Keep Knockin’

Scriptures: Luke 18:1-8, Jeremiah 31:27-34

She was already at the end of her rope. Her husband had died two years earlier, and her oldest boy, at sixteen, wouldn’t listen to her anymore. He controlled the family property, and he wouldn’t give her what she needed to run the household and care for the little ones. His head was full of a girl, not his responsibilities. And now the neighbor on the eastern side was sidling his crops over onto what little land they had left. She felt old and worn as she knocked again at the judge’s door.

He was just sitting down to dinner when the knock came on his door – again. That widow. And what did she even want from him? Something about a piece of land. He sighed and got up from the table. If she was going to keep whining like this, he would have to do something. It would be a pain to sort it all out, but at some point these interruptions had stopped being worth the trouble. He trudged to the door – again.

Our parable from Luke today seems pretty much like an open-and-shut lesson: be persistent in prayer. Heck, it even says so in the intro to the story: “Dear readers, the lesson of this story is: be persistent in prayer.” Of course, what Jesus says afterwards isn’t the exact same point, but they fit together reasonably well. He says, “God is good – much better than a lazy, corrupt judge, so, be persistent in prayer. Keep knocking at the door.”

Well, this is all very nice, but I’m not ready for a pat answer and a pat on the head. The first question that comes to my mind is: how long are we supposed to keep knocking? Sometimes God just doesn’t answer prayer. Or, God does answer, and the answer is no: people live for years with painful sicknesses, or give their lives away for addictions. People we love die young. Broken relationships stay broken. Even the judge is not coming to the door.

And for many people in churches like our across the country, we feel a little like the widow, too. Church 50 years ago was part of the establishment. Anybody respectable was a church member, and the laws made it illegal to do almost anything on a Sunday other than go to church. So a lot of people came to church, with kids and energy and money. But that moment has passed, and it’s hard not to feel like a widow sometimes, standing outside and knocking, needing a response.

So how long are we supposed to keep knocking? And for that matter, how do we know we’re knocking on the right door? How do we know that what we’re asking for from God is justice we deserve and not just our own selfishness talking? I don’t know. This is NOT an easy parable.

In our reading from Jeremiah today, the prophet is speaking to a people living in exile. Their beautiful, historical, holy city, Jerusalem, had been raided and desecrated, and they had been marched away into the heart of enemy territory in Babylon. “How long, oh Lord?” they cried out to God, “How long must we suffer for our sins?”

God’s answer, in our passage from Jeremiah, is this:

The days are coming when I will stop being destructive, when I will have finished dismantling your dreams, like so many tinker-toy constructions.

The days are coming when I will build something new, like you’ve never seen before.

The days are coming when justice will be real. When people who do wrong will be punished, when the helpless and abandoned will have recourse to the powerful.

The days are coming when I will make a new covenant.

The days are coming, when I will shape a new people, and they will know me in their bones, and my dream will be written on their hearts.

The days are coming, says the Lord. The days are coming. So keep knocking.

It turned out that the Israelites had a long time to wait. They spent a total of seventy years in exile. But at the end of seventy years, miraculously, inexplicably, they were allowed to go back home, to reclaim and to rebuild their beautiful, holy city. It wasn’t the same as before, but neither were the people.

I see ways that this congregation keeps knocking at the door, from my limited view from the pew.

Week after week, this congregation welcomes people to use the building – Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Guardian Angels, the Wellness Center. And sometimes, it comes at a cost to offer this hospitality. But we do. Knock, knock.

Each month our parties and socials are a welcome to the whole neighborhood, a chance to share hospitality and build relationships. Knock, knock.

Bible Study on Wednesdays, new Bibles in the pew as of last Sunday. Knock, knock.

New art above the altar, new banners in the sanctuary. Knock, knock.

Weekly prayers for friends, for family, and for people we’ve never met and never will. A candle of hope to remind us of God’s enduring call for justice. Knock, knock.

And those are just the things that I, one person, see. Each of you knows ways that we are working together to seek God’s blessing, and not just a blessing for us, but a blessing for the people in our lives and people everywhere. A kind word, a card, a gift, a sacrifice, an invitation. Knock, knock.

It is easy sometimes to get discouraged. Even Jesus guessed so much in the parable today. At the end of it, he says, “God will quickly grant justice to his chosen ones. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

We don’t know what the future will look like. All we know is that it won’t look like the past, and that God will be there with us. Today, Jesus calls us to be faithful. May we find the courage, the love and the strength, to keep knocking by the grace of God. Amen.