Parables of Grace: The Parable of the Persistent Widow; Our Crazy Loving God

So that first verse in our passage says you ought to keep praying.

Don't stop praying because I don't want you to lose heart.

This is how Luke sets up this parable that Jesus teaches.

He says, Don't lose heart.

It's like Luke is saying, I don't want you to lose heart.

I know it's going to be easy for you to lose heart.

It's going to be incredibly easy for you.

It's easy to get distraught.

That's the other word, maybe it's in your text, in your version.

Don't lose heart because life is hard and it gets busy and it's tiring and things didn't work out and that person didn't work out.

And maybe you lost a person or somebody's sick or you're sick.

You didn't plan on it.

Your plan didn't work out.

Your dream is not working out.

Don't lose heart.

It's not over.

Not in this life or in the next.

Not for a God who loves us in pain and through pain and in difficulty and through difficulty.

Don't lose heart.

You're going to want to lose heart.

You're going to want to move into pain and stay there and not move through it.

You're going to want to just stay in some sort of apathy or throw the talon.

Don't do that.

Don't do that.

Don't lose heart.

Keep praying.

And that's Luke's way of not just saying, like, you know, you're going to sit on your knees in your room and close your hands.

It's his way of saying, don't stop engaging with God.

So that's the setup.

Don't lose heart.

It's going to be easy.

It'll be easy for you to lose heart.

Don't lose heart.

And then Jesus begins in on this teaching, and there's a woman who keeps bothering a judge for justice, probably some sort of financial issue with somebody else, and finally he gives in to her.

And the woman's a widow.

So right away we know in this culture she's lost her social standing.

She's a nobody.

She's in need, and she's begging this judge.

She has she has nowhere else to go.

She's in financial need.

She's losing heart.

She has nowhere else to go.

End of a rope.

And she's in front of this judge.

In 2005, there was a judge in New York.

A cell phone went off in his courtroom.

There's 46 people in his courtroom.

A cell phone went off in his courtroom.

He'd already told the courtroom, everybody, have your phones on silent or turn them off.

A cell phone goes off in his courtroom, and he cannot believe this in his courtroom.

How dare these people not obey him?

And he says, Whoever's phone went off, confess up, confess it.

Nobody fesses up, nobody confesses it.

So he puts everybody in jail.

Out of his own gratification, true story.

Out of his own, I found it, I found it on the web, it's gotta be true.

Out of his own gratification and convenience, he arrests 46 people and puts them in jail.

Out of his own gratification and convenience, he makes this unjust ruling.

Now maybe you've been in front of a judge.

Maybe you know a judge, maybe you are a judge.

And maybe a judge can be short-tempered, maybe a judge can be creative, but we do expect a judge to have a respect for God and man.

And to be fair in response to that foundation.

And when we hear about judges who are not fair and they don't have a respect for God and for man, and fair in response to that foundation, we sort of want them off their bench.

You need to move along, you need to go to another job.

It's not a job for you.

And then we get Luke 18, and Jesus uses an unjust judge who does not care about God or man to represent God.

And it's because this judge goes in crazy favor for a woman that any other judge would not even let into their courtroom.

So point number one, the unjust judge is crazy.

For a while the judge tells her to take a hike.

Just, you know what?

Just go away.

Just go away, go away, go away.

And then a shift occurs in verse 4.

For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down.

This is his reason, this is his reasoning, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.

And the Lord said, Hear what the unrighteous judge says, and will not God give justice to his elect, to you, to his beloved, who cry to him day and night, will he delay long over them?

So let's just review this man's train of thought.

A judge, a beacon of righteousness and justice.

Doesn't fear God, doesn't care for people.

And just for his convenience, just to shut her up, he will grant her favor.

That's it.

And that's the point of this parable.

He is willing to be perceived as a bad judge, perceived as a bad judge in order to grant favor upon her.

This is crazy thinking for a judge whose entire career rests on just rulings based on sound arguments, not a ruling based out of his own desire.

But he doesn't care.

Just to grant favor upon her.

Two weeks ago, we sent all three of our little girls off to school.

First time all three are in school.

Praise God, no more preschool payments.

That's fantastic.

It's a new season of a life for us.

And so they're on the front porch, back, all three have their backpacks on, they're all dressed in their little navy and white school uniforms, ponytails and ribbons and all that going on.

We're taking these pictures.

And Christian, we just can't love them anymore.

I mean, like you look in that moment, right?

Like you're not you're not thinking about laundry too much in that one moment, right?

