Proper 24 - 2025

Sermon for Proper 24, Year C
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
The Rev. Andrew McLarty

"Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?"

This is the question Jesus leaves with us, a question that can feel sharp and uncomfortable in a world where justice often seems delayed, or even denied. We are tempted, I think, to read this parable as a simple equation: pray persistently, and God, like the unjust judge, will eventually be moved to action. But this creates a problem. It can make God look like the cynical judge, indifferent to our pain, needing to be worn down by our pleas.

But what if we’ve been looking at this story from the wrong angle? What if this isn’t primarily a story about God, but a story about us? Jesus isn’t comparing God to the unjust judge; he is contrasting the judge’s reluctant, self-serving response with God’s inherent, loving nature. The judge represents the common, broken way of the world—power that is indifferent to suffering. The widow, however, shows us the way of the kingdom.

If we pray for justice without working for it, our prayers become empty words. They are a quietism that abdicates our Christian responsibility to act as God’s hands and feet in the world. A prayer for the hungry must be accompanied by the work of feeding.

Conversely, if we work for justice without prayer, we will quickly believe it all depends on us. We will burn out from the effort, or worse, become hardened and self-righteous, like the judge himself. We forget that we are collaborators, not messiahs.

And if we pray and work for justice without faith, we will fall into despair when the arc of justice proves maddeningly long (The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” Theodore Parker 1857). In times of failure or hostility, without faith we have no well to draw from, no hope to sustain us.

If we recall Jesus’ teaching from just prior in Luke 17:20 (of which this is an extended answer) that the kingdom of God is already among us, this parable becomes a charge to work. God is not the knackered judge we must pester. The "judges" are the unjust systems, the indifferent powers, the structures of sin that we, like the widow, are called to confront with holy perseverance.

Our prayer is not meant to change God’s mind, but to fortify our own spirits for the long work of the kingdom in the world. It is in prayer that we realign ourselves with God’s vision for creation. It is in prayer that we remember the source of our strength. We are not nagging God to act; we are being equipped by God to act, and to do so with a resilience that the world cannot exhaust.

We are to be the widow, maintaining the prophetic voice, not just toward heaven, but toward the rulers and systems of our day. The question is not whether God is listening. The question is more challenging, as Jesus says, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

He is not asking about correct doctrine. He is asking if he will find this tenacious, widow-like faith. Will he find people who are so rooted in relationship with God that they can look at the world’s problems and refuse to be silent? Will he find people who are still praying, still working, still hoping, even when the results are not immediately visible?

Do we pray merely expecting a specific result, or do we pray to build the relationship that fortifies us for the journey?

The work of the kingdom is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires the dogged, patient, and sometimes inconvenient persistence of the widow who knew that her cause was right and would not let it go.

So, let us pray always and not lose heart. Let our prayers fuel our action, and our action be grounded in prayer, and let both be sustained by a faith that trusts in the ultimate triumph of God’s love. For that is the faith that will indeed be found when the Son of Man comes.

Amen.