‘Give me justice against my adversary.’

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This is perhaps the most vindictive, the most petty, the most true, and the most basic of all our demands in life. We have not been treated right, let some judge correct the wrong.

We are rightly told to not focus on the many small injustices of life, as it will only lead us to be bitter; but that is not the same as saying that such injustices never happened. They did happen; they were unjust; and in a just world, all injustice requires recompense.

Yet it is not our place to bring about ultimate justice, but the judge’s. Yet who is the judge?

Surely it is not any man, for man has never brought justice to anything in this good world. If he had, we would live in a world of righteousness, but righteousness we see not.

Is it this God we read of? Surely not, for He allowed the Hebrews, His own people, to be slaves in Egypt for four hundred years.

Is it from this God we read of? Surely not, for He commanded the execution of the Canaanites, that the Israelites might not be tempted by their ways.

Is it from this God we read of? Surely not, for He would not hear the cries of His people; a cruel and uncaring God, who for generation after generation ignored the lamentation and weeping of this suffering world, which had been forsaken by its last husband, a husband that promised knowledge of Good and Evil in the City of Man, and yet gave neither, for we know neither good nor do we understand evil; a husband that left mankind a widow. This widow weeps age after age, even until now, and still now; and will God listen?

It seems He never will. For we pray day after day for our simple needs, for relief from the little miseries of life, for us and for others, and He seems to ignore us. We often say we are so blessed, but how many truly feel that way? We say we are blessed, but we feel abandoned, like a widow.

Our God seems to be a hidden God, who answers not those who ask, nor opens to those who knock.

The sensible response to such a God is to simply stop asking, stop knocking, stop praying. If He is even there, He obviously doesn’t care about us, so why should we care about Him?

The Christ, Our Lord, is not so sensible. He does not tell us to stop asking, stop knocking, stop praying. Rather He holds up to us the image of a widow, who, though she receives no justice from a wicked and corrupt judge, yet comes and comes and comes to him again, demanding that she be heard, and her wrong be righted.

This seems unreasonable, even irrational, and yet the widow trusts that if she but bother the judge enough, he will have no choice but to hear her case.

And hear her case he does, and gives her justice.

The Lord now looks at you, and asks, ‘See what the unrighteous judge does. So will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night?’ ‘I tell you, he will give them justice speedily.’

This seems to us a lie, for we pray day and night, week upon week, for righteousness, healing, and joy, and yet none of these seem to ever come to us speedily. Some seem to never come to any of us at all.

Yet God is not a man, that he should lie. And our growing tired of waiting for God’s answer to our prayers is not a case of the Lord not caring, but of our impatience. Even the souls beneath the altar of the heavenly Jerusalem, that city, cry out ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’ and they are told to wait a little longer.

This waiting a little longer, this asking a little longer, this coming to the judge again and again, seems to us grueling, even insufferable. Yet it is with this waiting we are charged. It is this command we are to keep, for the judge will indeed right all wrongs, heal all illnesses, and avenge all blood.

To us, who wait, and for whom a day is as a thousand years, this is no easy business. Christ never said it would be easy, why should it, for the path He has been charged with will not be easy. It too will be filled with wrong and illness and blood. This is what the image of the cross means. He asks a lot, that we suffer this life, but He asks no more than what the Father asked of Him.

It is indeed no easy business to endure the wickedness and evil of sin, the devil, and this hateful world. And for this reason, the Lord ends His parable thusly:

‘When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith upon the earth?’

[Though He tells us that justice will come quickly, yet He seems to admit that it will not come quickly enough, not for us; not for the feebleness of our mind and will. For our faith may indeed fail; our prayers may indeed cease; and our crying to heaven come to silence; for to wait is an unbearable weight.

Yet the Lord does not ask us this, that we would despair, but that we should always pray, and not lose heart. By informing us of just how difficult the task before us is, He whets our appetite for the challenge that awaits. By acknowledging the gravity of the evil of our impatience, He emboldens our will to fight against it; that we might not disappoint the returning Son, who indeed is coming, and quickly.

‘So when the Son of Man returns, will He find faith upon the earth?’]

To you who wait, will He?

Yet He comes:

‘To bring justice against our adversary.’

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Preached by Pastor Fields

Sermon Texts: Genesis 32:22-30; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8.