19th Sunday after Pentecost

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Last Sunday through Tuesday, I attended the annual Bishop’s Leadership Retreat. Pastors and deacons of our synod gather for three days of worship, study, inspiration, collegial support, and to hear updates on what is happening in the synod and the ELCA at large.

At one point, our bishop mentioned how our lectionary readings for Sunday mornings have lately been rather poignant and have spoken powerfully to our current situation as Christians and as citizens of the United States and the world. We all agreed.

And we would agree again today, because both the readings from 2 Timothy and from Luke’s gospel account are so very timely.

I am beginning my sermon with the reading from 2 Timothy.

“For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but, having their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” What kind of thoughts did you have when we read this?

I had to think about the prosperity gospel which proclaims that Jesus wants you to be rich and that if you believe hard enough and give generously enough, you will be. Or White Christian Nationalism which promotes the belief that God loves the US more than other nations, and white people more than other races, and that God wants Christians to assume power over all political life. Neither one of these messages is in tune with the gospel, but they do tickle the ears of listeners and have become very popular.

I had to think of AI and algorithms. People will “accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths,” says the Bible. That’s exactly what those algorithms do: they feed you the news you want to hear and connect you with like-minded people and keep all other opinions away from you. You and I might do the same google search, but because of our browser histories, you and I will get different results that reinforce what we already thought and believed.

“People will turn away from the truth,” the Bible says. We as a nation can’t even agree any more as to what the truth is! There is no news channel left of which all citizens can agree it reports the facts truthfully.

What are we to do in this messy landscape?

According to our scripture today, we are to hold fast to the truths of faith we were taught. Timothy was taught by his mother and grandmother, and then mentored by Paul. His faith continues to be shaped by the word of God in the Bible. These are the foundations from which Timothy is not to turn away. Whether the time is favorable or unfavorable, whether people agree with him or not, whether the true gospel of Jesus Christ, of the cross and of love of neighbor is popular or not – hold on to the faith you were taught. Don’t let talk radio or social media or AI sway you. Be persistent, says our text, or, in the words of the translation The Message, stick with it!

“All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” All scripture is inspired by God. Literally, all scripture is “God-breathed”. God’s breath, God’s spirit, God’s life-force reaches us through the scriptures.

Breath of God: So many stories in the Bible come to mind. God breathes life into the dust to create human beings. Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into his disciples after Easter to mobilize them for mission. Today, through God’s word in scripture, God breathes life and hope and faith and truth and love into us.

That’s why we read from the Bible during each worship service. That’s we gather for Bible study and Jumpstart. That’s why we read the Bible at home, maybe daily. It is God speaking to us and breathing life into us.

That life-giving breath of God is what we need to navigate these messy times with their conflicting and deceiving messages.

And that life-giving breath of God is what we need when we face unjust systems that mistreat the poor and vulnerable. That’s what Jesus’ parable it about.

Jesus tells us about two very different people.

There is the judge. He has power. He is someone, and admits this about himself, who “neither feared God nor had respect for people”. In other words, he has no moral compass. He does not care that God explicitly and repeatedly calls judges to be fair and honorable and to take care of vulnerable people like widows, orphans, and strangers. Again and again in the Bible, God is very clear about this. The judge doesn’t care. He also has no compassion. And he doesn’t give a hoot as to what other people think about him.

People like that in positions of power are very dangerous. There is no sense of accountability. Nothing keeps him or her from abusing their power or office or position for their own benefit. And that comes all too often at the expense of other people, especially of poor and vulnerable people.

Like the widow Jesus talks about. In the patriarchal society of Jesus’ day, widows were powerless. This particular widow goes before the judge alone, which means she has neither husband, brother, son, or father who can speak on her behalf. She is a lonely woman in a men’s world.

We know people like that. Lonely struggling widows, yup, we still have them. And we have orphans and strangers, which the Bible so often mentions in one breath with widows. And we have poor people and unhoused people, gay and lesbian people and trans people, black people and brown people, Jewish people and Sikh people, people with disabilities and people with mental illness – the list of vulnerable people in our world is sheer endless.

What can we do? What are we called to do?

Jesus calls us to pray and not loose heart. But there is more to the kind of prayer Jesus urges then the “thoughts and prayers” we hear about after every major disaster. As Jesus makes very clear with the parable, the kind of prayer he has in mind is prayer that leads to action. The theologian Dorothee Soelle writes that prayer leads us “to a new relationship with the world, one that borrows the eyes of God”. Prayer makes us look at the world with God’s eyes. It makes us see what is amiss and urges us to do something about it.

Professor Francisco Garcia from Church Divinity School of the Pacific in

Berkeley, CA, writes: “Today’s gospel shows that prayer can and must be so much more. Like the persistent widow who doesn’t give up, and like our ever-present God who hears the cries of the weary, authentic prayer is faith in action. It is a constant believing and working for a more just and humane world that reflects God’s wellspring of mercy and justice.”

Grounded in our faith, revived by the life-giving breath of God’s word, called to action through our prayers, we can do what the widow does: show up and speak up, again and again and again.

To the world, this woman looks powerless. But she does have power: the power of faith in a God of justice, the power of trust in a God who hears the cry of the weary, the power of hope for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. With this power, she manages to be persistent. She pesters the judge relentlessly. She gets on his nerves something terrible. Eventually, she embarrasses him to the point where he gives her what she needs, just to be rid of her. The judge in the end does the right thing, even if for the wrong reason.

And then Jesus contrasts this judge with God: “And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?” With the double negative, Jesus invites a resounding answer of “of course he will!” Of course God is more just and compassionate then this human judge. Of course God is more trustworthy. Of course God is more kind. Of course God’s justice will prevail and bless God’s chosen ones.

These “of course” responses point to why Jesus is telling this parable in the first place: so that we would pray always and not loose heart. Because we trust that God is reliable and gracious, we are able to keep praying and serving, pestering and speaking out, challenging those in power and assisting the widows and those vulnerable like her.

The widow is a wonderful example for us. We might feel powerless over against the systems we face, be it the political apparatus, social media, AI and algorithms, fake news and conspiracy theories, false gospels and church decline, mega-corporations and industrial super-powers. But the widow seemed powerless, too. Still, her faith and trust in God’s justice helped her to exercise the power she did have: her voice, her presence, her vision of how the world should be according to God’s will. In the end, after a long struggle, that was enough to prevail.

Our voice, our presence, our vision of how God wants this world to be – maybe that’s enough for us, as well. Staying grounded in the faith we have been taught, having life breathed into us through God’s word, engaging in prayer that lets us see with God’s eyes, trusting that God hears us and will come through for us – that’s how we will be able to persevere.

I am closing with these words by Professor Eric Barreto at Princeton: “Perhaps this is precisely the kind of faith Jesus wonders if he will find on his return (verse 8)—a faith that demands justice in a world coursing with injustice, a faith that persists in seeking life even in systems seemingly ruled by the forces of death, a faith that looks to God’s promises and lives as if they will be fulfilled today.” Amen.