Sunday, Oct. 21, 8:30 - 21st Sunday after Pentecost
Jason Edwards, Pastoral Resident
“I have a dream. I have a dream that one day the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream that one day little black children and little white children will be able to join hands as sisters and brothers …”
In 1963, standing in the shadow of the Lincoln memorial, Martin Luther King shared his dream with our nation. Dr. King was a preacher, but this wasn’t just another sermon. These words rose from the very core of his being. He was a black American living in the midst of segregation and oppression. He was a husband, a father, and a pastor. This was more than a dream for our society; it was a personal dream. It was the dream that he lived his life for. He felt it deep within his bones.
I imagine that many who heard King’s speech that day probably thought it sounded like a good idea – even though they knew that it would never happen, not in this country. But Dr. King pursued his dream with passion and persistence to the point of losing his life, and his dream shaped our reality. It changed our society. Some of you can remember a time in your life before that dream was spoken into our midst. I cannot. It shaped my reality. It affected my sense of justice and equality before I was even born. And this is not because of Dr. King’s eloquence or importance. No, the power of his dream was in its deeper connection to the Dream of God.
Did you know that in the beginning, before God created anything, he had a Dream for us? He had an idea about how we ought to live and move and relate to one another. He imagined creativity and freedom, kindness and justice, generosity and peace, harmony and diversity. And even after we chose to go our own way, God’s Dream was still that we would one day become the people that he created us to be.
And did you know that God came into out midst and announced his Dream to us - that God himself walked among us as a Jewish rabbi and showed us how we could reach out and grasp this Dream?
Jesus talked more about the “Dream of God” than anything else. Only he didn’t call it a Dream. He called his Dream “the Kingdom.”
We’ve grown accustomed to using “Kingdom” language, but the fact is that none of us lives in a kingdom. We have no king and we have no queen, and so this analogy of God’s Dream for us coming true as a kingdom doesn’t really make sense. But it would have made perfect sense to first century Jews. They were living in a kingdom, and they were expecting another one.
These Jews were residents of Rome. They lived under the authority of Caesar, and they didn’t like it. But most of them believed in the promise of a new kingdom. They believed that one day God was going to break into history and set things right – which meant that he would destroy their enemies and cause every nation on earth to submit to their authority and worship their God. And it was this idea, this expectation that God was going to make Israel a world superpower that was rolling around in the minds of the people listening to Jesus in our story today.
Our text this morning is a parable. Luke tells us that this parable is about why we “should always pray and never up,” but we need to take a step back and look at the broader context, because there is something much bigger going on here. This story comes on the heels of an inquisition. The people were becoming impatient. They wanted to know when, where, and how the Kingdom of God was going to come.
Jesus listens to their questions. Then he takes their assumptions about the Kingdom of God and flips them upside down. He tells them that “the Kingdom will not come with their careful observation, nor will people say ‘here it is,’ or ‘there it is,’ because the Kingdom of God is among you.”
It is all around you. If you look closely, you can see it. If you reach out, you can touch it. It is within your grasp.
Jesus shattered their expectations. The crowd must have been confused. The expressions on their faces told him that he had some explaining to do, and so Jesus started telling stories.
“There was once a judge and a widow.” The scene Jesus describes was a common one. Women were second - class citizens in this culture. They had very few rights and they could not own property. If a woman’s husband were to die, she didn’t just lose a spouse; she lost her social standing, her security, and, in a word, her life.
Jesus tells us that this widow was standing before a judge who didn’t care about anyone or anything. She was looking for justice, but the law of the land was not on her side, and this judge was not the kind to be sympathetic. Her only hope was to wear him down with a persistent appeal for mercy. She begged and she pleaded, and for some odd reason, it worked. The judge found in her favor! And in this moment when grace is granted to the least of the least, Jesus showed them the Kingdom of God.
Luke tells us that this parable is about prayer, but do you see what else has happened here? Jesus has given a face to the Kingdom of God.
He tells them that the Kingdom of God is among them, and then he steps into the crowd and points into the faces of people. There’s a widow and a judge, a tax collector and a Pharisee. There’s a group of children, and there’s a rich young ruler. He points to the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, the leaders and the followers. And I’m sure the crowd thought they knew which ones represented this new Kingdom, but one by one Jesus proved them wrong. He directed their eyes into the faces of the lowly, the humble, the uneducated, and the immature. They are God’s dream come true.
