Christ Lutheran Church
Cleveland, Ohio
October 19, 2025
by: Rev. Dean Kavouras
Luke 18:1-6 (DKV)
1 Then Jesus told them a parable teaching them that it was necessary for them to pray at all times and never to lose heart 2 saying, “There was a certain judge in a certain city who neither feared God nor regarded man. 3 And there was a widow in that city who continually appeared before him pleading, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4 But he was unwilling for the longest time.
But later he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor regard man because this widow continually appears before me I will give her justice, lest she wear me out by her continual pleadings.’”
6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unjust judge says! 7 And will not God vindicate his elect who cry out to him day and night; and do so quickly? 8 I avow to you that he will establish justice, and do so quickly. Nonetheless when the Son of Man comes will he find faith on the earth.
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There are two ways to understand this parable.
The first is to hear it as our Lord’s own admonition to pray faithfully and constantly. To come before our God who unlike the unjust judge; is both willing and able to vindicate his people from all their adversaries namely: sin, death and devil; and to do so quickly. So hang on! Don’t lose heart!
Don’t be like Florence Chadwick who in 1952 set out the swim 26 miles from California to Catalina Island and who gave up early because of the fog. Afterward she discovered she was less than a half-mile from shore, and later said, “If I could have seen land, I know I could have made it”.
But we might take a positive lesson from the “One Hundred Year Prayer,” which was begun in 1727 a tiny group of Moravian Brethren in Herrnhut, Saxony They were determined to establish a continuous 100 yearlong prayer asking God to send missionaries to convert the whole world. Each had his assigned “shift” and each dedicated her life to prayer, praise, thanksgiving and sacrificial works done in the name of Jesus by which they hoped to convert the world.
In 1732 two of the Moravians, Johann Leonhard Dober and David Nitschmann offered to become slaves so that they could minister to enslaved people in the Danish West Indies, believing it was the only way to gain access to the slave community
Such believers were no doubt inspired by today’s gospel. But there is another way to look at it. Namely this: that the unjust judge in the parable represents sin, death and Satan who “flood the zone” with their wicked ways until the whole world should lose its collective mind, live debauched lives, stop worshiping our Lord Jesus Christ, and fall down and worship the devil instead. To which our Lord answers when faced with the same temptation says to the Tempter: “Be gone Satan for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.’” Then the devil left, and angels came to minister to him (Mt 4:10-11) The Lord and his angels will do the same for you.
It is this Wicked Devil, in concert with his earthly agents, who inspires mass shootings, transgender ideology and all the other social issues that social media is always on about.
But there is another way to perceive this parable and it is encapsulated in the last words of our gospel, “But when the Son of Man comes will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8)
The “coming” that our Lord references here is not the end of the ages wherein the cosmos will be obliterated – not by greenhouse gasses and so on, but because our God has a moment in mind when he will deliver justice; that is to say: renewal and redemption to the world by our Lord’s Second Coming. No one knows when it will come, nor does it admit of observation. Things will be going on as normal. People will be buying and selling, eating and drinking, getting married and giving in marriage … when of a sudden, in the blink of an eye, the end will come. And all bets will be off.
As glorious and coveted this Day is by God’s Elect, it is not the subject of today’s parable, but rather it is His own suffering, death and resurrection that our Lord has in mind here. When our Lord breathed his last the world came to an end. The old world that is. But when he rose again to new and eternal life from the tomb, in utter glory and, exaltation, the new world begun. We are sitting in it now.
Moreover in the parable the church is the widow, even as she is God’s Elect. For all the world she seems powerless to have any effect on the sin, death and devil that saturate the planet. Her pews sit mostly empty and there is no “program” by which to fill them.
Instead, today’s parable is a call for the church to do precisely she is engaged in at this moment. It is in this place, at this time and by this Divine Liturgy, that the church offers up her most perfect, powerful and comprehensive prayers to the Judge of all the Earth for “all sorts and conditions of men,” And he gladly receives them from the One Mediator between God and man: Man Christ Jesus. (1 Tim. 2:5).
When Jesus asks, “But when the Son of Man returns will he find faith upon the earth,” it is not a question of despair. But rather a rhetorical question that is meant to encourage our faith: specifically childlike faith in God’s method of vindication, which is the cross of Jesus. No one could believe that this was the means and price of salvation, not even the disciples. And to this day many people love everything about Jesus EXCEPT the cross.
But as a camel relieved of his hump is no longer a camel; and a triangle relieved of one of its members loses its form: even so Jesus, if we consider him apart from his “bitter suffering and death” by which he expunges the sin of the world: he is nothing.
But in truth He did become incarnate this “Man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). He underwent the punishment due to all sinners. But the only way to gain the benefits of his death is to: believe and be baptized by which forgiveness, life and salvation are given you.
But those who refuse will pay double jeopardy. They will suffer on their own for the sins that Christ suffered for them. What a terrible waste and shame.
And so we say to one and all: “Behold God’s Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.”
Come quickly Lord Jesus. Maranatha. Amen.