What kind of faith will the Son of Humanity find when he appears? Hopefully, according to the story Jesus told, something like that of the widow woman who wouldn’t stop bugging the unjust judge until she got what was right and fair.

  It’s not an insignificant thing that the woman in the story is a widow. Widows were extremely vulnerable in first century Israel. There wasn’t anything like social security, pension plans, or opportunities for women to have their own careers and 401k’s. And when a woman’s husband died his estate went to the man’s oldest son, not his wife. If he didn’t have any sons, the next closest male relative got the inheritance. Widows were completely at the mercy of sons, brothers-in-law or whoever ended up with the money for their continued survival. They needed people like judges to make sure they were not totally abandoned.  

  In this story, the judge doesn’t really care what happens to the widow. But she won’t leave him alone. So he finally gives in, not because it’s the just and right thing to do, but because he’s tired of all her demands for justice.

  In this story, Jesus makes it clear that the judge is not the God figure. God is not someone we have to bug until we get what we want. But what God does like is a persistence for justice, even if we have to persist with God. That has something to do about the kind of faith the Son of Humanity is looking for when he comes.

This story really gets its start earlier in Luke 17 when the disciples ask Jesus to give them more faith. He tells them that if they have enough faith they can tell a tree to go plant itself in the bottom of the sea. Mary talked about that a couple of weeks ago. Then he tells that story of the Samaritan leper who is healed that we talked about last week. Now Jesus tells this parable about a widow, another outsider, who is an example of faith. The kind of faith these outsiders show is the kind of faith the Son of Humanity is looking for when he returns.

Most of you know that our first grandchild Sofia has been spending the initial days of her life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at St. Anne’s Hospital in Westerville. Her care is not as intense as some of the other babies in that unit. At her four pounds and twelves ounces, as tiny as she is, she is twice the size of her most recent companion who entered the NICU.

  The technology in such places is amazing. The care and the skill of the staff is excellent. They know what they are doing and they have the equipment to get babies even smaller than two pounds and six ounces thriving and home with their parents.

  We have been praying and praying for Sofia even though we have good reason to trust the care she is receiving. But as I have prayed for Sofia I have realized there are so many babies in this world who don’t have the facilities, care, and technology that is available for her. So I can’t pray for Sofia without praying for them. And I can’t pray for them without realizing I will have to persist on their behalf, not only before God, but before the unjust judges of this world who don’t care about what happens to the babies.

  I think that has something to do about the faith the Son of Humanity is expecting when he returns. Can we have enough faith to believe that our persistence on behalf of the little ones, on behalf of the widows, is something that is going to make a difference in this world? Are we going to believe in what God can bring about? Or will we surrender to the system of the unjust judges and slink away to our spiritual oases where we don’t let the troubles of creation interrupt our religious devotion?

  The prayer that Jesus taught us to pray pleads for God’s kingdom to come, God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. That’s why this widow persisted against the judge. She wants God’s will do be done right here on earth, and won’t give up until it is. As Springsteen would say it, no retreat, no surrender until God’s will is done right here, right now. We can’t pray for our daily bread and not care whether others get their’s too.

After Tuesday night’s Bible Study, and spending time with this passage, I realized I’m a creationist, though a different kind of creationist than the ones getting all the press. If you read the first couple of chapters of Genesis you have to wrestle with that call for human beings to have dominion over the creation. So far that hasn’t worked out very well. We have taken that idea of dominion and abused the creation beyond description by turning it into domination. But the abuse isn’t, obviously, limited to the environment. The story of the persistent widow and unjust judge reminds us that the abuse of one another is also an affront to God purposes of creation.

  But Vern Ratzlaff, our resource for these studies suggests that dominion is not domination in the sense of what can we get out of nature for us. Rather the call is to dominate the forces of creation, including human forces, for the good of all people. I can go along with that. In The Message translation the idea of responsibility for the creation seems to be closer to what I think the intent is.

  The bible begins with the idea that the creation was in chaos and God spoke order to it. When God created human beings, making men and women in God’s own image, we were given the task of maintaining that order, helping creation work for the good of all creation, including humanity.

  I can make a good argument that the stories of Genesis 1 and 2 speak of God’s creation as something where people are not separate from the rest of nature, but a part of its web. It’s not that God created the natural world and then created human beings, but created the world which includes what we call the natural world and humanity.

  A gift that humans can bring to creation is helping all of creation, its human and natural elements, channel its forces for the good of all of creation, all its people and all of the natural world.

  I think a good example of of what the Genesis stories are getting to is the rain forests of this world. Creation can’t survive, including humans, without rain forests. So humans have to decide are we going to help the rain forests thrive so all of creation thrives, or are we going to cut them all down so nothing survives, including us?

  We need houses, economic systems, farmlands created out of the forests, and so much more to survive as human beings. But it all has to work for everyone and all of creation. And when it doesn’t that’s injustice, that’s not God’s intention for creation.

  So we persist. We believe in the God Jesus believed in. We believe the creation, the world God made, was made for the good of all people and all things. But Genesis 1 and 2 quickly give way to Genesis 3, where the sin and death and injustice enter the world. From Genesis 4 on, the rest of the story is about the possibility of redemption, of the creation becoming again what God intended. That’s what the widow in the story wants or.

  Will the Son of Humanity find faith when he returns? Will there be creationists who have persisted, who have bugged the unjust judges, for the justice God wants for the world, all its people and all of nature? Will there be people who believe in the God who has not given up on creation but will redeem all things?

  Can we live with redemptive vision? Can we maintain or discover a faith that continues to bug the unjust judges of this world and keep them awake at night demanding bread not bombs, economic equality not trickle down economics, fair treatment not fair trade, partnership between genders, races, nations, and cultures?

  They don’t have to give in because we have converted them, as nice as that would be. If they only do what God wants for this world because they are tired of us, that’s okay with me.

   It takes faith, though. We have to believe God is on our side. It will take prayer, lots of it. But you notice the story about the widow didn’t have her sitting at home praying. She was banging on doors because she believed God is a god who wants justice and fairness, even for widows.

  Here’s one of the things prayer does. When you pray for yourself, you start realizing there are others who are in need, too. So you start praying for them, but then it’s no longer simply about praying. You start noticing some of the things you are praying for are a result of injustice in this world, a result of denying God’s intention for creation. Now you are called to join God in working on behalf of justice, no longer simply for your sake, not even for the sake of others but, literally, for God’s sake. Then you start bugging unjust judges. That’s why God put humans here, to help creation fulfill its purposes.

It’s a lot. We have really messed up creation, including our relationships with God and each other. And those relationships are a vital part of the creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2. But Jesus is convinced that God wants something so much different for this world than that unjust judge did. And he also believed that faith in who God is is what brings about a new world.

  When we got back from Peace Camp this summer, I mentioned what Rita Nakashima Brock said about the understanding early Christians had of their calling. She was looking at the earliest of Christian art and realized that it’s primary theme was about paradise. They understood that following Jesus sent them on a search for God’s original intent in creating the world. Paradise was something to be discovered, or regained as the poet Milton put it. But more than being discovered or regained, paradise is our mission.

  Will the Son of Humanity find faith when he returns? Will there be cage rattlers, chain yankers, people persisting and being obnoxious, bugging God and unjust judges on the behalf of the justice of creation. Will the Son of Humanity find any creationists out there, people who believe God created this world for the good of all things and all people?