We live in a culture that values things that are instant. Perhaps it's the appeal of instant credit — you seem to be buying a pizza, would you like to pay for this in three instalments, and with one click you can say yes, and you've just opened up another line of credit for yourself. Or instant messaging — a way to keep in touch, share photographs and text messages with people on the other side of the world in under a second. Or even instant coffee — now, at that point, I just say no, there are some limits to the scope of the culture of the instant. Some things were not made to be instant.
And because we love things that are available instantly, we're not very good at waiting for things. However, if you have coming up your Indefinite Leave to Remain examination in the next few weeks or months, here is a little tip for you about British culture: in Great Britain we have elevated queuing to an art form. You only have to go abroad somewhere where something has to be waited for, and you can tell where the Brits are, because they will have organised themselves into a neat, orderly line. It's like how, when they used to build new railway stations in the 1980s, they would build ticket halls — before you had automated machines and the internet — so you could buy your ticket with thirty desks available, and you could choose which ticket clerk would sell you a ticket. They knew full well that at any given time only two of those desks would be staffed. But they still built one large enough for thirty desks, so as to create an impressive grand atrium at which people could worship at the god of the queue.
We are masters at queuing, but we hate delays. You know what it's like — you're waiting at the railway station for the train that departs to York at 8:54 in the morning, and then the sign tells you it will be leaving at 8:58, and then at 9:02, and then at 9:10, and you're beginning to think to yourself, I'm not sure this train is ever going to happen. And then it changes one last time and it says “cancelled,” and you think, I knew it. And then you remember that the great British railway institution has invented a system of instant refunds, and you're all right.
If it's hard waiting, if delays are hard, it's even harder if the thing you're waiting for is to have some crisis or situation resolved, such that your life is slightly on pause until it happens. Maybe you've had some medical tests done, and until you get the result you don't know whether you potentially have a serious illness, or you're clear — and until you get that answer back you can't make any plans, everything is paused. A friend of mine had a fairly major court hearing a few months ago in central London, to do with some complex property rights for his church building. All sorts of witnesses were gathered, cross-examined, arguments presented, and at the end of the court hearing the judge decided to reserve judgment — which means, “I'm going to go away and think about this, and I'll let you know.” Several months later, he still does not know which way that case will go.
Or maybe you've had your exams — GCSEs, A level, professional accountancy exams, I don't know — and it's not often like the driving test, where the minute you finish and turn the engine off you get the answer. You may have to wait weeks or months to find out whether you passed. Will I be going to university? Will I need to find a job? I don't know. And until I know, life is on pause, waiting for your crisis to be resolved.
Well, the message this morning is that when you follow Jesus, there are delays involved — which means this is one more thing, if you don't like delays, that can be hard about following Jesus. Many people become Christians with the promise they've picked up from somewhere that if they become a Christian, things will improve, and will improve relatively instantly. Perhaps you're financially quite hard up, and you think, well, if I join a loving church family, then I won't ever have any needs again, I won't ever be hungry, these people will look after me. Or perhaps you become a Christian with some health issue, and your expectation is that if you become a Christian, Jesus will heal and fix that problem. Maybe there are particular character flaws that you would love to work through, and you think, if I become a Christian, Jesus will sort out that temper that I've never got on top of, or particular sins that recur, that you would love to break — and if you become a Christian, Jesus will help you get on top of that. Or you become a Christian with various relationships in your life that are broken and dysfunctional in some way, and you hope that Jesus can sort those out too.
But then what happens is you become a Christian, and those things do not change straight away. The world stays broken, you stay broken, your little corner of the world stays broken, and it feels like Jesus has failed you. And when it feels like that, there are three really easy moves that you could make — easy, but disastrous. The first is that you simply stop — you stop believing in Jesus, you stop coming to church, you simply give up: “I had all these hopes pinned on what would happen, it hasn't happened, so I quit.” The second move is to drift — you keep coming, you're here in person, but your enthusiasm for Jesus and for his people just slowly slips away. And the third thing you could do is simply become resigned — so you're still here, but without any hope that anything will ever improve, you just become tired, cynical, and hopeless.
The theme of delay in Luke’s Gospel
Our parable this morning is part of Luke's Gospel. Luke's Gospel is a book of two halves, and the turning point in the middle of Luke's Gospel is chapter 9 verse 51: “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” So in the whole of the second half of Luke's Gospel, up until the crucifixion, Jesus and his disciples are on a journey with a purpose. Twice before we get to the parable we're looking at this morning, Jesus has predicted that when he gets to Jerusalem he will suffer and die — later, in chapter 18, he will do so for a third time. This journey with a purpose is a journey towards the moment of his execution. And as, through the second half of Luke, the disciples are travelling with him on that road, he is doing and saying things to teach them what it looks like for him to go that road, and what it looks like for those who follow him to travel that road with him.