Jesus took them from their reality, where winners are winners and losers are losers, into God’s reality, where the first shall be last and the last shall be first. The Kingdom has come all around them, and it could be seen if they looked closely - in the faces of the persecuted, the marginalized, and the lowly.
Writers and filmmakers have imagined what the life and ministry of Jesus might have looked like had he been born into a different time and culture. I wonder what these words from Jesus might have sounded like had he lived in the American South of the 1960s. My hunch is that he would have said something like this:
“Y’all keep wondering when God is going to make things right in this world. You look for signs in the stars and in the newspaper. You put your faith in power and education. But I tell you that God’s dream is coming true all around you.”
He would go on to tell them the parable of an elderly black woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama, even though the law of the culture said that when a white person needs a seat, you move. Jesus would recognize her persistence and her courage as heroic. And he might not say it, but the point would be that in her persistence, the world changed, just a little, and the Dream of God became a reality on earth, just as it is in heaven.
Can you imagine how some of our churches might have received this kind of good news in the 1960s? My guess is that it would have made at least a few people uncomfortable – there might have even been a lynching.
Which makes me wonder what these words from Jesus might sound like if he were speaking them to us today?
“American Christians, you seem to believe that the Nation of God will come on earth when you elect the right people or pass the right laws, but I want you to know that the Nation of God already exists, and its citizens are everywhere.”
Jesus would go on to spin the heroic tales of men and women who would never be named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential evangelicals. He would glance at the homeless, the immigrants, and the refugees and he would tell their story. He would tell us about teenagers who we would never want to see playing with our kids. And in this world where two days and one plane ride can move us from Dallas to Kenya, he might talk to us about our neighbors in Africa and India. Jesus would point to them, and some of us might understand that it’s in their faces, in their struggles, and in the moments when they receive mercy that Jesus sees the Kingdom of God.
How might we respond to that?
In the gospels, people sometimes responded to difficult words by walking away. If Jesus had shared his Dream with some white communities in the 1960s, he might have been murdered. But most of us would not walk away, and we certainly would not get violent. We know enough about Jesus to know that his values don’t quite match up with the values of our society. And most of us, as good Baptists, even enjoy a little conviction– especially on Sundays.
No, I think we’d get out our check-books and ask where to send our money. If God’s Dream is being realized among the homeless, we’d like to make sure that they have a good shelter somewhere. If Jesus sees his Dream coming true among teenagers struggling to find a future, we’d like to invest in a good inner-city youth program. It helps them and we get a tax break.
The problem is that Jesus has asked us to reach out and embrace his Dream with our lives. His Dream is supposed to be our dream. We’re supposed to look for it and then step into it. We want to write Jesus a check, and I want to assure you and the entire stewardship committee that he’s ok with that, but he wants something more from us. He wants to see his Dream coming true in our lives.
I wonder how many of us would be willing to invite the Kingdom of God into our living rooms. How many of us would feel comfortable seeing poorest of the poor and the least of the least walk into our church and sit in our pews - not as visitors, but as full - fledged members. How many of us are really ready to embrace God’s Dream and to allow his Dream to transform our lives? Our church?
This Dream wasn’t just some abstract idea to Jesus. These stories were personal. He told them about real people in the midst of real people. Luke tells us that the story of the persistent widow and the unjust judge took place in “a certain town.” That’s a funny way of putting it, don’t you think – “a certain town?” I’d be willing to bet my paycheck that this “certain town” was Nazareth.
Did you know that Jesus’ mother was a widow? Most scholars believe that Joseph died at some point before Jesus left home. My money says that there was a teenage boy in this story standing next to his widowed mother in that courtroom, watching her as she begged for justice and mercy. Perhaps her son felt guilty. He knew that she wouldn’t even be there if not for her desire to provide for him, his brothers, and his sisters.
Imagine how he might have felt as he watched her beg. Now imagine how his heart must have swelled in that moment when that cold hearted judge delivered a verdict of mercy. His eyes must have widened a bit that day as he looked into the face of his own mother and saw something more. Yes, this Dream was a personal Dream. Jesus felt it deep within his bones.
Jesus shows us real faith in the face of a widow and then closes his parable with an interesting and unsettling question: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? Will he find the faith of this widow among us? When Jesus comes, will he find us faithful? You ever wonder about that? Me too.
Amen.
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