Sunday October 17, 2010 Luke 18:1-8

Welcome, it’s been awhile since I’ve last blogged. Things have been very busy for me and I haven’t been able to find the time. I am on the Call Committee for the church and that is taking up a tremendous amount of my time along with two Bible studies and my husband traveling for work for the last 5 weeks. So there you have it ….my excuses. I will try to do better although I might be sporadic until my duties on the Call Committee are over. Please bear with me on this.

The previous gospel studies have been on the parables in Luke. Harry Wendt has a great study on some of these parables and their meanings as does Kenneth Bailey in his book “Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes”. Either study dives deep into the meaning of the parables explaining them for us to understand. Sunday’s text is on the parable in Luke 18. Jesus’ audience is his disciples. Jesus is giving them an example to follow about how to pray.

V2 In a city was a judge that neither believed in God nor respected people. Apparently this judge was only out for himself.

V2 In that city a widow kept coming to the judge asking for “justice” against her opponent. This is key-a widow. A widow at the time of Jesus needed male family members to protect her. Normally a widow would not go to a judge for a ruling but a male member of her family would go for her. This widow has no one and must go herself if she wants justice. Unfortunately this judge cares for no one not even a defenseless widow.

V4-5 The judge refuses to grant her justice. This indicates that he is probably taking a bribe from her opponent to rule favorable for them. This did happen in Jesus’ day as it does today. (Doesn’t anything ever change? Two thousand years and we are still doing the same thing.) Later the judge says to himself that even though he has basically no respect for anyone he will grant her justice because she is wearing him out by her continual coming. In that day there weren’t court rooms like today but the two parties appeared before a judge, each stated their case and whoever was more persuasive won. This woman kept coming and shouting at the judge for justice. She was allowed to shout at him but could not physically harm him. Women in the Middle East are granted more leniencies when dealing with authority in a situation when men would be killed for doing the same thing. He is getting tired of her shouting at him day after day so he relents.

V6-7 Jesus tells his disciples to note what the judge said about the determination of the widow in contrast to what God says about his chosen ones. If this corrupt judge will finally grant the widow justice because of her pure tenacity will not God in heaven who loves you grant you justice and hear you? We don’t need to wear God out by shouting at him day after day; he loves us and listens to us.

V8 God, who is always just and listening to us, will hear our prayers. But, there is a caveat. We can’t understand why God doesn’t answer our prayers. Many people use this as the reason why they don’t believe in God. However the problem is us and our prayer. How do we pray? Do we pray to give God a laundry list of our needs and wants or do we pray that God’s will be done on earth? I assume that a lot of us have determined that God’s will for our lives resembles our list of wants and needs. As much as I’d like to think this; it isn’t so. God’s will for our lives looks nothing like our lists for ourselves. As we parents know what is best for our children before they are able to discern this for themselves so does God know what’s best for us. We don’t know everything. Just listen to the Garth Brooks song where he thanks God for unanswered prayer and wasn’t able to marry his high school sweetheart. This is a simple example but in some ways a profound one. How many times have each of us looked back and thanked God for unanswered prayers that we desperately prayed for. We need to pray with the mind of Jesus. What is best for the Father to give us to complete His mission, and ours, on earth? We need to give up our list and say Father we want your will to be done even if we don’t like it. This is a hard idea to let go of, we aren’t in control. Jesus then remarks “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” So I ask you will Jesus find faith on earth when he returns or will we still be trying to manipulate God through prayer to get our agenda through?