The Widow and the Judge
Luke 18:1-8
October 20/21, 2007
Children's Sunday

As most anyone who has ever worked with children knows, one of the best things about working with them is that you never know exactly what they are going to say or do – you never know precisely what is going to come out of their mouths. This is especially true as children start to learn about the faith and particularly about prayer.

One mother remarked that she had been teaching her three-year old daughter, Caitlin, the Lord’s Prayer for several evenings at bedtime. She would repeat each line after her mother said it first. Finally, the little girl decided to go solo. The mother listened with pride as she carefully enunciated each word right up to the end of the prayer: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some e-mail.”
Or what the young boy who was overheard praying: “Lord, if you can’t make me a better boy, don’t worry about it. I’m having a real good time just like I am.”
Another story comes from a mother who invited some people over to her house for dinner. At the table, she turned to her 6-year old daughter and said, “Would you like to say the blessing?” “I wouldn’t know what to say,” the daughter replied. “Just say what you hear Mommy say.” The daughter bowed her head and said, “Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?”

And teaching children about faith can be just as challenging as teaching them to pray. A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. “If Jesus were sitting here, he would say, let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.” Kevin turned to his younger brother said, “Ryan, you be Jesus!”

Welcome once again to Children’s Sunday here at Beargrass, a weekend where we celebrate the wonderful gifts that children bring to our faith community. Our celebration this weekend coincides with a much larger event, the National Observance of the Children’s Sabbath. This observance is much more than just a Beargrass event, is much more than our denomination’s event, it is even more than a Christian event. The 16th Annual Children’s Sabbath, sponsored by the Children’s Defense Fund, is an interfaith observance uniting people from multiple faith backgrounds to work together for a common cause: the needs of children all around the world. This year’s theme, My Boat is So Small, Creating a Safe Harbor of Hope and Health Care for All Children, reminds us that there are children all around the world are simply lacking some of the most basic needs that we often take for granted.

I sure there are many people out there who have had miserable experiences with their children at the doctor’s office. And I sure that if my mother were still alive, she could probably entertain you with variety of horror stories about taking me to the doctor. I have heard from so many people that I was one of the worst two-year-old children that God ever created. Even though I have no memory of the events, the tantrums that I pitched in the doctor’s office were legendary. But even as I got older, I still dreaded going to the doctor’s office. If I were sick, I would beg the doctor not to give me a shot. Make me take medicine for 30 days! I don’t care! Just don’t give me a shot. Even as adult, I still dread getting shots.

But then I challenge myself to put all of these ideas in perspective. At least I am fortunate enough to be able to go to a doctor’s office when I am sick. There are approximately 9 million children in the United States – one in nine – that have no health insurance coverage. In fact, every 51 seconds, another baby is born without health insurance. And while Americans over 65 have access to health coverage under Medicare programs regardless of income, children have no guarantee, even for basic vaccines and preventive care.

That’s one of the reasons why the Children’s Defense Fund sponsors the Children’s Sabbath, a time devoted to emphasizing needs of children all across our country and around our world. After all, Jesus said let all the children come to me. He didn’t say only rich or middle class white children. He didn’t say let only the strapping boys but not the girls come. He didn’t say let only the able-bodied children come. He didn’t just welcome the children in the neighborhood or children who were reportedly nice. He welcomed ALL children – no matter their background, no matter their age, no matter who they were, Jesus welcomed them. Even when the disciples tried to send the children away, Jesus persisted and made sure the children could come to him.

And it is precisely this concept of persistence in one’s faith that appears in our scripture today. To teach his disciples about the importance of persistence and remaining faithful in prayer, Jesus shares with them the story about a widow and a judge. To fully understand the widow’s predicament, one must understand the challenges that widows faced during Jesus’s time. Widows were extremely vulnerable. They were not allowed to inherit their husband’s property, there was no social welfare program, and for the most part no opportunity for employment. They were dependent on the judge for protection since widows were easily victimized. In the story that Jesus tells, the judge is the widow’s only hope, and unfortunately, he is a bad judge. He doesn’t care about others, he doesn’t have faith or fear God, he simply is only looking out for himself.

So, what should the widow do? Doe she simply give up? Does she simply think that no matter what she does, the judge will simply not care? Instead, the widow here is an example to all of us. This woman of faith refuses to give up. She continues to bother the judge. Finally, all of her hard work and determination is rewarded, her faith pays off.

I think it particularly interesting to note that while judge does the right thing, he does the right thing for the wrong reason. He doesn’t grant the widow justice because he is a kind man. No, he grants her demands because he is sick and tired of listening to her requests. We have probably all been in the judge’s shoes. Who hasn’t given into someone’s demands just so they would leave you alone? I was in Target recently, and I stood behind a mother and child in the checkout line. The child kept nagging his mom to buy him a candy bar. She kept saying no, but the child would not give up. He begged, he pleaded, he had tears rolling down his face, and finally, his mom bought the candy bar. Was it the right thing to do? But just like the widow, the child’s persistence paid off.
Now I am definitely not advocating that parents should always give in to their children’s demands. But I think there is an important lesson we take away from both the widow and the child. What if they had not been so persistent? What if they had given up? There is an inspirational poster that hangs in my office and says, “Just because something is hard doesn’t mean you give up; it simply means you need to try harder.” I truly believe that would be the widow’s motto. She refused to give up. What if one of us, or a group of us, or our entire denomination worked together and wrote letters to fight for a cause close to our hearts? Would all the persistent e-mails and phone calls and letters convince someone in authority to make a change, even if they did it so we would stop writing? Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children’s Defense Fund, reminds us, “If you don’t like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.”

And just as we think about children all over the world who need our support, there are children and youth right here in our town, in our own faith community who need support. You never know when one small act on your part will make a difference in the life of a child. Maybe it’s by setting an example and participating in Mission Possible next weekend side by side with a young person. Maybe spending one hour volunteering in the nursery will show a child you care. Maybe a particular Sunday School lesson will touch a youth’s life forever. No never know when your persistence, your hard work, your faith in a child or youth may ultimately make a difference.

Miss Swan couldn’t take being a Sunday school teacher any longer. The disrespectful teenagers snapped their gum during prayer time and read magazines during Bible study. But worst of all, at prayer request time, they asked God to increase their allowances.

It took two months to a find a new replacement, but finally the minister recruited Miss Betty Ray for the job. New to town, she didn’t know the group’s reputation. By the look of her pink dress, one size too small and her bad blonde bleach job, the students obviously felt they had an easy mark.

Betty introduced herself, stating that she had recently come from the South. “Have any of you ever been out of state?” she asked. A few hands went up. “Anyone travel beyond five hundred miles?” One hand went up. “Anyone visit outside the country?” No hands went up. The kids were puzzled. What did this have to do with anything? Betty reached in her purse and pulled out a long tube and unrolled a map of the world.

“What else do you have in your purse? Lunch?” someone asked.
“Cookies for later,” Betty replied.

Then she pointed to the map with a long fingernail to an odd-shaped continent. “Is that Texas?” a student asked.

“No,” Betty replied. “Not even close. It is India. I was born there, and I lived there until I was about your age. My parents were missionaries there, and that is where my mother was when I came into the world.”

Betty fumbled again in her purse, this time pulling out a handful of old wrinkled pictures along with a tin of chocolate chip cookies. They passed the pictures around, viewing each with great interest. Dark faces stared up from the photos, frozen in time. “You don’t have to be a missionary – everyone can do something in this world to help another,” Betty said.

The hour faded quickly as Betty told them stories about faraway places and what people were like and how they lived. Sunday after Sunday, Betty came to class, tying her lessons to their everyday lives. She told the teens how they could make a difference right now. The students grew to love her, bleached blonde hair and all. The more they liked her, the lovelier she became.

Betty taught that Sunday school class for over 20 years. Though she never married or had children of her own, the town came to think of her as a surrogate parent since she taught 2 generations of children. Even after she retired, she still occasionally heard from a former student. There was a doctor, a research scientist, a businessman, and many teachers.

One day, she reached into her mailbox and pulled out a blue envelope with a familiar foreign stamp in the upper right-hand corner. In the left corner was the name of a boy in that very first Sunday school class years ago. She recalled how he’d always liked her cookies and seemed so interested in her lessons. A picture slid out of the envelope and onto her lap. Squinting her eyes, she smiled at the man in the photo, still seeing the teenage boy in him. Standing in rubble, from a city in India, he stood with other volunteers who had come to help earthquake victims.

The caption read, “Because of you, I am here now.”