A Song of Protest

Scripture

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to chosen ones who cry out day and night? Will God delay long in helping them? I tell you, God will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Sermon

Do you have a hill you will die on?

If I had to guess, the answer is yes, whether it’s great or small. It might be celebrity gossip, movie reviews, interior design, or opinions about your spouse. The greatest threat to Christianity is carpet color.

There are big hills that people are willing to die on, too. Politics. Voting rights. Doctrine. Values. Immigration. Those are very big, very important hills to die on.

Today, we hear a parable about a widow who was willing to die on a hill. She sought justice, constantly, persistently, even foolishly, and made her whole life into a song of protest. She made her whole life into prayer – in her words and her deeds. Sometimes, it turns out, there are hills we should die on, where God asks us to make our lives into a prayer—and song—of protest.

Jesus shares a lot of parables. He tells us parables about a good Samaritan, a prodigal son, a pearl of great price, a lost sheep, and a sower who casts seeds across a field. That’s only a small sampling. It’s sometimes slippery to define a parable, but most folks agree there’s over 30 in the Gospel accounts.

Sometimes we consider parables to simply be stories. But that’s not exactly true - sometimes parables are extended comparisons or metaphors, like the parable of the mustard seed. Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, that though tiny, becomes a mighty tree. Sometimes, parables are stories, of course, with beginning, middles, and ends. Today’s parable is like that - it has a plot that advances, winding its way to a conclusion. Some parables, like today’s, also have some interpretation by Jesus. After sharing the parable, Jesus essentially says, “here is what you should learn.” But in others, he doesn’t offer interpretation, sometimes intentionally leaving it obscure; “Figure it out!”

All that to say, parables are a big, diverse genre, one that is unified by its attempt to elicit insight. It’s meant for teaching. But I’m going to clue you in on one very, very important distinction when it comes to parables. Some parables are analogies; some are allegories. Here’s what that means…

Analogies are fairly cut and dry. This word sounds similar to analysis - “X data means Y,” “Y data means Z.” In analogies, there is a one-to-one relationship between things. In the parable of the mustard seed, the mustard seed equals the kingdom of God. The growth of the mustard seed equals the growth of the kingdom of God.

Allegories are different; they are generally more narrative, lengthier, and complex. It’s not cut and dry. Think of the last part of the word - “gory.” A gory movie is a mess. Drama! Guts! Gore! Allegories are those parables that don’t have cut-and-dry comparisons. A character might be symbolic of many things; the action might be ill-defined or complicated; the meaning of this parable might be expansive and open-ended.

So… to recap:

• Some parables are analogies, which have cut-and-dry, one-to-one comparisons.

• Some parables are allegories, which are far more of a mess.

That’s the question for us today.

…

On Thursday, I asked Colleen how she was feeling about the children’s message, and she said, “Which character do you think God is?” To which I said, “You first.” We chatted for a minute, and I gave some sort of smarty-pants answer saying this was one of those messy allegories. But is it?

Does God gives us justice, only when we pray and pray and pray, and only if we do it long enough, and hard enough?

Are we helpless widows, waiting for God to bend the “arc of the moral universe,” as Theodore Parker and Martin Luther King Jr. put it? [1]

I think hearing this as an analogy, where everything is pretty cut-and-dry, and hearing this as an allegory, where the picture is a little messier, are both valid.

Let’s say for a moment that we read this as the analytical, one-to-one analogy. In doing so, we hear an invitation to be a prayer warrior, so to speak. We hear Jesus tell us that prayer is the vehicle for change. In praying, God is brought into the world with us, and accompanies us in every moment of every day. We hear that prayer is what softens the hearts of unjust judges, and can even move the heart of God. In this analogy, our lives constantly sing to God, expectant of justice and change.

This is a beautiful image! That is part of our Christian calling, without a doubt. Jesus teaches us in this passage that prayer isn’t an elective discipline, but an essential rhythm of our daily lives.

But it doesn’t stop here. We might not need to choose whether we interpret this an allegory or analogy. If we read it as both, we find an even richer tapestry of the gospel.

Let’s turn to the allegory. If there isn’t a one-to-one correlation, but a more complicated, symbolic narrative at play, then we might consider humanity to be both the widow and the judge and the widow’s accuser.

