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“PERSEVERING IN PRAYER”
Text: Luke 18:1-8
Sunday October 19th, 2025 – Pentecost 19
Trinity – Creston/Mount Ayr
Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
Our text for this 19th Sunday after Pentecost is the Gospel lesson from Luke 18 that was just proclaimed.
Let Us Pray: Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit to remind us that as we face the trials of being faithful to you and your word may we be ever persistent in prayer, not getting you to do what we want but knowing you will always provide what is best and what w need! Amen.
Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:
We all have stories about perseverance. Moments in our lives when, as children, we learned how to persevere. I see this in my granddaughter as she is relentless and non stop trying to climb up anything and everything.
And then as you grow older, the trials come. The doctor says he or she found a lump. Your daughter is unable to conceive. You need to navigate the loneliness of losing a spouse.
What once was child’s play becomes difficult. It is easy to lose heart. You turn to God in prayer and set it all before him. But you wonder how long you can continue to do this. When will God intervene?
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If you have ever been in that situation, it is a blessing to be able to listen to our Gospel reading today. Jesus has a word for you. In Luke’s narrative, Jesus sees that his disciples are about to lose heart. Discipleship has been difficult for them—and it’s about to get harder.
Jesus has begun to predict his crucifixion, and the disciples don’t comprehend (9:22, 44–45). They have watched as the religious leaders have challenged Jesus. Jesus has called for forgiveness so radical that they fear they cannot do it (17:4–5). And so Jesus pauses to tell them a parable.
As we listen to the parable, it is easy for us to identify with the woman. Perhaps we, like her, having struggled with injustice, having fought to have a voice, having been denied a seat at the table, understand what it is like to be overlooked.
It would be easy for us to think that Jesus was giving us an example of a woman who had nothing and yet used everything to continue fighting. It would be easy to look at this parable and to conclude that Jesus was telling us, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” It would be easy to do that. But it would be wrong.
Notice how Jesus does not ask us to focus on the widow. Even though we are interested in her situation, we don’t hear about her case. We don’t hear some secret about how she found the strength to carry on. Instead, Jesus tells us to focus on the judge. In fact, Jesus explicitly says, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says” (v 6).
Why on earth would we want to listen to the judge? The judge is arrogant. He does not care about God or about people. The judge is selfish. The only reason he grants the widow justice is to keep her from bothering him anymore. What good could come from listening to an unrighteous, arrogant, selfish person?
A great deal. You see, Jesus is making a lesser-to-greater argument. He knows that the judge is about the worst person you could encounter. But he wants you to know that if you get justice when you come before an unrighteous judge like that, imagine what will happen when you come before a righteous judge like his Father.
Jesus wants us to look at the unrighteous judge so that we treasure all the more fully the righteous judge that God has revealed himself to be. God truly desires to bring about justice. God cares about people.
God not only invites people to pray, but he also promises to listen to their prayers. Jesus knows that what motivates us for prayer is not a command that we should pray ever more fervently, but rather a promise that God has brought us into his kingdom, where he promises to hear our prayers and to answer them.
The unrighteous judge was selfish. He didn’t want to be given a black eye by the widow’s constant complaining. Jesus Christ is selfless. He not only wants to bear our burdens, but he also is willing to be crucified that he might carry our sins to the grave and rise to rule over any suffering that afflicts us.
In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has shown himself to be loving and faithful. He forgives your sin and promises you life in his kingdom.
God Gives of Himself to Save His People.
And if Jesus is willing to bear your sins, if Jesus desires to be your Savior, what burden could possibly be too much for him to bear? What prayer would be too great for him to hear?
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This God who is greater than any human judge, this God who is righteous, who seeks to care for his people, who invites his people to come to him with all of their life’s burdens, this God has brought you into his kingdom in Baptism and promises the gift of his Spirit to guide you throughout your life.
Unlike the judge, Jesus was righteous. Unlike the judge, Jesus was judged. Condemned for our sins and crucified for the entire broken world, Jesus died and rose in order that he might rule over all things and bring about a new creation at the end of the age.
This Jesus comes today to you in this place. This Jesus calls you through this parable and encourages you never to lose heart. If you have a prayer request that you are getting tired of making, if you have a burden that you are tired of carrying, if you have a battle that you are tired of fighting, do not give up.
Jesus is coming, and he encourages you to carry on. He holds the entire world in his hands, and he is working all things together for your good, for the good of those who love him.
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So how can we help one another fight this good fight? What does this look like in action? Well, it can begin by us praying for one another and perhaps even with one another.
The widow in the parable is alone. But you are not. Jesus promises that we will never be alone. He has sent his Spirit to be with us, and he has also called us into community so that we are present with one another.
Consider how the apostle Paul encourages the church. We are to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal 6:2), “encourage the fainthearted, help the weak” (1 Thess 5:14), and “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (Eph 6:10).
Simply asking someone if there is anything you can pray for them about is a good way to begin the conversation and to extend the love of Christ to one another.
In Picasso’s Guernica, we see a picture of prayer in despair. Painted in response to the 1937 bombing of Guernica, Picasso’s canvas captures a horrific scene. The street is filled with dead animals and mutilated bodies. A woman, cradling a dead baby, raises her eyes to the sky in a silent cry. Prayer in despair.
At the center of the painting, the all-seeing eye of God looks like a light bulb. Yet the only light in the painting actually comes from a lamp that a woman holds from a window above the scene.
It is as if the only light we can see is the light that we bring to this senseless destruction, and the eye of God is not offering any light on the evil that happens on earth.
Picasso offers an accurate vision of the world without the story of Jesus Christ. Suffering is prevalent and powerful, and prayer happens in despair.
But Jesus entered our suffering to bring life and hope to light. God is not found in the distance. He has come near in Christ. In his death, he claimed all suffering, and in his rising to life he offers all hope.
Our parable of the widow and the unrighteous judge (Lk 18:1–7) is like Picasso’s painting. It is filled with strange figures. Yet through this parable, Jesus offers the promise that God hears and answers your prayers.
Amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. Amen.
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