This second half of Luke is not just one long account — it's punctuated by, if you like, various stops at the motorway services, as they reach various geographical landmarks, and each starts a new section. And where we are today, in Luke 18, is in a section that began at chapter 17 verse 11: “Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled along the border between Samaria and Galilee.” And that section ends in chapter 19 verse 28: “After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany, at the hill called the Mount of Olives.” So that's the final section that we're in — it's the last leg of the journey. They're now going up the hill towards a place called Bethany, from where you can actually see the city just down below you. If the kids amongst them were asking, are we nearly there yet — the answer is: now we are. This is the last leg of the journey.
And in this final chunk of the journey to Jerusalem, one of the key themes for us is the fact that there will be a delay — not all the benefits of following Jesus will be experienced at once, certainly not the moment they arrive in Jerusalem. So I'll give you a couple of little examples. Chapter 17 verse 20: “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied…” — when will it happen, Jesus? And he goes on to tell them that it won't happen straight away, there will be a delay. Or 19:11: “While they were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once.” No, it won't.
So this parable, in Luke 18:1–8, is all about the need there is to wait for things. You get delays with Jesus. That's not him missing his own deadlines, overpromising, underdelivering — no, from his point of view, he's never late. But things could take longer than you would like them to. From your perspective, it could well feel like not everything will happen at once. And so he tells the story — the story of a widow and a judge.
The story of a widow and a judge
We meet the judge first, in verse 2: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought.” This judge does not care what God thinks, neither does he care what people think. Now, you might think that's a good thing — you don't want a judge who is easily swayed, who is influenced, who gives favourable hearings because it's concerning his own mates. But as we read on, that's not what this is about. He doesn't care what people think in the sense that he doesn't care for people at all. He has no aspiration that they will ever get justice. He simply does not care whether he does a good job as a judge.
And then we get the widow, in verse 3: “There was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’” Now, the thing about widows back then was that there was no state social security system — there was no pension scheme, no Universal Credit, no sickness benefits, forget any idea of whether the government will give you help with your gas and electric bills next winter — there was no help with anything. And so, if you were a widow, you relied — most women didn't work — on having members of your family who were at work who could support you and look after you. But not this widow. The other fact about women in those days was that they had no rights in the court of law — so if you had an issue that required legal help, as a woman you would need to find a male member of your family who could go on your behalf to plead your case. But this woman is repeatedly going before the judge herself — which means she had no male relatives who could go for her. She had no brothers, no dad, no sons, no uncles, no nephews, no cousins. She was on her own. And that meant she had no income, she had nothing to live off. Things were about as bad for this widow as they could possibly be. She had this adversary, whoever they were, who kept coming and pestering her for something. She had no money, and she lived in a town where the judge simply did not care. What hope did she have?
And then, wonder of wonders, the judge changes his mind. Verse 4: “For some time he refused, but finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don't fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually come and attack me.’” This judge is extraordinarily self-aware — “even though I don't fear God or care what people think.” I wonder if that got written down in the official court record, as you look back and read here the outcome of this hearing — and there you go, there's the written judgment for the case: “I, Justice So-and-So, the Honourable Whoever I Am, do not care what God thinks, or about what's right and wrong. But nevertheless, in the case of the widow, here is my ruling.” There are certain things that you're not supposed to say out loud, and yet, amazingly, this judge does. He knows himself really well — which means he's not suddenly found a conscience and started to care for this widow. The only reason he helps her is because it is in his own self-interest to do so.
That comes in verse 5: “Yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually come and attack me.” Now, who knows — maybe, in all the spare time this widow didn't have, she joined some evening course in some kind of martial art or self-defence, and the judiciary in the town genuinely were fearful for their lives in case they crossed the wrong person. Maybe. I'm not so persuaded. I'm told this phrase “come and attack me” comes from the realm of boxing — it is the word that would be used for the knockout blow to the face, that gets your opponent down and counted to ten and out. That is the attack he has in mind. So one writer suggests that maybe what the judge is saying is this: this woman gives me a headache, so I'm going to give her what she wants, because I just need this problem to go away — otherwise I'm going to be wiped out for some time by the headache I am being given.
