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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Amen.)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Hardly a day seems to go by without one political party or the other’s finding yet another example that calls into question either the past or the present U‑S Department of Justice or the federal court system. From allegations of politically-motivated prosecutions to allegations of politically‑motivated rulings, one wonders if Lady Justice is either peeking out from underneath the blindfold of her impartiality or has taken‑off that blindfold altogether! So, perhaps we relate better to the unrighteous judge at the center of the parable in today’s Gospel Reading, whose delay in giving justice to the widow of the parable helps us to realize this morning that “God speedily gives justice to His elect”.
Today’s Gospel Reading’s “Parable of the Judge and the Widow” (SQE §236) is unique to St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, and that account places the Parable after both last Sunday’s Gospel Reading about Jesus’s cleansing ten lepers, one of whom was saved by faith (Luke 17:11-19), and Jesus’s intervening teaching of His disciples about His, the Son of Man’s, final coming and the division that that final coming will bring between un‑believers and believers (Luke 17:20-37). As we heard, Jesus told the Parable about the need for disciples regularly to pray and essentially not to lose faith (confer Luke 21:36; 22:40), ending His interpretation of the Parable by asking whether, when He, the Son of Man, comes, He will find faith on the earth.
Delays can be difficult to deal with. In the Parable, the widow—whose circumstances and complaint we are not told, though we know that widows can be particularly vulnerable—the widow repeatedly kept coming to the judge, who for a time repeatedly kept refusing to give her justice—why we are not told—but she kept coming, nevertheless, presumably until he gave her justice. In the Old Testament Reading (Genesis 32:22-30), Jacob strove with God overnight, and he prevailed and got the blessing that he sought in the morning. We also may pray to God for any number of things and wrestle with when and how God answers our prayers. You may misapply the Parable of today’s Gospel Reading and wrongly think that, if you—and maybe also all of your Facebook friends and X‑followers—just persist in prayer, then eventually you will beat God down by your continual coming and get whatever you want. But, the Parable is not about praying for anything. The widow in the Parable told the judge to give her justice against her adversary, and Jesus in the Parable’s interpretation promises that God will give justice to His elect on the Last Day, prophecy that we also heard this past Wednesday in our Midweek Bible Study’s consideration of Joel 3:1-12, which you can find online if you want to hear it.
Do we pray regularly for the justice of the Last Day? We may not pray particularly for the justice of the last day, maybe because we know that someone else may be getting justice against us as their adversary. To be sure, we do not pray in general as we should. You may have lost heart, or the faith, because your previous prayers appear to have gone unanswered. Or, you may not pray for the justice of the Last Day because you wrongly think that doing so would be like praying for the death and eternal damnation that your and my sins deserve. Yet, out of God’s great love and mercy, the Holy Spirit calls and thereby enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin and to trust God to forgive our sin. So, we can pray for the justice of the Last Day, knowing that God has punished Jesus for our sins and given us Jesus’s righteousness. The justice of the Last Day will bring damnation for our unrepentant and unbelieving adversaries, and, more importantly, the justice of the Last Day will bring full and complete deliverance for us who repent and believe.
The argument from the Parable to its interpretation is an argument from a worse example to a better example. If the unrighteous judge eventually gave justice to the widow, then, all the more, our righteous God speedily will give justice to His elect. In some sense both the unrighteous judge and God act on the basis of their nature. Twice the Gospel Reading essentially told us that the unrighteous judge neither feared God nor respected people, and only to stop the widow from bothering him and beating him down by her continual coming did he apparently eventually gave her justice. But, our God is righteous and does not need someone to bother Him or beat Him down by continually coming, but, of His own righteous nature, He will speedily give justice to His elect. God even used a miscarriage of human justice in order to put His Son to death on the cross for us, in our place and for our benefit, and then God gave justice to Jesus, as it were, by raising Him from the dead. We who are elect, whom God both chose in Christ before the foundation of the world and in love predestined us for adoption to Himself (Ephesians 1:4)—we turn in sorrow from our sin and trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, and so God does forgive us. Divinely necessary for our salvation is that we pray and not lose heart, or the faith that the Son of Man will find on earth when He comes. So, we prayed in the Collect of the Day that the Holy Spirit would direct and govern our hearts that we may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of God’s Name.
God’s Triune Name is put upon us with water in Holy Baptism, where we are adopted as God’s children. We, who privately confess to our pastors the sins that we know and feel in our hearts, are forgiven of those sins in that same Triune Name with touch in Holy Absolution. And, baptized and absolved, we are admitted to the Holy Supper, where we receive bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, which thereby give us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. These Sacraments, along with God’s Word read and preached, assure us that we are among the elect, and they enable us to persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of God’s Name, as we asked in the Collect of the Day.
Although we know that God always preserves a faithful remnant (for example, Isaiah 28:5), Jesus’s question of His disciples in today’s Gospel Reading, whether He will find faith on earth, reminds us that these latter days are those of increasing unrepentance and unbelief. Similarly, St. Paul’s words to Timothy in today’s Epistle Reading (2 Timothy 3:14-4:5) warn us that more and more people will not endure sound teaching, that they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and that they will turn away from listening to the truth and instead wander off into myths. So, even if it takes more than our earthly lifetime of struggling in prayer (confer Revelation 6:10), we pray regularly for the justice of the Last Day, and we do not stop believing that God ultimately will give it, not because we have prayed for it, but because of Who He is as our righteous God.
Regardless of any real or imagined issues with either the past or the present U‑S Department of Justice or the federal court system, “God speedily gives justice to His elect”. On account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve death and eternal damnation, but, through His Word and Sacraments, God forgives us by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, Who died and rose for us. We have His peace and joy already now, yet that same Jesus promises that He is coming soon (Revelation 3:11; 22:7, 12, 20), and we pray for Him so to come, with the resurrection and glorification of the body that His coming will bring. In the words of today’s Introit (Psalm 74:18-19, 21, 20a, 22a; antiphon: v.2a), we pray, “Have regard for the covenant; arise, O God, defend Your cause.”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +