Jer 31:27-34; Psalm 119:97-104; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8
Living in a small-town setting can be a blessing because, especially in previous generations, survival sometimes depends upon the kindness of your neighbors. Some amazing acts of caring and generosity happen in small towns. A small town is a place where you can actually make eye contact with people walking down the street, where you can walk into the diner and greet other patrons you’ve known for years and see employees you had as students. A small town is a place where you celebrate the Fourth of July together, and where you mourn the loss of a beloved member of the community together. Life in a small town like Windsor or Oxford or Greene can be a blessing. It’s that place, as the TV show Cheers reminded us, where everyone knows your name.
Life in a small town can be a curse, too. A small town is a place where every mistake you or your family makes is a painful topic of public discussion. A small town is a place where you can be judged for mistakes your grandfather or your mother or your cousin made. A small town is a place where you become every mistake you made as a child or as a teen, mistakes that some will never let you rise above. A small town is a place where gossip about a family can doom every member of that family to ridicule and prejudice for the rest of their lives. A small town is a place where your private business becomes the measuring stick with which others will judge you. Life in a small town like Windsor or Oxford or Greene can be a curse. It’s a place where everyone knows your name.
My point is that, no matter how much we love our small towns and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, life in a small town is a double-edged sword. And depending on who you are in the community, small town life is a blessing or a curse.
Our reading from the prophet Jeremiah has a ‘good news’ prophecy for the “living in a small town can be a curse” problem, for the “you will be judged for what your grandfather or your mother or your brother has done” problem. Jeremiah prophecies about a coming time when, “In those days they shall no longer say: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Jeremiah insists that there will come a time when those who sin will be responsible for their sins, but no longer will the sins of the parents be visited upon the heads of their children and their grandchildren. This is what Jeremiah means when he says, “30But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.” Jeremiah is also preaching about an end to our judgment of one another. Jeremiah has a vision of a small town that is 100% blessing; where what we do today is more important than anything we did yesterday, where who our family is is less important than who we are as individuals, where the skeletons in my closet haunt only me.
When you’re judged for what someone else has done; for a grandmother’s alcoholic behavior, or for a father who disrespects women, or for a sister who cheats customers; that’s the kind of thing that Jeremiah is prophesying an end to. When you’re judged because of your poverty, or because of your gender, or because of the color of your skin, that’s also the kind of thing that Jeremiah is prophesying an end to. And that’s the kind of injustice that Jesus is teaching about in today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke.
Luke has Jesus once again teaching the disciples about the importance of prayer, and the importance of constant prayer. This parable is about the importance of prayer, and about the kind of God who listens to our prayers. But for me where this story from Luke intersects with the reading from Jeremiah is justice.
Central to this parable of the “unjust judge” is the one seeking justice. In many societies, including the one Jesus lived in, justice was not about who was right and who was wronged. Who you were was more important than what you had done. Your social class, your gender, your marital status, and your net worth were the major factors in receiving fair treatment and justice.
In this parable we have the lowest of the low: a poor, unmarried female. A poor, unmarried female with no male family support had less worth than slaves and work animals. At least slaves and work animals were owned by a male, which game them their worth. A poor widow was like… well, we don’t even have an equivalent in our day. Our pets have more rights today than a poor widow had back then.
A poor widow seeking justice from a judge in Jesus’ time was more ridiculous then than it would be for your dog to sue someone today. So when this parable speaks about the judge even considering trying the widow’s case, listeners then and now should have a good idea of just how improbable it was that this poor widow would receive the time of day, much less justice.
Add to this impossible scenario a judge who is not afraid of being punished by God for his actions, and who couldn’t care less who appeared before him in court. There is absolutely nothing in this judge’s interest to giving this woman justice; no money in it, no public will demanding it, no fear of God to guilt him into it, no drive to see justice served.
Well that’s not completely true. I guess there is one reason the judge will benefit from giving this pesky woman justice: so that she will shut up and leave him alone. This unjust judge will grant the widow justice simply because he wants her to leave him in peace.
her to leave him in peace. This is the danger to modern day listeners of the parable: that we will think that Jesus is comparing God’s reason for granting us justice to that of an unjust judge who gives justice to get us to go away. God does not grant justice so that we will stop praying, God grants justice because of who God is. This parable is saying, “If this unjust judge will eventually grant justice, how much more likely will the God of justice be to hear our prayers and to see that justice is done?”
When we small-towners are tempted to judge our neighbors, we do well to remember that Jesus of Nazareth was a poor man, a man who was born out of wedlock, a man whose human father did not take part in his conception, a working class man who made a meager living with his hands, a man who was not married at 30 years old, a man who had no children, a man who was arrested and executed as a criminal of the state. I wonder what others from his village had to say about him. I wonder what I would have said about him if I had lived in the same small town where he was raised. Would I have made his small-town life a blessing or a curse?
The Good News given to us today is that we, God’s people, are all members of at least one small town – our congregations. Jeremiah, and Jesus, and God the Father call on us today to make life in our small towns a blessing and not a curse. It doesn’t matter if our small town is a congregation or a zip code or a workplace or a school or even a prison. Jesus calls on us to love those neighbors as ourselves.
The Good News today is that the God of justice is giving us homework to do, and it’s homework that will make our small towns a blessing and not a curse. His homework is to answer two questions.
Question 1 – what does justice look like in the small towns we come from.
Question 2 – what can we do to make our small towns a blessing for everyone who lives there?