A Widow’s Persistent Prayer (Luke 18:1-8)

A Widow’s Persistent Prayer

 

Luke 18:1-8

 

In today’s passage, Jesus tells the parable of a widow in order to show his disciples that they should always pray and not to give up. In Jesus’ days, widows were considered a social minority who were in need of help and protection. Surprisingly, however, a number of widows are recorded in Luke’s Gospel. First of all, a prophetess named Anna is mentioned in Luke 2:36-38. She lost her husband only after 7 years of marriage, and spent the rest of her life, 84 years’ long period of time, in fasting and praying in the temple. And at last, she became the first prophetess who greeted the newborn Savior and introduced him to the world. In Luke 7:11-17, we see another widow who was crying for her dead son who was the only son of the mother. Having pity on her, Jesus raises the young man and gives him back to his mother. Luke 21:1-4 also tells us about a poor widow who offered all she had to live on. Jesus praises her generosity out of her poverty. And we have another widow in today’s passage, who is a woman of persistent prayer. We may call Luke’s Gospel a gospel for widows. In this sense, Luke’s Gospel is our gospel because, from the viewpoint of the Bible, we are all widows.

 

The widow in Jesus’ parable went to the judge of her town and made a plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” It is believed that she had an adversary who had inflicted unbearable injustice upon her. As the ｅxpression “get justice” is repeated in the story, this must be her most important and possibly the only prayer topic. She might think about this issue day and night. We don’t know what she suffered from the adversary, but considering that she was a widow, we can guess that it was related to her husband. In verses 7-8, Jesus talks about justice for chosen people instead of the widow. And the Lord says that God will bring about justice for his chosen people who cry out to him day and night, and will do it quickly. How does God bring about justice for his chosen people? It is by the coming of Jesus Christ again to the world. When Jesus comes back with his great power and glory, he will do justice for the chosen people. The Lord will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain in them (Revelation 21:4).

 

When we receive and believe in Jesus as the Savior, we die to the world and come alive to God in Jesus the Lord. In terms of marriage, we are divorced from the world, and betrothed to Jesus. But my bridegroom left the world to heaven, leaving me behind. Separated from the husband, I have only the “promise” that he will come back soon and there will be a great wedding banquet at that time. Now I have to live like a widow in this world to which I already died. The Bible describes this situation of the believers in various ways. 1Peter 1:1 calls them “scattered strangers in the world,” Luke 12:32 “little flock,” and 2Corinthians 11:2 “a pure virgin.” These brands suggest that Christians have to be minority in the world, and their hope is not in this world any longer. Rather, they, as the Lord’s pure bride, have to trudge a long and lonely journey without a place to stay and settle in this world.

 

To Jesus’ disciples, the coming of Jesus Christ is the only living hope and it is like a star twinkling alone in the dark night and guiding the direction of our journey in each step. Today, however, the Christians’ life has been changed a lot. We are no more “scattered strangers” or “little flock.” The world has become a much more livable and comfortable place to the believers. Even it may sound distressing to live a life of “a pure virgin” divorced from the world and waiting for her bridegroom. Instead of wrestling to move forward to the future promise, we may remember the old love with the world and cherish a revived desire to go back to the past. In his letter to Timothy, Paul says, “Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica“ (2Timothy 4:10). In today’s passage as well, Jesus wonders, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Considering that Jesus just told the story of a widow’s persistent prayer, we can say that the faith mentioned by the Lord is the persistent faith of holding onto Jesus’ promise to come back and waiting for him. Still Jesus is wondering if there are people who are waiting for him as desperately as the widow’s prayer. When I was young in Korea, the reunification of South and North Korea was a nationwide wish, and we often sang the song titled “Our Hope Is the Reunification.” After the Korean War in the 1950s, the Korean Peninsula was divided into two nations South and North Korea, and because of this sudden forced division, there happened a great number of Korean families whose members were separated between the two countries between which it was quite impossible to come and go. They had to endure the bitterness of separation from their home and their beloved who were merely an hour’s drive away. To them, singing the song was more crying and praying. With the lapse of time and the change of generations, however, there are fewer people who are missing their families over the fences, and North Korea has become one of foreign countries in many ways. With this, many people lost their desire for reunification, and even some feel uneasy with becoming one again with the other half. This may also be the case to us Christians in yearning and waiting for the Lord.

