God's a Failure!

Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

This is a parable, but this week, unlike last week, Luke tells us up front, “Jesus told them a parable” so we don’t even have to do any work to figure out it’s a parable!  So this is a parable and parables tell us something about the way God works.  Parables also very often tell us something about God that we might have trouble hearing if it was given to us straight.  So it comes to us in a softer… maybe even in a bit of a tricksy way.  This week’s parable is a particularly good example of that because IF Jesus had told the crowd the message of this parable straight out, this is what he would have told them:   God is a complete and total failure.  See what I mean?  Hard to hear that God’s a failure!  But that’s the message of this parable and THAT’S why you don’t start a parable at the end.    

So, let's go back to the beginning.  God, in this parable is the unjust judge.  It’s a judge’s job to hear the case and decide the case regardless of how people beg or plead or pester.  It’s a judges duty to give out fair and impartial verdicts and judgments without regard to feelings, or emotions, or anything else.  But in this parable, the only thing this judge is concerned with is whether or not he’s going to keep being bothered by this pesky widow.  In the end this judge decides to completely flush all jurisprudence down the toilet, chuck fair and honest judgment in the bin, and instead just give this annoying woman what she wants... so she’ll get off his back for crying out loud! 

In doing that, the judge in the parable is a failure as a judge.  He wasn’t giving a fair and impartial hearing of the cases that came to him.  He no longer ruled in favor of the person the law and precedent directed him toward.  He no longer paid attention to the facts.  In short, the judge stopped being a judge.  God too, Jesus is telling us, has stopped hearing the cases against us as well.  God too, no longer gives an impartial hearing of our failings and shortcomings.  God too, it seems, is no longer judging each of us by our actions and by the way we live our lives.  In short, Jesus tells us, God has become a failure as a judge.

I don’t know what you have to say about that but what I have to say about that is… Thank God!  I mean, think about it.  Where would we be if God gave us exactly what we deserved?  What if God treated that "break one commandment and you’ve broken all of them" thing as an originalist?  How would you do if God was to do God’s job as judge?  What would happen if God was the most impartial and unswerving deliverer of Justice?  I don't know about you but I’d be doomed and might even have some company with me in the super hot, extended stay, un-airconditioned place as well!  

The Good News is that God has decided to be a complete FAILURE at being a judge.  The Good News is that God has fixed it so there is no way we could ever possibly expect a fair trial from Him.  Thanks be to God!  But even with that Good News, Jesus knew this parable would be a hard sell.  He knew people much more easily wrap their minds around a God of judgement than a God of love… That’s why Jesus wondered at the end of this parable whether he’d find any faith on earth when he returned.  Our world sadly LOVES a god of judgement.  Our world loves a god that hates all the same people we hate.  But this parable tells us that is just not the God we have!  We have a God of radically inclusive love and acceptance, a God of infinite forgiveness and grace.

As Christians, you and I are basically clerking for God, the failure of a judge.  We are called to learn from and model our lives and the ways we treat the people around us after the ways of this unjust judge.  May we all learn this lesson so well from God, our mentor judge, that we too only give out love and inclusion, forgiveness and grace and grow to become judges that are notorious failures… just like God.  Amen.