears their prayers and has the power to respond, but because of their refusal to repent, he won’t.
But for us Christians—for whom Christ suffered God’s judgment for our sins, and through whom we stand before God as perfectly righteous—these words say something astonishing about prayer: “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear.”
Let those words sink in: God hears every one of our prayers. And his “hand is not shortened”—he has all the power in the universe to give us whatever we truly need.
He can work a miracle that defies the laws of physics. He can work providentially—invisibly, through perfectly ordinary circumstances. He can use anyone in the world to provide the help we need…
… if he’s willing.
Remember the unrighteous judge: Our Father is not like him… so of course our Father is always willing to help his children.
Do we pray like we believe that?
And here’s what I most admire about the widow in the parable.
She knows exactly where to go for help. She knows this judge has the power to give her justice. And she is tenacious. She doesn’t give up. She doesn’t get discouraged. She doesn’t quit. She’s going to stay as close to this judge as possible until she gets what she needs.
I wish my relationship with God mirrored her relationship with this judge!
Because think about it: this woman has far less reason to keep going back to this judge than you and I have to keep going back to our Father!
She knows the judge has the power to help her. But she has no reason to believe he loves her. No reason to believe he cares about her. No reason to believe he wants what’s best for her.
Yet she keeps going to him…
So… What excuse do we possibly have for not praying like that?
“Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Dear Lord Jesus, when you return, please find it right here! Find this tenacious faith among your people at Five Forks Methodist—a faith lived out, first, in the way that we pray. Amen.
[1] Matthew 6:7-8 ESV
[2] Matthew 7:11 ESV
[3] Romans 8:26 NLT