And so here is the lovely surprise of this story. You would not have written a story with this ending — there's the widow, in all her desperate need, there's the judge, completely callous, could not care — and guess who wins? The woman, the widow. She is the one who comes out on top. That is extraordinary, and is deliberately a great comfort to us.
How is this story like our situation?
And so Jesus goes on, and we see where we fit into the story. In verse 6, the Lord says: “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 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.” Here's where we fit into the story: we are like the widow, but God is not like the judge.
So we are like the widow — we are helpless. There are lots of things in your life that you need God to make right for you, lots of things that you cannot fix for yourself. Now, it may be that you don't feel particularly helpless and powerless like the widow — we are raised, from a young age in this country, with the view that if you will only take ownership of your problems and challenges in life, you can solve them all for yourself, there is no problem you cannot overcome if you work hard and take responsibility and sort things out. Now, that's good, to encourage people to take responsibility and ownership. But the promise that goes with it is a lie — there are lots of things that, no matter what you do, you cannot sort out. Your destiny is not under your control. You need God to fix things for you.
But if you do feel particularly powerless and weak in life, then know this: as Luke decides what events to include as he writes his Gospel, he deliberately chose to record many individuals who were particularly disadvantaged, fragile, outcast, struggling, and at the margins of society — and he chose to record those instances of those people receiving special kindness from Jesus. And so the more you feel powerless and helpless in your life, the more this story will resonate with you — and deliberately so. Luke and the Lord Jesus want those who feel like life is against them to read Luke's Gospel and realise that this is a word for them.
So we are like the widow, but God is not like the judge. Remember, the judge does not care about justice, and he doesn't care what God thinks. God is the complete opposite — God does care, God cares for justice, and God cares what God thinks. Okay, that might sound a little strange, just to explain to you — God cares for his own character. God is a God of kindness, of justice, of fairness, of faithfulness, of uprightness, of consistency. That's what God is, that's what God is like. And God cares, therefore, that he should be like that in all he does — so God cares about what God thinks. But here is the point: at times in life it can feel like God is like the judge of the story, it can feel like God is not just and fair, and that God just does not want to hear our cries. And Jesus is saying: if a judge this corrupt gives this widow justice, we can be sure God will look after us, however unlikely that may feel.
How do we respond?
Well, there's the story. How does Jesus want us to respond to it? We don't have to guess, he tells us. So we start with verse 1: “Jesus told his disciples a parable” — why? — “to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” And then verse 7: “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. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
So there are two reasons why he told the story — so that we would pray and not give up, and so that when Jesus comes he would find us to be people of faith. And that means three things in practice.
1. Keep trusting when it’s dark
Number one: keep trusting when it's dark. Remember, Jesus told this story to his disciples just before they arrive at Jerusalem. When they get to Jerusalem, things will get very dark for them — indeed, it will feel to them, as Jesus is arrested and killed, that God is like the judge of the story, that God does not care. They will feel the pressures of their adversaries hunting them down as well, they will cower behind locked doors. And what they need to do is pray and not give up. And if you know the story, they didn't do a desperately good job — when they got to the garden of Gethsemane, just hours before Jesus's arrest, Jesus prayed through the night in deep anguish about what was to happen, while his disciples, three times, couldn't keep their eyes open and fell fast asleep. But the Son of Man would come — Jesus would come, he would rise from the dead and be back to help.
And so, as we realise, through the disciples' original setting, that this phrase “when the Son of Man comes” doesn't just refer to the second coming at the end of time — Jesus is saying that there will be dark seasons in the lives of his people, and during those dark times we need to live by faith. We need to keep praying, and we need to not give up.
Just go back to the railway station, with all their departure boards — these days everything is internet-connected, there's lots of information about where every transport vehicle is on the planet, and you get regular updates. Not so in the old days, particularly buses. In the old days, at the bus stop you'd have a paper timetable pegged to the bus stop post, and that's it — nothing that says “next bus in three minutes,” none of that, no app you can look at, no website, it didn't exist. So if the bus is due to come at 5:42, and no bus comes — well, take your guess. Maybe the bus has a puncture, maybe the driver's off sick and that one's not running today, maybe there were thirty people getting on a few stops back and it's just a bit late, maybe it's literally just about to arrive. And you're doing that thing in your head, going, how long do I wait before I just walk, rather than wait, because I'd be so annoyed if I started walking and then it came straight past me — but if it's not going to come, I should start walking. But you don't know. You are completely in the dark as to what this delay is and why it's going on.
