{"id":5915,"date":"2019-10-21T14:53:55","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T19:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/?p=5915"},"modified":"2019-10-21T14:53:55","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T19:53:55","slug":"the-widow-and-the-bad-judge-102019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/2019\/10\/the-widow-and-the-bad-judge-102019\/","title":{"rendered":"The Widow and the bad Judge 10\/20\/19"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s reading from the Holy Scriptures tells of the unjust Judge. As the Parable goes there was a judge who answered only to himself, couldn\u2019t give a rip about spiritual things and worst still did not care one hoot about or for the poor widow. Mosaic Law prescribed that the husband\u2019s immediate family and the community of faith were primarily responsible for widows. This notion would not have been lost on Jesus\u2019 audience that she had no one – family or faith community. The point is there was only one person on earth who could help her \u2014 the judge.\u00a0The parable suggests that if even this notorious unjust Judge ended up giving the woman justice how much more would God the merciful do for those who keep asking. Remember that our God is God even of the unjust Judge and God can change the minds and attitudes of the unjust in our world. <\/span><\/p>\n

The widow knew that this Judge was her only earthly hope, so she prattled on and on, daily waiting for the judge to arrive at his office in the morning, daily being the last face he saw as he left for his comfortable home in the evening.\u00a0Her persistence in prayerfully dealing with the unjust Judge won in the end, he gave her justice. The point Jesus made was, \u201cwe must prayerfully persevere in dealing with the ungodly world and in the end we will come to know God\u2019s justice.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

What a powerful word this is for us in a society that wants everything to come our way easily. At the first inkling of things not going our way we throw in the towel. We do not want to hear any other view but our own. We lock ourselves in silos and thus there is no cross fertilizing of ideas and actions, no holy conversations and God directed comprises. The result is that we grow progressively impoverished in character and spirituality. This is how it is in politics and this is how it is in the many church. The parable speaks loudly to us, it is time to prayerfully persevere. <\/span><\/p>\n

Faith, patience, hope and openness be yours!<\/span><\/p>\n

Ernest Belisle (Pastor)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s reading from the Holy Scriptures tells of the unjust Judge. As the Parable goes there was a judge who answered only to himself, couldn\u2019t give a rip about spiritual things and worst still did not care one hoot about or for the poor widow. Mosaic Law prescribed that the husband\u2019s immediate family and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-worship-and-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5916,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915\/revisions\/5916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}