Do Not Lose Heart

Luke 18:1-8

October 19, 2025

 

            I am not a big fan of the television show, Family Guy. If you don’t know about it, it’s a cartoon sitcom made for older teens and adults. I’m not a fan of it, but our son is, and I suspect that many of his friends would join him in that sentiment. I don’t know how to explain the show to you because, frankly, I don’t understand it myself. It’s about a family in Boston I think, but there’s this little outer space alien character who lives with them. I think the dog talks too. And there’s a character called Stewie who looks like a little kid and dresses like a little kid but has an adult face and voice and a British accent.

            But there is one scene with Stewie that speaks to me. His mom is lying on her bed looking depressed and exhausted and Stewie is trying to get her attention. This is how he accomplishes it.

            “Mom, mom, mom, mom, mommy, mommy, mommy, mama, mama, mama, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, ma, ma, ma, mommy, mommy, mom, mom, mom.”

            She finally stops him by saying, “What?!!!

            I remember when my kids were little and I absolutely adored them, but they would follow me around demanding my attention, and even though I didn’t let them go on as long as this mother did, some days it felt like that’s all I heard. “Mom, mom, mom, mommy, mommy.”

            Kids are persistent. They can be like water on rock, just wearing down their parents drop by drop by incessant, persistent drop. I suspect the judge in this strange parable found only in Luke’s gospel, must have felt the same way as a parent with an insistent child. He was just being worn down by the widow’s unrelenting, persistent demand for justice.

            Our passage begins with these words, “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart …” So, we know from the get-go that Jesus is going to tell those listening about prayer and praying always, praying steadfastly, praying faithfully. And that sounds great. Surely it will be a lovely story about a person or people making time to pray every day, and how their faithful prayers are answered, transforming them and transforming the world around them. But that’s not what we get. Instead Jesus tells them and us about a certain judge in a certain city and this judge neither feared God nor respected people. He was an unjust judge.

            In that same city there was a widow who required justice against someone opposing her, so she came to the judge asking for this justice to be granted. He refused this justice to her, so she just kept returning to him with the same demand. Grant me justice against my opponent. Jesus does not specify how often she came to the judge, but I imagine that it was a daily occurrence and that she was unrelenting.

            “Judge, judge, judge, judge, judge, judge, judge, judge, judge, judge, justice, justice, justice, justice, justice, judge, judge, judge.”

            This judge says to himself, even though I don’t fear God and I don’t respect people, I am going to give this widow the justice she wants because she won’t let up and she is wearing me out. Interestingly, what is translated as, “so that she will not wear me out by continually coming” can be more literally translated as “so that she will not give me a black eye.”

            Is this a literal black eye or a figurative one? Or both? Perhaps the judge wonders if this widow will get so tired of pleading with him to do his job that she’ll resort to giving him a black eye out of frustration, or that his reputation will receive a black eye because he won’t do what he is required to do.

            Jesus does not give specifics about what injustice has occurred in the widow’s life. We do not know the circumstances surrounding the opponent she refers to. We also do not know why the judge is unjust; why he has no fear of God or respect for anyone else. But we do know that because this is a widow, she is a person on the margins of that culture. Widows and orphans were included in the category of “the least of these.” The fact that this judge will not hear her complaint tells us that he truly did not fear God or respect people because he is completely comfortable disregarding the scriptural command to help the most vulnerable in his midst.

            The judge also possesses self-awareness. He describes himself as not fearing God or respecting people, which makes me think that he knew exactly what he was supposed to do, what he was called to do by the Law, but didn’t really care. But despite this, he finally grants the widow the justice she seeks. He does so grudgingly. He does not have a change of heart. He just wants her off his back. He just wants her to stop verbally punching and poking at him. He grants her the justice she seeks.