Throughout human history, we have seen the ways legal systems can be fabricated into cudgels against the most vulnerable. In the nations surrounding the ancient Hebrew people, women and migrants had no status. In Ancient Rome, subjugated people had little or no standing judicially. In the wake of the Protestant Reformation, Catholics burned Protestants alive, then Protestants burned Catholics, and around and around it went.

…

What if we, too, even in this day, still have a law that is partial to some, and opposed to many?

What if we are the unjust judges, who are both the accuser and the accused? What if, in denying justice to the widow, the orphan, the migrant, we are inadvertently accusing ourselves, too?

What does it mean to “pray always, and not lose heart?” And how do we make prayer the foundation of our lives, even when justice seems elusive, if not impossible, even though we pray?

…

Jesus asks two questions at the end of this parable. The first, seeming to be rhetorical; the second, seeming to be open ended: “Will God delay long in helping [the oppressed]…? When the son of man comes again, will he find faith on earth?”

In this teaching, Jesus seems to link “faith” and “helping [the oppressed].” That is a key link.

To understand this link between prayer, faith, and helping others, we might turn to a saying attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola. He said this: “Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”

In prayer, we trust and depend on God to bring reconciliation to this world. And indeed, God has in Christ, and will continue to do so through the power of the Spirit. Coming out of that foundation of prayer, Paul reminds us in second Corinthians, Christ has entrusted us with “the ministry of reconciliation.”

This week, the only sermon illustration that’s needed rests in the Civil Rights Movement. The letters, and speeches, and yes, songs of protest in the Civil Rights Movement were steeped in religious conviction, just as its opposition was. Kumbaya, what is becoming our infamous refrain for this Lent, was also one of those songs - calling for God to help, and hear the prayers of Black Americans who cried out for justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted an 1853 sermon from Theodore Parker, repeating that iconic line: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” We forget that King did not just pray to God that this moral arc be bent; King, his companions, and the Americans who listened, took the “ministry of reconciliation” seriously. They prayed, knowing everything depended on God; but they followed the pattern of Christ in the world, writing and speaking and singing a living protest.

Persistently, and faithfully, they made their lives prayers to God that refused to give up. Remarkable, ordinary people engaged in sit-ins; marches; disobedience; protest; and conspiracies of the gospel, being willing to be incarcerated, attacked, slandered, and vilified by every corner of society.

To be an “ambassador for Christ,” as Paul says, we cannot resign to the world and the way it is. Within each of us, we have an unjust judge, a disenfranchised widow, and a false accuser, all of whom are clamoring. Within this world and our society, there are unjust judges, disenfranchised widows, and false accusers — in Newton, in New Jersey, in all of America.

But there is reason to have great joy, and great hope. God is not delaying in bringing justice; and we will not delay in praying with our souls and with our actions. Those prayers—whether in the confines of our hearts, or outwardly in our deeds—are joyful songs of protest.

Throughout the week, there are impressive, talented, remarkably intelligent students who are tutored through Literacy NJ. The volunteers who offer tutoring do more than teach; they lift a song of protest against the obstacles of low literacy. At Manna House and Bread of Life, our neighbors are fed free, balanced meals. Those volunteers lift a song of protest against the injustice of hunger, and all that it affects. In ushering, and hosting social events, and even fellowship after worship, we are lifting songs of protest against the isolation and disconnection and division that is rife in our society. For those who are tired, stepping away from volunteering and leadership can also raise a song of protest: a protest against the compulsive busyness, and work, and control that the world expects from us.

However you choose to serve, or however you choose to step aside, and in whatever you pray, may it be a hopeful, joyful, faith-filled protest against anything that keeps us from wholeness and abundant life. Learn to laugh in the face of despair. And in whatever you do, keep on praying. Keep on knocking. Keep on lifting a song of protest, knowing that in God, and in joining our hands with Christ, the moral arc is surely bending.

Sources

[1] “Theodore Parker and the ‘Moral Universe’” 2 September 2010, NPR, https://www.npr.org/2010/09/02/129609461/theodore-parker-and-the-moral-universe