And it can feel like that with Jesus sometimes. Sometimes there are real dark seasons, and the hard thing is not the fact that there is a delay in Jesus coming to help — that's hard — but the really hard thing is you don't know why there is a delay, and you don't know how long it's going to be. You are completely in the dark. And Jesus says the Son of Man will come. Keep trusting him when it's dark.
2. Keep praying when nothing happens
Second lesson for us today: keep praying when nothing happens. First and foremost, this parable is a call to pray. So you see Jesus says the same thing in two ways — verse 1: “So they should always pray and not give up”; and then verse 8: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Two sides of the same coin — will he find faith, will you keep praying?
Now, faith is essentially invisible — it's about truths that are invisible, that much is true, so faith is trusting truths about God that he has spoken but you can't see yet. But that's not what I'm saying — I'm saying that faith itself is invisible. As you walk down a street and people are coming past you, you can't go, “Oh, that one's got faith in Jesus, no, that one doesn't, that one does” — you can't see it, it's invisible. But when you realise that having faith and keeping praying are two sides of the same coin, then you realise that you can see faith. If I can put it this way: prayer is faith made visible. You can see whether or not you pray, and what you pray.
Now, I'm going to tread slightly carefully — almost every Christian feels slightly guilty about the fact they don't pray enough, and the last thing I want to do is add to that, because prayer should be a joyful expression of your relationship with your heavenly Father, not about guilt. But, treading carefully — prayer, says Jesus, is a window to your soul. Think about all the different areas of life that you have to navigate day by day — your work, your money, your friendships, your family, your future. You use all the resources God has given you to navigate all those areas of life, don't you — God's given you some skills, some relationships, some contacts, some opportunities that come your way, and you use all of those resources to navigate through life. But here is the question: do you pray about those areas? You see, that is how you can tell whether you are somebody who thinks all those resources you've got are sufficient for you to navigate life, or whether you use them but are ultimately dependent on God to get you through life. Any area of life that you don't pray about, you obviously think that you don't need God to get you through.
And Jesus told this story so that we would pray and not give up. One day Jesus will come back, one day Jesus will come to your aid — the question is, do we trust him? With most things in life, if you do something and it's not working, you don't just keep doing it, you change course. There's a quotation that is attributed, I think, to Albert Einstein, but apparently he never said anything of the sort — it's made up — which is this: the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results. So you do something, it doesn't work, you do it again, it doesn't work, you do it again, it doesn't work — and, not Einstein, somebody else says: the definition of insanity is to be faced with the opportunity to do the same thing again, and you think, I know what, maybe it will work this time, I'll do it again. No.
So you go to a garden shop, you buy some nice feed for your lawn — it says to apply it weekly, and you should see improvements within three weeks. So once a week you put the feed out on your lawn, again, again, again — three weeks, four weeks in, the lawn looks as brown as ever. What do you do? You change course. You don't just keep applying it, going, well, this isn't working. Or you're given some tablets by the doctor, and you're told, take one once a day for a week, within three or four days you should start to feel some improvement with that pain in your belly. After a week, no improvement — so what do you do? Go back to the doctor. What do you ask for — another pack of those pills, please? No, you hopefully say, they didn't work, what can we try next?
But prayer is not like that. Prayer is the reverse. With prayer, Jesus is saying, keep praying and don't give up. Maybe there's a friend, or a member of your family, that you've been praying will come to know Jesus for themselves, and you've been praying that prayer every day for thirty years. Wow — that's enough time to give it a try and give up, isn't it? Jesus says, keep praying, don't give up. God loves to hear your voice — he's your heavenly Father, he loves you. So the question is this: do you still pray? Or is there a little bit within you that has begun to give up? I'm not talking about the giving-up-praying that we all know about, just the pressure that prayer is hard, we can always find other things to do — I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a little bit within you that says, this praying never does any good, so what's the point — so you're just starting to give up. Keep trusting when it's dark, keep praying when nothing happens.
3. Keep waiting for Jesus to return
Third: keep waiting for Jesus to return. Now, we've already said that Jesus will come to your aid in lots of ways, but the fullest meaning of that phrase, “when the Son of Man comes,” must be to the final return of Jesus at the end of history — when he comes in all his glory and splendour, accompanied by the heavenly angels, to judge the living and the dead. How will he find you on that day? Will you be a person of faith? Will you be still praying, still trusting him?
Jesus says, remain confident he will come back. When he does, he's not promising that he will give us everything on our personal wish list — an Aston Martin, whatever it is — he is saying you'll get justice. The day when he comes is the day when he will put everything that is wrong, right. Everything that is broken will be fixed. That much is absolutely certain. The question is: will he find us trusting him when that happens?