So, over the last three weeks, if you were paying attention, you might have noticed that we stumbled into a three-week Old Testament series on the Babylonian exile. If you missed the past couple of weeks, here’s a quick primer: as the Babylonian empire defeated Israel, they sent the People of God into exile. The Israelites wept and wondered how they could find God now that God's home in Jerusalem lay in ruins. And still, they prayed.
Jeremiah sent word to all the Israelites scattered around the empire. Don’t give in. Live your lives, raise your kids, follow God’s law, even here. And they did. With all the reasons in the world not to, still, they prayed.
And today, in this reading, God chimes in, again. The People of God are still living in exile, still living their lives, raising their kids, and following God’s law. They’re even still praying. And God realizes something. He realizes that the People of God are capable of being faithful. Even as their world collapsed around them, they didn’t turn their backs on God. Instead they searched for God.
And the People of God learned something, too. They learned that they could find God outside of Jerusalem. Through their searching and their praying, through their faith, they found God. And God reinvigorates and reestablishes the covenant he set between them, through Abraham and through the Exodus.
Up ‘til now, the covenant was written on stone tablets and squirelled away for safe-keeping. It was external, and it had to be taught. You didn’t just wake up one day knowing what Moses brought down the mountain. But this time, says Jeremiah, God’s not writing on stone, God’s writing on the people’s hearts.
It’s internalized. This time around, God’s law is at the core of their being. The organ that pumps life through their bodies also pumps God’s promise and God’s forgiveness. Now, God’s promise is life. And you better believe, they prayed.
And maybe just as exciting, God says they’re going home, with the land of Israel sown with the seeds of human and animal life once again. Now in Hebrew Scripture, the Land of God's People is often less of a setting and more of a character, living and breathing. This is one of those great examples. Israel isn’t just sitting there fallow while the people are gone. It’s healing its wounds. It'd drying its tears.
It reminds me of something I read the other day. There’s a strip of land in Northeast France called the Zone Rouge, or the Red Zone. It’s roughly 460 square miles of abandoned land near Verdun, where one of the most intense artillery battles of the Great War stretched out for nearly a full year. Where thick forests and rich farmland stood before the battle began, trenches soon gashed their way through the countryside.
In short order, though, the trenches were so rattled by shells, that they gave way, and so the soldiers fled them and fought from the relative safety of the shell holes that pocked the landscape. By the end of the battle, the forest was gone, the farms destroyed, and the battle moved on to ravage other parts of France. And broken Verdun received its much-needed rest.
Today, over a hundred years out, the area is still mostly uninhabited. Plantlife has returned, but it’s still a dangerous place for human and animal life. The land is still churning up unexploded shells and full gas canisters, ridding itself of such abominations. Even so, it’ll likely be centuries before the seeds of human life return. It’s slow, but the land is healing, and the people still have hope, and yes, even they pray.
Our Gospel reading today presents us with an unjust judge in Luke. It’s a weird story at face value. Jesus tells the parable: there’s this unjust, ungodly judge, and he’s trying to ignore a widow seeking justice, but she keeps pestering him. Finally, just to get her to leave him alone, the judge gives in and gives her the justice she seeks. Then Jesus ends by saying, “Listen to the unjust judge.”
But Jesus isn’t saying it’s ok to be unjust so long as you give in when people get annoying. He’s saying something along the lines of “look how powerful you can be when you persist in seeking justice.”
Even this poor widow made an ungodly judge act justly. That’s not to say she fixed him or turned him into a godly man. Rather, even that ungodly man is capable of doing good when pushed by her.
And Jesus leaves it there, with us wondering how much more justice can we expect when the judge isn’t an unjust man and instead is the most just judge? When the judge is God? So persist. Call for justice in all places, call for forgiveness, call for what is right. And, in all that, pray.
It’s the same lesson the exiled people teach us. If they could pray while Jerusalem fell and Babylon spread them far afield, then surely so can we. It’s the lesson the people of France teach us. If they can pray while the harvest of their land is made of steel instead of wheat, then surely so can we. And it’s the lesson of all those who’ve sought justice. If they can pray while justice fails before them, then surely so can we.
No unjust judge or land rattled by humanity’s failings is greater than the justice we seek. For the justice we seek is God’s. It is written on our hearts. So we pray.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, and so, we pray.