            Then Jesus makes this strange parable even stranger by hearkening back to the opening sentence; this is a parable about praying always and not losing heart. Jesus tells those listening that if this judge who doesn’t give a whit about God or others will grant justice, then how much more will God, who does care and does love people, grant justice to those who cry after God day and night? God will not delay in giving justice. God, who cares and wants the best for his children, will not stall or dither or hesitate. God will grant justice and will grant justice quickly. Therefore, pray always and do not lost heart because God, unlike the judge, is just and hears your prayers.

            This all sounds great on the surface, but there are two problems that come to mind. The first is that even though Jesus says that God is not like the unjust judge, there is an implication that we should not hesitate to harangue and harass God with our prayers. God may not be an unjust judge, but like the widow we need to pray with dogged determination, with persistence, to be heard. That begs the question, why would God make it that hard, that challenging? Do we really have to pester God for God to respond to our prayers?

            The second question is that most if not all of us have probably prayed fervently and fiercely for someone or something, only to see our prayers go unanswered. We have prayed for justice only to see justice denied. We’ve prayed for violence and wars to cease only to see them escalate. We have prayed for people we love to live only to watch them die. Does this mean that God has refused our prayers or that our prayers aren’t faithful enough or both?

            In my lectionary group this week, a friend and colleague told a story about when he was home from college and attended a young adult Sunday school class in his home church. The class was taught by the pastor’s wife and she told them that faithful prayers were answered by God whereas unfaithful prayers were not. A young married couple in the class told her that they had prayed and prayed for their infant baby to live, but the baby had died. Did that mean they didn’t have enough faith for God to hear them and answer their prayers? The teacher said, “Yes. You do not have enough faith. God didn’t answer your prayers because you didn’t have enough faith.”

            My friend was offended when he heard this, and we were offended as well. What a terrible thing to say to anyone, much less grieving parents?! But that’s not the first time I’ve heard that response, from pastors as well as laity. I’ve heard that response, and I’ve heard equally unsatisfying responses to this dilemma about unanswered prayer. One response is that sometimes the answer to prayer is “No.” Another is that sometimes silence is the response, or maybe God has responded but the prayer has not listened. All of those may be true, but in the face of losing someone who should be too young to die, they seem woefully inadequate at best and cruel at worst.

            Another way to look at this is that prayer is not so much about getting your hopes and wishes fulfilled, as it is about building relationship with God. Prayer is not just a grocery list of desires, but a way of being in communion, in relationship with God, which in turn builds your relationship with others. I find this helpful, and certainly I need to be more persistent in building my relationship with God and other people.

            But essayist and theologian, Debie Thomas, offers another possibility, one that she admits might be a stretch. What if the unjust judge in this parable is not meant to be about God but about us? Thomas points out that time and time again scripture tells us that God not only hears the prayers and the cries of the least of these, but God is also in those prayers. God’s voice is their voice and their voice is God’s voice. Maybe the persistent prayer that Jesus refers to is not so much to wear God down but to wear us down. How am I the unjust judge? How do I not fear God and not respect people? How often are my heart and mind closed to the demands for justice by others, to the needs of others? Maybe praying persistently and not losing heart is more about what needs to be transformed within me more than about trying to capture God’s attention?

            How often have I heard the cries of the least of these and turned away? How often have I closed my eyes to injustice and inhumanity because I couldn’t take it? How often has my heart been hardened because of my own stubbornness, my own unwillingness to fear God or respect others? Perhaps praying persistently and not losing heart is not so much about not giving up but about keeping our hearts open, even if what we see and hear breaks them.

            It seems to me that Jesus is speaking to our need to be persistent in prayer, true, but also to God’s persistence in pursuing us; God’s persistence in loving us so that we can love God and love people. As a little girl in Sunday school, my favorite picture was of Jesus standing outside a door and knocking. That door, we were told, was the door to our hearts. Jesus was knocking asking to be let in. While I might debate the theology being taught to us, I can’t help but think that there is a grain of truth to it. The good news is that God persists in loving us. God persists in calling us. God persists in wanting our hearts and minds open to the cries of the least of these which means that our hearts and minds are open to God. So let’s do exactly what Jesus says to do: pray always and do not lose heart. Be persistent because God, our God, is persistent too. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.