LESSONS IN LIVING

“Persistence”

A St. Andrew’s Sermon Delivered by Daniel Williams June 7, 2020

Scripture Readings: 2 Timothy 3:14-17; 4:1-5; Luke 18:1-8 (The Inclusive Bible)

2 Timothy 3:14-17 You, for your part, must remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know who your teachers were. Likewise, from your infancy you have known the sacred scriptures, the source of wisdom which through faith in Christ Jesus leads to salvation. All scripture is inspired of God, and is useful for teaching — for reprimanding, correcting, and training in justice — so that the people of God may be fully competent and equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 4:1-5 In the presence of God and of Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of the appearance and reign of Christ, I charge you to preach the word; to be prepared in season and out of season; to correct, reprimand and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. For the time is coming when people won’t put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers who say what their fickle ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations; endure hardship, perform your work as an evangelist and fulfill your ministry.

Luke 18:1-8 Jesus told the disciples a parable on the necessity of praying always and not losing heart: “Once there was a judge in a certain city who feared no one — not even God. A woman in that city who had been widowed kept coming to the judge and saying, ‘Give me legal protection from my opponent.’ For a time the judge refused, but finally the judge thought, ‘I care little for God or people, but this woman won’t leave me alone. I’d better give her the protection she seeks, or she’ll keep coming and wear me out!’” Jesus said, “Listen to what this corrupt judge is saying. Won’ t God then do justice to the chosen who call out day and night? Will God delay long over them? I tell you, God will give them swift justice. “But when the Promised One comes, will faith be found anywhere on earth?” Sermon

Parables are tricky things. I think sometimes we get parables confused with fables. Wikipedia, normally an all-knowing oracle of truth, suggests that the main difference between a parable and a fable is that parables don’t feature plants or animals or forces of nature that have assumed human characteristics such as speech. No offense to Wikipedia, but I disagree. Theologians and scholars of the New Testament tend to view parables, or at least the parables of Jesus, with a bit more nuance. Whereas fables tend to have a clear moral, a definite lesson that is often stated at the end of the story, the meanings of parables are trickier to tease out.

Take for example a story about the bear and the frog that I grew up hearing. It’s told, as I know it, by Joe Hayes, a storyteller in Santa Fe who tells stories largely inspired by indigenous and Hispanic folklore of the Southwest. I don’t have nearly the storytelling skill that Joe Hayes has, so you should look up the video of him telling this story, which I think you can find on YouTube.com.

Anyway, it’s a story about the time, way, way back at the beginning of the world, when the length of day and night had not yet been fixed. There might be eight long years of nighttime, followed by only a few short days of light. And that was hard for the first animals. The animals who came out at night loved the long periods of darkness but didn’t know what to do during the days. And the animals who preferred the light didn’t like it any better - they needed the light to find food and explore, and the long unpredictable nights made it hard for them to take care of their families.

So one day Eagle flew up to tell the Sun--remember, this is a folklore fable--that a lot of the animals were unhappy and wanted more daylight. The Sun wanted all the animals to be happy, so it told Eagle to gather all them all together in one place and to come to an agreement. At first, every animal had their own idea about how much day and how much night there should be, but eventually the animals came together around two ideas. The nighttime animals were represented by Bear, who roared, “Ten years of darkness, one day!” And the daytime animals were represented by Frog, who croaked, “One day, one night.”

The daytime animals and the nighttime animals just couldn’t agree. So Eagle went back to the Sun and told it that there were two competing ideas. The Sun decided that the nighttime animals and the daytime animals should have a competition to see which idea was best. Each group would select one representative and whichever animal could say how they wanted things to be longest without stopping would get things their way.

Right away, Bear volunteered to speak for his side. He was big and loud and was sure he could win! And Frog volunteered to speak for her side. Both animals got ready for the contest to begin, and before Eagle even gave the signal, Bear started bellowing, “Ten years of darkness! One day!” He was so loud and confident; he doubted the other animals would even be able to hear Frog! But when Eagle gave the signal, Frog started determinedly croaking, “One day, one night.”

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Well, this went on for a little while and some of the animals were starting to think that Bear had been right - he was so loud and powerful, there was no way he would lose!

