19TH Sunday after Pentecost 2025

Texts: Luke 18:1-8, Genesis 32:22-31, 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I believe that for any person that has undertaken any activity in life, whether that is a skill, a sport, language learning, relationship-building, the acquirement of virtue, or as is the case in our Gospel this morning, praying, this advice runs across all of them: “Persistence is key”. In any realm of life, if we want to see the fruits of our efforts, we need to persist in them, to keep at it. To be persistent is to endure and abide in a course of action. There are many things that reveal why persistence is essential in our lives. Persistence reveals dedication and commitment to something. It shows that we consider something worthwhile, so much so that we are willing to put in the time, pain, and effort. And sometimes we are not aware of it, but time is our treasure. Everything we have is time, so as finite human beings, we are prompted to invest our time in what matters most.

However, we should keep in mind that persistence is also morally neutral. Sometimes we can persist in the wrong thing! We can invest that precious time in pursuits that are not good for you, or perhaps we can pursue things that benefit us in detriment of the neighbor. We can be committed to sin just as much we can be committed to goodness. So how essential it is to persist in those things that God has given as being life-giving and good for all!

This morning, we hear Jesus encouraging his disciples to persist and to not grow weary in praying to God. So He tells this parable about an unjust judge who had “no fear of God and no respect for people”, and a widow who is pleading justice for her

case. From what we can gather in this story, the widow was probably a poor woman who did not have the financial means to solve her case. Widows throughout the Scripture are one of the groups of people that represent both the oppressed poor and those God advocates for, so Jesus’ parable is deliberate in his choice of character here. Even though she was the victim of the situation, the accuser is probably someone who was going to take away the little that she had, there was little recourse for her to solve the case in her favor. So she was left with the only resources left to her: time, the justness of her cause, and persistence. She put her whole life on the line to receive the justice she was seeking. Her persistent plea was “Grant me justice!”

Now the other character of this story, the unjust judge, is the one with power and status, he has a position of authority of which the responsibility is to deliver justice and fairness, yet his reputation is one of persisting in injustice rather than justice. Even more, he is a man who does not fear God nor respects people, meaning he is a self-serving man. The judge does not care for or love the neighbor and rather seeks his own profit and comfort. The story reveals to us the mettle of the self-serving man. He hears, but does not listen to the cry of the widow.

The widow knows that out of the goodness of his heart, this judge will not budge. But she will not be denied justice. So she starts this campaign of persistent protest to the judge’s door. She won’t let him catch a moment’s rest until he does what is right. I can imagine this judge going to his court room and be like: “Oh brother, its that widow again! “ Justice is a more powerful motivator for persistence than self-interest, for the fruits of justice are life abundant, and the fruits of self-interest and injustice rot the soul and body. The judge thought that by being persistent in injustice he could get his

way, but this widow will not relent. Like the Roman philosopher Lucretius said: “The steady drip of water causes stone to hollow and yield” It seems like it does not have the capacity to break it, but with consistency and time, the stone will yield.

This widow in Jesus’ parable reminds me of many people in history who were persistent in justice seeking and love. But my mind goes mostly to these group of women in the Argentina of the late 1970’s and onwards. This is a hard piece of history Beloved, bear with me in telling it. In Spanish this group of women are named Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. Argentina during that time was going through a period of military dictatorship. Those were dark days in Argentina, where people were “disappeared” under the pretext of natural security, people being disappeared for being slightly affiliated with what the military junta determined as “left-wing”. Perhaps you were a teacher in a union, maybe you were seen in a rally, maybe you wrote something or belonged to some socialist leaning organization, and then suddenly you could be whisked away. These people who were whisked away were known as the “desaparecidos”, the disappeared. Since many of the desaparecidos were young people, those left to bear these tragedies were their mothers and grandmothers, who did not know where their children had been taken. So a group of brave mothers and grandmothers decided to convene in the main city square of Buenos Aires, the capital, to protest and demand that the government grant them justice, for the government to reveal what had happened to their children. They wore children’s nappies as headscarves, often embroidered with the name of their lost loved one. They brought pictures, and banners, they marched and prayed and agitated to share their grievance. They marched weekly for years, some even daily. At

one momentous march in 1980, they marched for 24 hours in the Plaza de Mayo. Until the fate of every child was not revealed, they would not relent. And even after the dictatorship, they continued to march so that the perpetrators were tried and sentenced in a court of law. To this day they are still active, for some cases are still ongoing. There is an estimate of over 30,000 desaparecidos during that time, the government has only admitted to around 9,000 of the cases. I do not need to belabor the point that it is presumed that the majority of the desaparecidos were killed by the junta. The persistence of these mothers for justice to be granted assured that such a thing would not happen again in Argentina.

Justice requires persistence. Love is built on a committed consistency to be present to one another. Like these brave mothers and grandmothers, their cause was listened to because they have persisted in prayer and prophetic presence. They did not relent when the unjust wanted them to go away. Similarly, in Jesus’ parable the unjust judge relents because he can’t withstand the widow’s plea anymore. There’s even a funny translation situation when the judge says: “yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” That phrase: “so that she may not wear me out” can also be translated as “so that the widow doesn’t give me a black eye” or punches me in the face!” So it can be interpreted that the unjust judge was afraid of the widow’s reaction if he continued to ignore her! Because injustice only festers humanity, but justice demands all to sit in the table of equality and asks things to be set rightly.

So how does God come into the picture in Jesus’ parable? Important to make the clarification, Jesus is not equating God with the judge. On the contrary, He is making

the contrast. God is not the self-serving unjust judge, He is the loving Father who embraces us. God loves you as His beloved child. Knowing that God watches over the oppressed and the poor, knowing that God is Justice and Mercy itself, how could He not listen and care for us when we cry out in prayer, Jesus says! God can’t help but listen and embrace us when we cry out to Him in our troubles. Jesus teaches us to persist in prayer because the God who listens is with you. Jesus says: “I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them!” God is quick in loving.

Then Jesus confronts us with the following question: “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Jesus asks, will there be a faith in this God? Will there be a confident trust in the love and justice of God? Or will people walk away and trust other gods? Perhaps other more self-serving ones? Will the fire of hope be kindled in this generation? Beloved, we are called to this faith that Jesus calls us to embrace. To trust and persist in God’s way of doing things. Like much of what we heard from Scripture today: are we listening unlike the judge, are we persevering like Paul on behalf of the Gospel we have received, are we pleading like the widow? Demanding justice on behalf of the oppressed, and putting all things to God in prayer, like that Gospel song:

What a friend we have in Jesus,

all our sins and griefs to bear!

What a privilege to carry

everything to God in prayer!

Are we struggling like Jacob alongside God, that until we receive His blessing, we shall not be moved? Perhaps alone we cannot do it. But the Holy Spirit empowers us, it only takes a small drop of faith upon the stone of our troubles for the Holy Spirit to carry us through. And better yet, God is here, pleading with us, supporting us, like He supported those mothers and grandmothers in Argentina, like He listens and carries us forward in love and compassion, letting us know that in Him we have life and hope, and through Him we share that love and hope with others. We are being led into a persistence for the highest things in this life. And thanks be to God, because while the march might be long, we are simply asked to take the first step, and then the next, bolstered by this Word of the Gospel that forgives us when we walk astray, that uplifts us when we are down, and empowers us when we are weak. God is with us in each and every one of those steps, listening and embracing us closely. Let us then pray: