Luke 18:1–8

21st Sunday

¹And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

²He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man.

³And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, 'Give me justice against my adversary.'

⁴For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, 'Though I neither fear God nor respect man,

⁵yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.'"

⁶And the Lord said, "Hear what the unrighteous judge says.

⁷And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night?, Will he delay long over them?

⁸I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

It is happening today. Innocent little boys and gifts are brutally slaughtered before birth. Families are fractured and marriages are broken, while self-obsessed people pursue the immediate gratification of their every desire. Young people are losing their way, and even their lives, in a maze of alcohol and drugs, and classrooms of high schools are littered with the bodies of murdered teenagers. It is happening today that our nation’s leaders wallow in decadence and deceit while the people look on in apathetic indifference. We live in a society where passions are rider-less horses of decadence. Where love has become a jungle emotion, lust is exalted to lordship, sin is elevated to sovereignty. Where Satan is adored as a saint and man magnified above his creator. We have come to live in an Alice in Wonderland world of fantasy and self-delusion. Everything has been turned upside down and inside out. Right is wrong, and wrong is right. Good is bad and bad is good. True is false and false is true. We are degenerating into a decadent culture obsessed with selfishness and sin, death and destruction. A moral meltdown has overtaken America, as our political leaders deal in trivialities and superficial nonsense, practicing the feel-good politics of ambiguity, while the destruction of our families, the perversion of our most basic moral principles, goes on and on.

As terrorists blow up planes and buildings rogue states are acquiring nuclear arms and threatening to wipe out our country. We sit by and wonder if the economy is on the brink of total collapse. The threat of global warming shakes us to the core.

Meanwhile the punditry and the self-proclaimed intellectuals all see Christianity as just another item on the smorgasbord of ideas, ideologies, philosophies and superstitions to choose from. And so the church has grown timid and afraid. We compromise the demands of God’s law and tailor our message to meet the felt needs of sinful men in order to gain worldly popularity and success.

As a result our families disintegrate and our children fall away from God. All that we hold precious and dear slips out between our fingers. We fear for our lives, we fear for our loved ones and in fear we cry out: “Where is God?”

Today is a difficult time for the believer. The Apostle Paul warned, “In the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power.” (II Timothy 3:1-5). People have always done such things, but there was a day when people who did them would have admitted that they were sin. But today evil is called good and good evil and we are taught to “tolerate” sins and evil. This is just as St. Paul predicted when he said: “Through they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”

Today the church lives in a hostile environment. Being a follower of Christ is difficult, sometimes even painful. Jesus knew that these evil days were coming. That is why he tells us, “Pray always and do not lose heart.” The enemies are fierce. They rage about like a roaring lion seeking whom to devour. Like the widow in the parable, we are oppressed by our adversaries. And who are our adversaries? They are the world around us, they are the devil and most of all our own sinful flesh.

We need justice. We need someone to judge the adversary and give us relief.

Jesus compares us to the widow making a plea to the judge for legal relief from her adversaries. Like the widow, we cry to the judge night and day. We plead our case and earnestly beg for help against our enemies. We live in evil times. We beg for relief from our enemies. They drive us to prayer. In the face of afflictions, despair, and pain we are driven to fervent prayer. Prayer that seeks God with all earnestness.

Jesus tells us to pray always and not lose heart.

Like the widow, we pray to the judge. The widow’s judge feared neither God nor man. Still, he granted her request just to get her out of his hair. We don’t even know if she was in the right. We don’t know if she had a just cause. All we know is that he granted her request, not because she deserved it, but just so she would stop bothering him.

Our number one enemy is sin. Not merely the sin that lies out in the world, but the sin of our heart. Our enemy is original sin, a corrupt, sinful heart. It is the old man of sin who lives in our flesh and raises up his ugly head in our lives of lust and greed and selfishness. For we are sinners from birth and our hearts are corrupt and dead to God and all that is right.

Our enemy is also death which is the curse of sin. Sometimes death comes to us sometimes violently and quickly, and sometimes slowly as our weak, frail, sick and aging bodies and flesh slowly rot away into the grave. It is against these enemies that we cry out. Against the enemies of sin and death that we plead day and night.

Like the widow, we plead our case before the judge, but in reality we don’t have a just cause. We are guilty of sin and corruption. We are dead to God. We are born sinful; enemies of God. We have no case against death because death is the just result of sin. Death is what we deserve.

So the question is: Will the judge hear us? Will the judge rule in our favor? Will he pass judgment against sin and death? Will he help us in our struggle against sin and death?...

The fact is, He has already judged the case. God has already ruled and handed down the verdict. His ruling was the cross of Jesus Christ. His verdict is the resurrection. Sin is forgiven. The death that we deserve is banished completely. We have prevailed in court, not because we deserved to, not because we were in the right, but because our lawyer and judge was Jesus Christ, the very one who died on the cross. The judge ruled in our favor, not because we were right, but because our sin has been wiped from the face of the earth by the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. The judge himself paid the penalty for our sin on the cross. By his resurrection, death has been vanquished and the elect children of God have been freed from their bondage and oppression.

Because of the cross of Jesus, God proclaims, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended and that her iniquity is pardoned.” For on that bloody cross of Jesus, our sin was washed away and we are forgiven.

The judge has ruled in our favor. Not because we were innocent. Not because we deserved it. But because sin has been cast away, death has been defeated and the devil has been conquered by our Lord and Savior.

We are now free from our oppressors. Free from the bondage of sin. Free to serve God in righteousness. Free to face this hostile world without fear. Free to cry to God day and night for his mercy. Free to beg for his forgiveness and free to beg him to preserve us in death. For the cross and resurrection of Christ is the assurance that God does give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night.

God overcame death! “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Jesus died and was buried, and on the third day he rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven. Death has been turned over night into life! The grave has given up its victim. The tomb is empty. We are free from the oppressor of death for Christ has won the victory.

In our baptism we are joined to the death and resurrection of Jesus. In baptism our life is joined to his and we have been buried with him to sin. The old man in us has been slain and buried in the tomb with Jesus Christ. And just as Jesus rose from the dead, so too shall we be raised from the dead for we are joined to him in his resurrection.

So that now we are dead to sin but alive to God. Our lives have been joined to Christ and it is now not we who live, but Christ who lives in us. The life that we live now is Christ in us. Our deeds and actions on behalf of our neighbor is Christ in action in this world to serve others.

And in our communion, we partake of the body and blood of Jesus which he comes down to place into our mouths so that his blood covers our soul as a life giving river that floods away our sin and fills us with his love for one another; even for our enemies.

The Holy Spirit calls and gathers us into his church by word and sacrament. We become one body, the church, and we belong to each other in love. The church continues in prayer day and night, praying for one another and praying for the lost all because God is faithful to give justice to his elect who pray day and night.

So today, as our enemies oppress us, as sin and temptation come into our hearts and minds, as the world around us tempts us to give up hope and lose heart we stand firm in the assurance that God has done away with sin and death on the cross of Jesus. As we suffer from illness, aging, weakness, and death we stand boldly and mock death in its face. For as Christ lives, so too shall we live. As the world confronts us and skeptics denounce us and we are oppressed by temptation, persecution, ridicule, and death we stand firmly on the cross of Jesus for the judge of all mankind has ruled and our enemies have been judged. The church is built on the foundation of God’s word. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church of Christ.

God indeed has done justice for his elect who call on him day and night. Therefore, little flock, pray always and do not lose heart.

Amen.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.