But, pretty soon, the Bear’s throat started to hurt. He wasn’t able to roar quite as loudly as he had been before. In fact, soon he couldn’t roar at all! He quickly bent down to drink some water out of the stream, and roared one more time, “Ten years of darkness, one day!” But that was it! He had lost his voice.

Meanwhile, little Frog was still croaking away - “One day, one night.” In fact, even to this day, if you knew the frogs’ language, you’d know what they’re saying when they croak - “one day, one night.” So all the animals, even Bear, agreed that the daytime animals had won the competition. So now we always have one day, followed by one night.

It’s a cute little story and all the animal voices that Joe Hayes does were very fun to listen to as a kid. As an adult, I remember it as an etiology, or explanation story, for the cycle of day and night, but I had forgotten until I listened to it again the other day that he also adds a moral onto it: “The story explains why it is, among all the animals, but especially among the people, it’s still not the one who’s the biggest and loudest and strongest who gets things their way. The one who gets things their way is the one who has a good idea and says it over and over and over and won’t stop saying it for anything. And that’s how you can get things your way too.”

I don’t know why, maybe it was a stroke of divine inspiration, but the morning after Jim called me to tell me he wasn’t feeling well and asked if I could preach this week, I up hearing Bear chanting “Ten years of darkness! One day!” from deep within my memory. So I listened to a recording of Joe Hayes telling the story, and when he got to that moral at the end, it was like lightning had struck! I knew what scripture I would preach on! This little fable was just like Jesus’ Parable of the Persistent Widow!

Well - not quite. Because while the story about Bear and Frog wraps everything up in a neat little bow with a clear moral, the Parable of the Persistent Widow provokes at least as many questions as it answers. In Godly Play, in the religious education model we use here at St. Andrew’s – alongside Sacred Stories, Liturgical Actions, and Silence—Parables are one of the four genres of religious language that we use.

If you’ve heard me preach before or if you’ve been exposed to Godly Play, you might have heard the “wondering questions” we use to prompt children to reflect and make meaning when we tell them sacred stories. We use similar, but different, wondering questions when we reflect on the parables with the kids. The fundamental wondering question about parables is always: “I wonder what this could really be?” This question implies that there is more to the story, more to what’s real, than what we immediately perceive. That’s why we use flat, two-dimensional images to tell the parables, rather than the three-dimensional figures we use for sacred stories. The parables are a canvas for us to project our imaginations onto, that’s why Jesus was usually so reticent to explain the parables to his disciples.

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One of the questions we often ask the kids about parables is, “I wonder what this person’s name is?” It helps them build a bridge of meaning between their lived experience and the story we are playing with. And I found myself wondering the same thing as I encountered the Parable of the Persistent Widow this week.

I wonder what the widow’s name is? Is she named Roxie Washington, sharing a name with the mother of ’s six-year old daughter? Is she, like the mother of Sandra Bland, named Geneva Reed-Veal? Does she share a name with Breonna Taylor’s sister, Juniyah Palmer? Is she Brenda Ramos? Sybrina Fulton? Gwen Carr? Lucy McBath?

And I wonder about the corrupt judge. I wonder what his name is, this man who feared neither God nor his neighbors? Is he named Donald Trump, like the man who invoked George Floyd’s name to tout unemployment numbers? Is he named Brian Manley, like Austin’s police chief whose officers shot Justin Howell, a 20-year-old protester, in the head with a lead pellet bag, sending him to the hospital in critical condition? Is he named Daniel Williams?

And I wonder about all the people who aren’t in the story. I wonder about all the people who are conspicuous only in their absence. I wonder why she is going to the judge every day all alone? I wonder where her friends are? I wonder where her family is? I wonder where advocates for justice in her community are?

Widowhood is often used in the Bible as an example of people who are both economically disadvantaged and socially isolated. Often mentioned in the Old Testament alongside orphans and foreigners, widows represent those who have no one else to care for them and who must rely on the community of God for support. In the patriarchal society in which Jesus was telling this story, women had no inheritance rights. When a woman’s husband died, she had to turn to another man to support her financially; either her father, a brother or brother in law, or a son. But many women couldn’t find any support from male relatives, and so were left completely alone and reliant on the broader community.

