Sunday Message
October 17, 2004
Richard L Sheffield
Text: Luke 18:1-8; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

The story Jesus told about the woman and the judge is a parable, not a Polish joke. But if the judge had been a Polish Jew he'd have had a Yiddish word for the woman – noodge. In English, a "nudge" is a "gentle push." ¹ In any language a "noodge" is just "pushy." Know any "noodges?" Don't answer that! We all do. Jesus did too. He peopled his stories with people. He no doubt knew someone like the woman.

Someone has said of author William Faulkner, who had a way of saying things that said more than some people wanted to hear, that he didn't make it up, he just wrote it down. Jesus was like that. He looked around him at life and then told us stories to help us look at life too. Stories about all kinds of people, including this "noodge." We call Jesus' stories "parables."

Parables are stories more interested in telling the truth than in reporting the facts. The story Jesus told is identified by Luke as a "parable," so right away we should expect something more than the obvious point. That 1 + 1 = 2. To be sure we "get it," Luke tells us what "it" is that Jesus wants us to "get." Luke writes: "Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not lose heart." ² Or, as another translator puts it, "Jesus told them a story showing that it was necessary for them to pray consistently and never quit." ³

That's Luke's interpretation of the story. But Jesus tended to let his stories interpret themselves in the lives of his hearers. He told them this story. The one I read. "There was once a judge in some city who never gave God a thought and cared nothing for people. A widow in that city kept after him: 'My rights are being violated. Protect me!' He never gave her the time of day. But after this went on and on he said to himself, 'I care nothing [for] what God thinks, even less [for] what people think. But because this widow won't quit badgering me, I'd better do something and see that she gets justice – otherwise I'm going to end up beaten black-and-blue by her pounding." ⁴

Literally, he said, "I will grant her justice, so that she may not come and slap me in the face." ⁵ Persistence pays off says the parable. People who give up, never know how close they might have been to getting what they wanted. If the noodge had quit her nudging she might never have known the justice that she sought.

There's a poem I've quoted from time to time. Someone gave me a copy of it that sits in my study. It's called "Don't Quit." It ends,

"Success is failure turned inside out –
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt.
You never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far.
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit –
It's when things seem worst
that you must not quit."

But there's more to it than that. More to it than being a "noodge." Something more I hope Katie Rhoads takes with her in her new ministry. I don't get to give her my advice this afternoon, so I wanted to give it to her this morning – but she's working. If she were here, I'd say, Katie, in your ministry remember,

That politics is the art of the possible, and so is ministry. Both are about people.
That compromise is not a bad word; it's a good way to get something done.
That in a storm it's the trees that bend that don't break.

But mostly Katie remember this:
You never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far.
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit –
It's when things seem worst
that you must not quit –

BECAUSE.

Not because you are called to be a noodge, but because you are called to serve the one who will never quit on you.

That's in Jesus' parable too. Jesus didn't say that God is like the judge and answers our prayers only if we make ourselves a pain. He said, If this woman by her persistence could get through to that judge; how much more can you be sure that your prayers get through to God? God is listening. Don't quit on God. God won't quit on you. So don't you quit on you either.

I'm just starting a book that is already overdue at the Lima Public Library. Don't tell Scott Shafer or Candy Newland! The book is called, "The Courage to Start." It could just as well be called, "The Courage to Quit Quitting." It's written by a man who decided to take up running at the age of 43. The cover shows a happy penguin in running shoes. The author says that's him.

He writes, "I was a round little man with a heavy heart but a hopeful spirit. I didn't really run, or even jog. I waddled. I was a Penguin. That was the image that fit. Yes, I am round. Yes, I am slow. Yes, I run as though my legs are tied together at the knees. But I am running. And that is all that matters." ⁶

He goes on a little later to say, "To those of us who simply want to run, the value of genetics is highly overrated. Running doesn't require an extraordinary combination of muscle and bone. It requires only the desire to move our bodies and the wisdom to accept the difference between our will and our won't." ⁷

That's the difference Jesus was talking about; "between our will and our won't." Our will to keep going, or our belief that it won't make any difference, we won't succeed, so we might as well quit. Quit on quitting, said Jesus.