Like a minute later you are, but in that one moment, you're not thinking too much about laundry or difficulty, and they're not, they're not, you know, on each other too much.

And just in that one moment, you're like, I can't, I can't love them any more than this, right?

There's just those moments when you're not thinking about all the difficulty, and there is harmony, and your heart is so full of love for someone, and maybe it's not your children, maybe you don't have children, maybe it's for a niece or nephew or aunt or uncle or a parent, maybe it's for your dog.

Like I really love my dog.

It's kind of crazy how much you can love a dog.

And you can you think I just can't love any more than this.

And then time passes, like a week passes or a month passes, and then you're in another moment, right?

And it's a good moment, another moment where like there's harmony again, and you're not thinking about all the difficulty, and you look at that person and you're like, oh my gosh, I love them more.

Like, how did that happen?

We revert to measurement a lot of times in this moment where we'll say, like, I love you to the moon and back, right?

But that's kind of limiting.

Because that's 238,900 miles to the moon times two.

So you're you've kind of limited your love a little bit.

So maybe you would say something like, Well, I love you like the Milky Way, but that's still limiting because that's a measurement, right?

That's 150,000 light years across.

And I know a light year is really fast because light can go around the Earth seven times in a second, so that's pretty fast.

And the galaxy is a hundred, our galaxy, right?

Which is a small one, by the way, 150,000 light years across, but still a measurement, right?

So it's still limited, it's finite.

But the universe is something different.

See, the universe made up of all these different galaxies, galaxies we don't even know about.

The universe is actually, people believe, like real, real smart people, like scientists, believe it's still growing.

The universe is actually still growing.

So I love you to the moon and back, it's a little limiting.

But I I love you like the universe is growing.

Now, now, only then have we begin to touch into like the sort of favor and love God has.

Like a crazy, a crazy God with love, finite, imperfect people.

It's crazy thinking to people like us who want to put parameters on God's love.

And it's just, I I love them because they're mine.

Jesus didn't have to make the woman a widow.

He made the woman a widow in the story on purpose.

Because she would have been somebody who just didn't have her act together.

Point number two, the unjust judge teaches us of God's crazy love.

This strange story is telling us God is willing, God is willing to be perceived as a bad God in order to favor us.

Now, he's not actually a bad God, but he's willing to be perceived as that by the religious people in order to favor broken, needy, sinful people, by which all of us are, including the religious people, that perhaps had a perception of this bad God.

My favorite Jesus story is John 8.

I tell it all the time.

I think it comes up about every two or three months in a sermon.

And you remember it, the lady was caught in adultery, and the religious folks they go and they grab her and they bring her in front of Jesus and a whole bunch of other people in the town, and they say, Hey, we caught her in adultery.

The law says we we need to stone her to death.

Everybody's gathered around, she's there, she's exposed.

She has no case.

She has no case, no standing.

She doesn't even voice a case.

She can't.

She has nothing to offer here.

She's helpless, she's helpless.

And the Pharisees throw the question at Jesus, what are you going to do?

I mean, the law says you need to stone her.

That's what the law says.

Are you going to be a good judge?

Because a good judge will stone her.

So the law says, Will you be a good judge, or will you decide to be a bad judge and will you do something else?

Will you break that?

And Jesus kneels down, stands up, and he kneels down and stands up.

He does some awkward stuff there.

And perhaps I've always thought maybe that's just to get the attention off of her and onto him.

We don't know what he's doing, drawing pictures in the dirt.

I don't know what he's doing.

Nobody knows.

But he moves the argument from law and justice to human experience and grace very quickly when he says, hey, okay, if any one of you, if any one of you has no sin, cast the first stone.

Right?

He's saying, you're no better than her.

We know what the law is.

We know what the law does to us, to me.

The law is righteous, it's true, but we are imperfect before it.

I'm not gonna stone her.

You shouldn't stone her.

You need a God who loves like a crazy judge, just like she does.

And slowly everybody drops their stones and they leave, and then he says to her, you know, neither do I condemn you.

I don't even condemn you.

Go now and leave your life of sin.

What a crazy proclamation to declare over this woman.

I don't condemn you.

Everything she just did deserved judgment and condemnation, and yet the judge decides to be perceived as a bad judge and say, I don't condemn you.

Offer you love.

And all of this is crazy love.

But he's not actually a bad judge.

That's the interesting thing about the whole thing.

He's actually completely just and righteous.

It's just that God decided to take it upon himself.

Right?

Our sin is cast upon Jesus on the cross.

His righteousness is given to us that we might be forever the beloved.