So this widow in this story is likely very much alone. Some commentators have observed that it’s unusual for a woman to be pressing her case herself in front of the judge at all; normally that would have been done by a man in this patriarchal, male-dominated society. Without anyone to speak for her, without anyone to support her, without anyone to accompany her or gather around her in solidarity, this persistent widow showed up day after day after day, demanding justice.

As the progressive rallying cry now goes: Nevertheless, she persisted. And ultimately, against all odds, she prevailed. Like Frog in the story, she won not because she was the loudest or the most powerful or the strongest, but because she wouldn’t give up.

That, in and of itself, is a word for us today. When the first started taking shape in response to well-publicized killings of black people by police and vigilantes, you heard the phrase “a movement not a moment” a lot. It was used to remind us that the work of justice is a marathon, not a sprint. That mass protests are often a critical part of the work for

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Facebook gives you the option to add a frame to your profile picture, and this week I opted to add the words “” to a picture of me and my fiancé, Austin. As part of that process, Facebook asked me when I’d like the system to automatically revert back to my normal picture. A month? A week? A day? In essence, it was asking me when will I no longer want to have my identity on social media tied to my support for black lives?

It’s a hard question to answer, because it’s hard to believe right now, as protests in big cities and small towns all across the country still dominate our headlines, but Black Lives Matter will soon not be the thing that we’re all talking about. Donald Trump will say or do something offensive, the presidential race will heat up, we’ll have a new wave of coronavirus news and, for many of us, especially those of us who benefit from white privilege, our attention will understandably be diverted from the moral crisis of white supremacy in this country.

You’ll bring the Black Lives Matter sign in after it gets beat up by hail and forget to put a new one out. I’ll change my profile picture and forget to add the Black Lives Matter frame to it. We’ll stop going to demonstrations regularly and eventually there won’t be one scheduled one weekend. It’s not that we’ll have stopped caring about black lives and anti-racism, it’s just that our energy and attention will have changed.

I think that moment, even more so than this moment, is when we need to remember the persistent widow. She’s been forgotten by her community, abandoned by the men who had the power to help her situation. But she doesn’t have the luxury of giving up. And so she doesn’t. She shows up. And she shows up again. And she shows up yet again and again and again. And she refuses to let the judge’s corruption or her neighbors’ indifference or her adversary’s opposition deter her.

Unlike many of Jesus’ parables, the Parable of the Corrupt Judge tells us about God’s kindom by describing its inverse. God isn’t like this corrupt judge, Jesus tells us. God will not make us wait for justice. If even this corrupt and immoral judge could be brought around by a petitioner’s persistence, how much more quickly will God answer prayers? Jesus says: “Won’t God then do justice to the chosen who call out day and night? Will God delay long over them? I tell you; God will give them swift justice.”

If this parable tells us about God by telling us what God is not like, let it also tell us about ourselves by describing what we will not be like. Let us not let the persistent widows among us-- the Black Lives Matter activists, the , the prison abolitionists--be as alone and abandoned as the woman in the story. Let us aspire to the persistence that she shows, gathering in love and solidarity around those for whom this work is a way of life, an inescapable calling to let justice be done.

After all, when we act for justice, love, and peace, are we not God’s hands and feet in the world? Is that not how God answers prayers? Are we not the ones we’ve been waiting for? I invite you to your own reflections on these words.

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Benediction

Living lives committed to justice, love, peace, and compassion is not easy work. Especially if we feel that issues like anti-racism, patriarchy, hetero-sexism, ableism, classism . . . if we feel like those things don’t affect us personally, it can be easy to get lost in a morass of despair, hopelessness, to get distracted by the new outrage in the news, to let the persistent widow approach the judge alone.

For God calls us to something different. God puts us in communities so that we can support one another and bear one another’s burdens, to gather around each other in love and solidarity so that none of us are ever alone in this work. Know that you are not alone, and know you are the person who makes someone else less alone. Go to love and serve. Go in peace to act in compassion and solidarity. Go in peace forevermore. Amen.

Transcribed and edited by a member of the St. Andrew's Sermon Transcription Project.

St. Andrew’s Church Loving Progressive Presbyterian 14311 Wells Port Drive, Austin, Texas 78728 · (512) 251-0698 · Fax: (512) 251-2617 · www.staopen.org

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