Power of Persistence

Luke 18:1–8

Welcome to part two of our stewardship series, New Beginnings: Serving in Faith. We began last week with the story of the ten people healed by Jesus and the one who turned back to give thanks. We considered how gratitude leads to faith and faith leads to thanksgiving. We were reminded by the prophet Samuel to look upon our blessings with awe and to serve the Lord faithfully.

This morning we have fast-forwarded a bit in Luke’s Gospel, so let me catch you up. Jesus is wrapping up an extended response to a question: “When is God’s kingdom coming?” He tells them it is not something you can point to and say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” The kingdom, he says, is already among you.

Then Jesus goes on to describe his coming suffering and the ominous arrival of the Son of Man—a time when “those who seek to secure their life will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.” Our parable follows that warning as a word of encouragement, a reminder not to give up when the way ahead feels uncertain.

It features a persistent widow and an unjust judge. Luke tells us that Jesus shared it to encourage people to pray and not lose heart. But I can’t help wondering if Jesus had something more in mind. You be the judge.

These are the words of Jesus, as recorded in Luke’s gospel, chapter 18, verses 1 through 8. The Greek is translated into English this way. Listen for God’s word for you.

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 accuser.’ 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?”

Every time I hear this parable, I want to ask Jesus, “Is this really how prayer works? Is this how God works?”

At first glance, it sounds like Jesus is saying prayer is pestering—that if we just keep asking, keep knocking, God will eventually give in. Like a divine version of, “Fine, just take the cookie.” Every parent, or anyone who’s ever been around a determined child, knows this strategy.

The small, persistent voice that keeps asking:
“Can I have it?”
“Please?”
“Can I have it now?”
“Why not?”
“Just once?”

It’s the Ralphie Parker strategy—you know, the kid from A Christmas Story who spends the entire movie asking for a Red Ryder BB gun. Every conversation, every school paper, every visit to Santa is just another creative way of making the same request. He’s told, “You’ll shoot your eye out!” over and over, but he never gives up. And in the end, his persistence is rewarded by his seemingly detached father.

So maybe that’s the image in our minds when we hear this parable: if we just bug God long enough, we’ll get what we want.

But then—what happens when the thing we long for doesn’t come?
If we believe that asking enough times will make us rich, what does that say about poverty?
If we think persistence guarantees healing, what happens when the diagnosis doesn’t change?
If we think we can wear God down, what does that say about who God is?

Preaching great Fred Craddock once said, “Only after you have knocked at the door until your knuckles bleed and have still received no answer do you begin to understand what prayer is about.”

Prayer isn’t meant to change God. It’s meant to change us.

And this story is not a story about God. God is not the unjust judge. This is a story about us. It’s a reminder of how we should relate to God.

So maybe this parable isn’t about pestering God to get what we want, but about persisting in faith to bring about what God wants—justice, mercy, compassion, peace.

The widow’s persistence is not selfish. It’s faithful. She keeps showing up, day after day, because she refuses to give up on the promise that justice is possible, even if the judge is unjust. She believes that the world can still change, even when the system says otherwise.

We’ve seen that same holy persistence right here in Wichita.

On a bright, warm Saturday morning in July 1958, 19-year-old Carol Parks took a deep breath, opened the door to the Dockum Drug Store just down the street at Douglas and Market, and sat down at the lunch counter under a sign that said “white patrons only.”

She later said, “This was my first experience with fear.”

Carol Parks and Ronald Walters were leaders of the Wichita NAACP Youth Council. Inspired by the action of students at UCLA, they organized, planned, and trained college and high school students using a comic book based on the nonviolent practices of Gandhi. These materials were prepared and distributed all over the country by Chester Bowles, later the U.S. Ambassador to India.

The pamphlet had practices like, “If I insult you, if I shove you, maybe I hit you. What do you do?” Answer: “I keep my temper. I do not budge. I do not strike back. I turn the other cheek.”

After a few days a sign went up at Dockum’s: “This Fountain Temporarily Closed.” But the demonstrators didn’t quit. They kept coming back, day after day, sitting quietly and peacefully, forcing the restaurant to choose between business and discrimination.

For weeks they came—facing insults, threats, even danger—until August 7, when manager Walter Heiger announced that Dockum’s would serve everyone, regardless of race.

The sit-in ended without a big speech or photo-op, just a quiet moment of relief. But history remembers what their persistence accomplished and how it helped spark a national movement for civil rights.

That same spirit of persistence is still alive in this city: In the 1970s, when activists pushed for a Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. In the 1980s and 1990s, when churches and neighborhood groups organized around fair housing, refugee resettlement, and economic justice. In 2021, when Wichita passed a Non-Discrimination Ordinance protecting residents from bias in housing, employment, and public spaces, including protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. And today, through Justice Together, people of every faith are partnering with city leaders to care for our unhoused neighbors and to build a 24/7 mental health care system that serves everyone in our community.

Grace Presbyterian Church has stood in the midst of all that—praying, serving, showing up, giving, and loving. That’s what persistent faith looks like in action.

The question is not, does God hear us, or will God be worn down by our pleas. The question is, will we still be doing the work of Christ in the world when we are needed?

Because if we pray for justice without working for justice, our prayers are empty. If we work for justice without prayer, we’ll start to think it all depends on us. If we pray and work for justice without faith, we’ll lose heart when change comes slowly.

The Kingdom of God doesn’t come with obvious signs or quick victories. It comes when ordinary people persist—in prayer, in justice, and in faith—trusting that God’s kingdom is already breaking in among us, one conversation, one coalition, one act of love at a time.

Paul told the early church, “Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but having their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, be sober in everything, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.”

That’s what stewardship is—persistence in faith. Our giving, our serving, our pledging are not quick fixes. They are steady acts of trust.

We give not because it is easy or everything is perfect, but because we believe God is still at work in the ministry and mission of this congregation—that God’s kingdom is coming into the world through us.

Every pledge card, every offering, every act of generosity is an act of persistent faith—a way of saying, “I still believe. I still trust. I’m still showing up.”

Like the widow, we keep knocking, even when our knuckles are swollen and sore. We keep knocking, not just with our prayers, but with our compassion, our generosity, and our love, trusting that the God of justice and mercy will not delay, and that through our persistence, God’s kingdom is coming to life right here, in our midst.

May it be so in your life, in the life of your family, in the life of this congregation, and in the life of Christ’s church.