But that's very hard to understand to people who love merit and performance.

Point number three, our hope, our hope is in God's crazy love.

It's the only place for hope.

Hope meaning how how will you live?

How will you live in a non-anxious presence and joy and freedom?

How will you do that?

How will you have a confidence for tomorrow that you can handle tomorrow and not lose heart?

How will you do that?

How will you have that sort of hope?

Well, do you know that you're loved?

That you are favored rather than judged by God Himself?

And this love forever lives and works in you.

When Christy and I first got married, we went on a road trip and we we stopped we stopped for gas, and I can remember this.

She goes in, I assume she's going in to use the restroom.

She comes back out, she has a Diet Coke and hot tamales.

Interesting combination, by the way.

And I don't want to cause a candy split or issue here, but that's bottom shelf candy.

You know.

They just sell it off the floor in most gas stations.

I mean, it's it's the bottom.

It's the bottom.

It's not respectable like Reese's Pieces or intellectual like a junior mint.

I mean, that's hot tamales, let's be honest.

And so she gets in the car and I share my views about her candy.

And she shares with me a few words.

But for me, this was also new.

This was new to grab a snack at a gas station.

How many of you grew up in families that grab snacks at gas stations as you grew up?

Okay?

How many of you you're like, what?

A snack in a gas station?

Dad would have never.

Yeah, okay, that's me.

We barely were allowed out of the car to use the restroom.

We had to make good time.

Time was very important more than the snack.

But for me, that was new, okay?

I didn't grow up in that.

If you wanted food, you should have brought it in the car from the house and a little cooler.

That's how it should have been.

That's how it worked.

And Christy's over there, she's chomping away.

Hot Somalies is allowed candy.

We know that.

I didn't get anything, so I sat over there.

I'm driving and judgment upon her and her trashy candy and all of that.

And she, of course, on these road trips, she continues to get a drink and candy.

Over and over again.

And she would say stuff to me like, Russ, road trips are hard enough.

Like, just get a snack.

Like, give yourself a break.

Like, we're gonna be in the car for eight hours.

Just like, it's three dollars.

But I have all that all this stinginess, you know.

So I'm like, well, you know, she's happy.

She's over there happy as can be, and I'm in judgment about her trashy candy, and you know, and I'm starving and I'm miserable, but I'm not spending three dollars.

The strangest thing happened.

I don't know when it happened, but it happened at some point.

Some point I gassed up and I used the restroom, and I got a Coke and trail mix, something respectable.

I couldn't go back to the car with just you know anything, so twizzlers.

I wasn't gonna do Twizzler.

And I get back in the car, my Coke, and my trail, trail mix, and you know what you got there?

What you got there, Russ?

She got a snack.

Good.

Like she'd been waiting years for this transformation out of my judgment and stinginess.

And we we wear each other down, don't we?

Not in demand or judgment, that doesn't work toward joy.

But we do wear each other down with truth and grace and love.

And a persistent crazy love is the love that we have from God to us.

Because it just doesn't stop.

That's why Luke set it up with don't lose heart.

Because the love, this crazy judge that favors us, how he favors us in Jesus, it doesn't stop because you're imperfect or you're broken or your act's not together, or you're super stressed out, or you're fearful, or life's hard, or there's suffering.

And the persistent love wears us down and it gives life to all sorts of dead places that we didn't even know were dead.

We're worn down by the absurdity of it, that it doesn't need any merit.

And that's absurd to any of us or to a world or any churches that are infatuated with merit or pride.

A God who accepts and justifies, that's the word in the text, justifies, we justify me, we justify, will you make me right?

That you would be justified by his crazy favor upon you.

Though you have no case.

So we circle back around that verse one, and he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

So, last point, point number four, prayer isn't a way to manipulate God for things, but to be in a posture where we can be worn down by God's persistent love as to have hope.

So, isn't it silly that we so often base our Christian faith in what we do for God when the entire time is all about what he has done for us.

His persistent love toward us.

My brothers and sisters, in Jesus the Christ, he accepts you and he favors you with a crazy love.

May you walk in peace.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you for the gift of Jesus.

That was a crazy act of justice, undeserved to people who have no case.

Yet we come needy.

And we show up empty-handed.

We have nowhere else to go for justification.

And yet, by grace, through faith, you justify us as valuable, as righteous as your beloved.

Free us from all the ways that we make you really small and make your love small.

All the ways we rely upon our own behaviors for our righteousness or justification in this world.

Increase our faith in you that we might trust in you and walk in a non anxious joy and freedom in this world.

Amen.