 

Unfortunately, Christians have to live with “a hope that cannot be fulfilled in this world.” This hope is Jesus’ coming again. only when he comes, all of our desires are fully satisfied. Until that time, our hope is merely “a hope.” With regard to this, Paul says, “Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?“ (Romans 8:23,24) Paul asserts that “hope that is seen is no hope at all.” By saying this, he is urging us to throw away our hopes in this world and to hold onto the true hope in Jesus.

 

We believers are living with the problem of being separated from Jesus. “The redemption of our bodies” mentioned by Paul means that we not only have a new spirit but also will have a new body through the resurrection and come to see Jesus “face to face” (1Corithians 13:12). Unfortunately, the problem of being separated from Jesus cannot be solved at all by anything else. We are like a widow who lost the bridegroom. Nothing in the world can fill the empty seat left by Jesus. only the Lord can fill the empty. Therefore, we should not to look for something to fill the empty. Like the prophetess Anna fasted and prayed in the temple day and night for 84 years, there is no way other than praying and crying day and night until the Lord comes and wipes out our tears. In a sense, our bitterness is truly the driving force that raises our eyes to look up the promise shining like a star in the dark sky and move us forward to the hope. With this bitterness, we should continue our journey toward the unseen hope.

 

The widow begs, “Grant me justice against my adversary!” We believers also have an adversary. It is Satan. As desperate is our waiting for the Lord, so our resistance to Satan should be firm and strong. We can say in the other way. When we stop waiting for Jesus, Satan will become our friend, not our adversary. There is a movie I watched long ago, which had the 2^nd World War for its background. In the movie, a group of soldiers of the Allied Forces slipped into an area under the control of the German army in order to carry out a very important mission. But they were all captured alive, and as a matter of course, the German army tried to find what their mission was. The captured soldiers pledged one another not to open their mouth even to death. The German investigators kept the soldiers in a room, and called one at a time. The first soldier was tortured cruelly but he kept the secret. He, as good as dead, was dragged back to the room. Then another soldier was called. This soldier entered the investigation room, full of fear in his face. But surprisingly, the German investigators were very kind to him. They offered cigarette and tea, and asked some unimportant questions such as How old are you? Where are you from? What was your job? Even they made him smile with funny jokes. After having such a fun, the soldier came back to the room where his fellow soldiers were waiting. Seeing him not harmed at all, the fellow soldiers began to suspect him. one of them who was hot-tempered grabbed his throat and pressed him, “What did you tell them?” Then, a wise man noticed the German investigators’ wily scheme. The soldiers stopped fighting themselves, and remembered who their true adversary was and what their mission was. After all, they escaped from the hand of the enemy and completed their mission.

 

The adversary of the Christian believers is Satan. Jesus gave his disciples a special mission, and Satan hates to see this mission completed. Revelation 6:9-10 says, “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’” According to this word, the disciples were persecuted and slain because they spoke out the word of God and the testimony on Jesus Christ. Like the German investigators did to the Allied Forces soldiers, Satan tries to keep the believers from being faithful to their mission as Jesus’ witnesses. It is hiding his identity as our adversary and provoking worthless fights among us. In order not to be deceived by Satan, we should remember that our true adversary is Satan and our mission is spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

 

What we should learn from the widow is that she fought not with the adversary but with the judge. The widow didn’t get justice by herself nor go to the adversary, but went to the judge and begged him to grant her justice. The judge was a man who neither feared God nor cared about men. Nevertheless when he was bothered by the widow every day, he had to change his mind, complaining to himself, “Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me with her coming.” Jesus says, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.” This is true. It is only God our Father who listens to our prayers and resolves our bitterness. Sometimes Satan pretends to be concerned about us and listen to our stories, and many times God seems to be silent to our prayers and indifferent to our miseries. But either isn’t true at all. It is only God the Father who cares for us, the pure virgin of Jesus Christ. Satan never changes its nature as our enemy. Thus, we have only one hope, and one mission, and one friend and one enemy. When all these are clear, we can keep moving persistently in one direction and toward one goal.

 

When we open our eyes and see how we are in this world, we will find a widow who is coming to God the Judge everyday and praying for justice persistently. This is the life of a true believer who is separated from her bridegroom and engages herself with a long and lonely struggle throughout the days in the world. We have “a hope that cannot be fulfilled.” This hope will be fulfilled only when the Lord comes again. This hope leads us to come to God, to miss our Love in heaven, and to keep moving forward and upward as a stranger in this world. I pray that we all live with this hope and this prayer, and be found by Jesus as men and women of faith on the day when we see the Lord face to face.