Finding Faith ... in

EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2017 I began a new venture as a synodically authorized minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. The ride over the past 2.5 years has been an amazing journey of learning, growing and the deepening of my theological mind. This sermon originally took place on Oct. 20, 2019.

This past week, we’ve spent a great deal of time talking about the plight of our farming community.

Bishop Bill Tesch even declared this past Thursday a day of prayer for our farmers and the greater farming community. And he held a prayer vigil for the farming community that night in Fisher, Minn., near East Grand Forks up north.

The bishop even spent the time to make a video discussing the difficult times our farmers face.

And all of this discussion about the farmers’ struggle has been done for good reason. … Things are bleak for the farming community right now.

According to the National Weather Service, our region has received about five times the amount of precipitation we normally receive in the period from mid-September to mid-October.

And crop prices are historically low. In fact, according to one news report, over the last few years, farm income has dropped by half.

And last year Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings, a special bankruptcy category just for farmers, reached 500 in number. … That’s numbers we haven’t seen since the farming crisis of the 1980s.

So, in light of all that our farmers are enduring, as I read and studied this week’s gospel, I took special interest in the unfortunate widow’s unjust plight.

There are many poignant themes in this parable. But the one that is the most poignant is the timing of when Jesus uses this parable to teach his followers about the need to persistently reach out to God in prayer.

We have to remember that at this point in his travels, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, where he will be unjustly tried, tortured and killed, for seemingly no reason at all.

And so, as Jesus relates the story of this poor woman who faces persecution by an uncaring and unkind judge, it seems that he probably knows a little something about being punished unjustly.

If you were like me, the telling of this short parable angered me with each passing sentence because, after all, don’t our scriptures tell us that as followers of Jesus we are especially obliged to care for all those who are vulnerable in society, including the poor, orphans, those who are visiting from foreign lands, and, yes, widows, as well.

And as a civic leader of his time, the judge in this parable most certainly would have been aware of the scriptures that demanded him to do the same.

But instead, want does this judge do? … Each time the widow comes to him, begging for justice against her enemy, the judge refuses. … Proving that he’s not just indifferent to the widow’s worries, but rather he’s truly one who neither feared God, nor has respect for people.

So, based on Jesus’s description of the judge, as I read the parable, I do not have great hope for this widow’s case. … But ultimately, what happens?

We discover that in the end the judge grants the woman’s request because he just doesn’t want to be bothered by her any longer. … Not for humanitarian reasons, mind you, but just because he sees the woman as a nuisance.

Not quite the magnanimous decision we’d hope for the antagonist in this parable. … But Jesus’s parable does have an illustrative outcome nonetheless.

Because, you see, Jesus turns that judge’s anger-inducing decision into a teaching moment.

“Listen to what the unjust judge says,” Jesus tells us.

And if an unjust creep of a leader such as that can be made to change his corrupted mind, then cannot our God, if we persist in our supplication to him, not deliver an even grander relief from our struggles?

“And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?” Jesus goes on. “Will he delay long in helping them? … I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.”

So, just where am I going with all this?

Well, right now, doesn’t the plight of our farmers sound a bit like that of the widow’s plight?

And haven’t each of you in your own right, whether you are a farmer or not, felt like the widow in this parable at one point in your life?

I will be honest. … I do not know what our farmers and their families are enduring right now. I can’t tell you what it’s like to pour your blood, sweat and tears into the ground each spring, and then give up to the variances of nature.

I cannot tell you what it’s like to see the rain come down in record amounts, only to wash out your fields and keep you from a harvest as the clock is ticking.

Nor do I know what it is like to work just as hard today, just as many hours, endure just as many sleepless nights, and read just as many disheartening headlines as a few years ago, but know that my farm’s value is a fraction of what it was back then.

I will never know those feelings.

But, I do know what it is like to be the widow in my own way. … I know what it is like to be living through the darkest days of your life, having what you thought was a safe, comfortable, middle class family life be pulled out from underneath you in the blink of an eye.

I know that gut wrenching feeling of worry for your family, not knowing when the seemingly unending stretch of bad blows will stop.

I know that feeling of repeatedly finding myself in front of that judge who does not fear God and who does not respect people in ... the ... least.

I know all of these same things in the figurative sense that our farmers are feeling today. … I know that each of you does too.

Because that is why Jesus knows that this parable is so universal to each of us. … At some point, each of us in our lives has been this poor widow, standing before a heartless judge, time after time, begging for some kind of relief to make up for our pain, to make up for our struggle.

But Jesus uses this parable for another reason too, and the pay-off is his very last message to all of us “widows” standing before a judge with a heart of stone.

“And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? … I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.”

Jesus reminds us that when we find ourselves in the midst of these very challenging times … dare I say these faith-testing times, that the answer … and the only answer … is for us to return to God time after time, and beg for justice against our opponents, whether they be figurative or literal, in the case of our farmers today.

Jesus tells us to cry out to our God both day and night, and our justice will be granted. “Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.”

The trouble, of course, is that our time and time in the Kingdom of God are two different matters. … And the hardest thing for me to say today, is that I simply have no idea what Jesus means by “quickly.”

To each of you farmers sitting in this room today. God hears your plight.

To each of the rest of you “widows” also sitting here today, God hears your plight, as well.

And please know this: I do not know when God will deliver you from the particular struggle you are enduring. … I can’t tell you how he will deliver you and what “quickly” means in God’s Kingdom.

But, what I can unequivocally tell you today is … go to God with your pleas, day and night, without ceasing. Fall on those knees, raise up your fears and frustrations and, yes, even your foes, be they literal or figurative. … And God absolutely will grant you justice.

Some way, somehow, God will hear your repeated pleas and come to your aid, just as Jesus tells us he will in today’s gospel.

And that is the Good News for this Sunday. … Amen.