Hungry for Righteous Justice

PPLP - World Hunger Day

Pentecost + 19 Proper / Lectionary 29

16 October 2022

Jeremiah 31:27-34

Psalm 121

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Luke 18:1-8

God of the dispossessed,

you teach us to hunger for justice

even when the weak are shut out

and the powerful turn over in their beds:

in the heat of anger

and the bitterness of our complaints,

give us courage to protest,

the persistence to pray and the heart to love;

through Jesus Christ, the true judge. Amen.

_________________________________________

This week’s sermon I found difficult to write. It’s difficult because God, through Jesus’ teachings, today, encourages us to be persistent in prayer.

Pulling me from another direction, though, is that the ELCIC asks us to commemorate today as World Hunger Day.

And this is where I’ve been stumped for the last few days, until it occurred to me that there is a direct correlation between hunger and persistence.

The example that Jesus give us is a widow seeking justice. She’s hungry to see justice be done, preferably in her favour.

“2He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”” (Lk 18:2-3)

So, then, what are the things that we’re able to be hungry for, in our lives? In our world?

Naturally, the first on our list is a hunger for food. Specifically, if the food we like, and are accustomed to have, isn’t available due to international tensions, or even because of the disruptions caused by the pandemic.

But going further, do we know what it’s like to have a lack of food, in general? In life? To know the feeling of knowing that there’s no food in the fridge, the freezer, or the cupboard?

Unfortunately, this is a situation that is becoming all too familiar to more and more Canadians. Food bank statistics, in general, tell us that there are more families of lower income to middle income who are finding themselves in need of help, these days.

How many of those who are retired find themselves facing the choice of paying the rent, or purchasing needed medications?

For what else, then, do we hunger?

I know we hunger for justice, as does the widow in today’s parable. We know that to seek justice is an engrossing occupation, whether it’s someone wrongly accused, or someone who is overlooked because of societal or racial prejudices in our society.

In the past few years, even before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission published their 94 Calls to Action for all of Canada, inequality between Canadian peoples has been a problem for a nation, our nation, who styles itself as open, welcoming to all, and multicultural.

In fact, this remains an ongoing yet oft overlooked issue in our society. And yet, its something that we are able to be passionate about, and for which we continue to hunger.

So, for what else do we hunger?

What we have to realize that though, is that it is our hungers that have the power to change us, especially when we strive to fulfill them without God, and without prayer.

““Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” ’ 6And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?” (Lk 18:4b-7)

When we hunger, then our eyes are opened, and we see things we might not have seen before. We become aware that the world is a beautiful and diverse place and that when we, for whatever reason, fail to embrace each other as brothers and sisters in the world, then justice is harder to find, and hunger isn’t necessarily something with which we are familiar.

So, what happens, do you think when we begin to pray, and pray persistently for world peace?

Do we remember those who went to war from our past? Parents, grandparents, siblings who came back changed, if they came back at all.

Do we watch the news to see how the different sides in conflict with each other present their appeals for international understanding and aid?

Do we wonder how we are able to support the desire, the need, for peace in a place that isn’t next door, geographically?

But this isn’t the only hunger we carry in our lives, is it? How about equality for all, regardless of race, creed, or ethnicity? Or reparation for past harms that have left the marks of intergenerational trauma not just on those who are at the centre of the maelstrom of this trauma, but for those of us who recognize and can emphasize with the harms given, received, and passed on to the next generation?

What about issues of clean water? Food security? Safety for women? Or those who, regardless of background, are missing, are found murdered, or worse yet, are never found at all?

And in the midst of these hungers, then, we turn to today’s gospel and see how Jesus shows us a widow and her persistence to see justice done with a judge who by modern definition could be bought because he has no fear of God and no respect for the people.

“Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”” (LK 18:1-3)

We’re told that she prayed. She prayed to God, and she prayed to the judge.

She was so persistent in her act of prayer that she was there every time he stepped out of his house, his courtroom, even his golf course pleading and praying for justice to be done.

I’m reminded of a 2004 movie called “Iron Jawed Angels” about the American Suffragette movement in the early twentieth century.

At one point, the leaders of the movement are jailed, and one goes on a hunger strike, while in jail. She says it’s an old Irish custom to starve to death in doorway of the one from whom you are seeking justice because it gets hard to ignore them when they’re in your doorway and when they have to step over your prone body as you lose the strength to move from starvation.

I could see the widow Jesus describes to us and the ways in which she seeks to be in the way of the judge to encourage him to see justice done.

“there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” 4For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” ’ 6And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’” (Lk 18:3b-8)

And this brings us back to the ponder from which I started.

For what do we hunger, in life?

Where do we recognize the need for justice in the world? And how persistent will we be in our prayers to seek that justice is done and that this particular ‘hunger’ is able to be fulfilled?

“7And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’” (Lk 18:7-8)

But whatever hunger we pray about with persistence born of a widow and her judge, we know that God will help us to see the world with new eyes and new hearts so that we see the New Heaven and the New Earth become a reality in our lifetimes.

Amen.