I'm one of those people who read the last page of a book to be sure it's going to be worth reading all the pages that come before. (You can even do that with the Bible!) The last words on the last page of The Courage to Start are three: "Waddle on friends." ⁸ "Waddle on friends," whatever comes. Words with which I think Jesus would agree. Words that echo the words of an old hymn I haven't sung in at least 40 years.

"O land of rest, for thee I sigh!
When will the summons come?
When I shall lay my armor by
And dwell in peace at home.
We'll work ... till Jesus comes,
We'll work ... till Jesus comes;
And we'll be gathered home."

Bingham writes in his book, "Running, like living, is alternately easy and hard, good and bad, exciting and boring. It is made up of long periods of dreadful sameness interrupted by brief moments of pure exhilaration." ⁹ What Jesus is telling us; what Bingham is telling us, is that in life, as in running, those "moments of pure exhilaration," come to those who do not quit.

Jesus doesn't give us the reaction of the woman when the judge gathers himself together and finally gives her what she wants. He doesn't have to. You can imagine that for yourself. It's one of those "moments." Her relief. Her tears. Her sense of something gone right. Her "Yes!!!" where there had seemed to be only "No!" A "No" this noodge would not accept. A "yes" she would not quit on.

Along with you, I was saddened this week to learn that the death toll in Iraq has come home to our neighbors in Elida. The story in Saturday's Lima News was headlined "Soldier's wish being fulfilled." It might better have been headed, "Soldier's family not quitting."

ELIDA — The grieving family of a local slain serviceman is set on making one of his final wishes come true. The family is getting help from local schools to do so. The last time U.S. Army Capt. Dennis Pintor talked to family members, he asked them to send school supplies to children in Iraq. Now family members are collecting the school supplies he so often talked about. Pintor, 31, died Tuesday while serving in Iraq. "We will do our very best to continue what he wished. That is the least we can do for him," said his aunt, Lillian Abelita of Lima.

"We will do our very best to continue." We won't quit. We won't quit on him. We won't quit on the Iraqi kids he wanted to help. We won't quit on ourselves. We won't quit. Not quitting doesn't mean not having good reason to. Whether your feet hurt from running, or your heart hurts from breaking, life offers plenty of reasons to quit. "Don't," said Jesus, because God won't.

Let me embarrass the mayor. (He reads my sermons.) He's not running for reelection this fall, so this isn't political. It's personal. Whether you agree with Dave Berger or not, on this issue or that, you have to agree with one thing. He doesn't know how to quit! I've known Dave for 20 years. During those years lots of people have quit on Lima. Dave never has. Lots of people quit hoping when word came that the refinery was closing. Dave never did. And the refinery didn't. Not everything Dave has tried to do has succeeded. I remember being on a task force with him to see if we could get the company that makes the children's blocks called "Legos" to build an amusement park called "LegoLand" in Lima. Don't laugh. They listened to us! Five years ago they built it a little to our west – near San Diego.

Dave didn't win that one. But Dave didn't quit. And neither should we. Not on ourselves, Not on our church. Not on our community. Not on each other. Not on God. Not because we're naive about hard knocks, but because we are faithful followers of Jesus Christ, who taught us to "pray consistently and never quit."

At the end of his story Jesus asked a question. "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" ¹⁰ That doesn't mean faith that believes this doctrine or that. It means faith like that of the woman; that doesn't quit. I wonder. Will he? I wonder. What if he came today, would he?

1. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=nudge
2. Luke 18:1 NRSV.
3. Eugene Peterson, The Message, 195.
4. Ibid.
5. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 110nt.
6. John "The Penguin" Bingham, The Courage to Start, 12.
7. Bingham, 13.
8. Bingham, 197.
9. Bingham, 13.
10. Luke 18:8 NRSV.