Persistence Over Predjudice

“Persistence Over Prejudice”

October 19, 2025 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Luke 18:1-8; Ephesians 2:10

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 18:1-8

The Parable of the Persistent Widow and the Unjust Judge

18 Then Jesus^[a] told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. ² He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. ³ In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ ⁴ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, ⁵ yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ”^[b] 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. ⁷ And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? ⁸ I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Ephesians 2:10 

¹⁰ For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them.

“Hi”… 

“Hi!”

“I’m a baby!”

“Well do you think I am, a loaf of bread?”  

These iconic opening lines of the skit “Boy Meets Girl” were the highlight of the “Free To Be…You and Me” album for me as a child.  And there’s something so incredibly satisfying about seeing this skit come to life not only with grown-ups, but grown-ups from the pews of our own church… wearing pajamas in church!  There are a lot of churches in the world and aren’t you glad that you came to one this morning where we don’t take ourselves too seriously? 

Believe it or not, I had another reason besides nostalgia for asking Brian and Libby to bring this skit into our worship service this morning.  

 It’s kind of a great opening act for Jesus.  

The point of this skit is to demonstrate that babies can’t be put into categories based on their gender alone.  People are more than the categories we put them in.  Jesus is concerned about this, too. Jesus cares about the ways we stereotype each other.  Jesus worries when prejudice makes us treat someone else differently just because of the way they look, or their gender, or who they love, or what they do.  

When “Free To Be…. You and Me” came out as an album of skits and songs in the 1970s, it was speaking a prophetic word into a world where prejudice dictated what kind of job you could have and how much you got paid simply because of your race or your gender.  And instead of coming right out and marching in the streets (although others did that important job, too), Marlo Thomas, the producer of the album, knew that fighting prejudice needed to begin with children.  They needed to hear the message in catchy and creative songs and skits.  Children needed to learn from an early age that they could be anything they wanted and that they didn’t have to live in the confines of the boxes that were put around them.  A boy growing up to be a cocktail waitress?  Absolutely!  A girl not afraid of mice?  Absolutely!   People are people and they grow up choosing to do and be what gives them life, not just what is expected of them.

The genius in this album is its catchiness.  Songs about being true to yourself and breaking down prejudice get stuck in your head… at least they did for me as a kid and I know they did for others, too… especially after the play a few weeks ago.  These songs and skits are persistent across the decades, are they not?   They remind us of how far we have come in some areas like gender equality (by the way, women made .57 cents to every dollar earned by men in the 1970s and in 2024 this had risen to .84 cents to every dollar).   And they also remind us of how far we still have to go in fighting the prejudices that still linger in our society.  

This week when I opened up the Bible to find that the lectionary assigned us a text about a person being treated unfairly because she was a woman, I was struck.  Some problems have been problems since the beginning of time.  And in our gospel of Luke, Jesus chooses to highlight this story because it tells us something not only about people, but about God, too.  

It goes like this: Once upon a time there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.  I wondered where they ever found a judge like that.  And in this same city there was a widow who sought justice from the judge, a ruling, that would validate her plea against someone who had wronged her.  The judge—being the kind of person he was, having no respect for God or people, and especially, it seems for widows who were considered at the bottom of the society by people who kept track of such things—this judge refused to grant justice for this woman.   The woman could have left.  It would have been the rational thing to do.  It was what the world expected of her, powerless with her fate in the hands of the powerful men above her.  The woman could have left.  But the woman did not leave.  She came back the next day and the next day and the next day and she asked for justice persistently.  She knew justice was due her and she refused to accept anything less even though she was a woman who had no husband.  And finally after seeing this widow day after day after day, the judge said (I imagine in a condescending voice), “though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, this widow keeps bothering me.  I will grant her justice,” the judge said, “so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”   A more literal translation of this line is actually meant to have a slapstick tone by saying “I will give her justice so she will not give me a black eye by coming back so often,” a term actually borrowed in Greek from the sport of boxing!

That woman wore him down.  Not with any power or money or actual threat of violence.  She simply never gave up.  She never walked away.  She never shifted her focus.  She never stopped believing in her right to justice.  

I don’t know about you, but I kinda want to be this woman when I grow up.  Can I get an amen? 

Jesus told this parable because it highlighted the ways society treated widows, and everybody listening to him would have known that widows were at the bottom of the bottom.  It didn’t matter what their name was or who they had been married to, if they no longer had a husband, they were automatically put into a category that they couldn’t escape.  Jesus also told this parable to empower anyone with ears to hear that there is a power stronger than prejudice.  And it’s persistence.  Faith so strong in a greater good—a more fair justice, a better world—that you will not walk away when you are told no. You will not walk away when the doors shut in front of you.  You will not walk away when you’ve woken up to 200 straight days of disappointment. You will not walk away when what you love has been broken.  You will not walk away from what you believe at your core.  And what she believed at her core, was that God had created her as a beloved child and that every beloved child of God deserves justice.  

Jesus celebrated her story.  Jesus used her story to inspire everyone who has ever faced a challenge that felt bigger than life itself, to never stop persisting.  Because if even God-less, people hating, good for nothing judges can finally come around, then anything is possible.

What I want to know is, is it possible for us to have a faith like that?  Is it still possible for us to believe in something so fiercely that we do not walk away?

I love what Ephesians 2:10 tells us: 

We are what God has made us…. We are created in Jesus’ name…to make this world a better place.  God has made us who we are.  No caveats or exceptions.  We are all who we are meant to be and the only thing that matters is how we use the unique gift of life we’ve been given to advocate for a world in which every unique life is valued just as ours is.  Is this possible?  Can we do this? 

….

One thing I can tell you more clearly today than I would have ever believed in my life before, though.  If this is what we believe, then it will take persistence.  

The good thing is that persistence is free.  We all have the capacity to possess it.  We all could be the tenacious widow if we had to be.  

The hard thing, though, is that persistence takes a level of commitment and faith that is hard to sustain.   It’s hard to be persistent when you feel small compared to the enormity of the injustice. 

Persistence means walking out your door to join a march knowing you are just one person.  

Persistence means singing a song in the street until your voice goes hoarse and then singing some more.  

Persistence means showing up for your community even when you’d rather do something else.  Choosing to be here because you never know when your presence is exactly what someone else needs. 

Persistence is committing to something small and simple and not talking yourself out of it.

So here’s some advice.  Start small.  Be persistent at staying present to your family and friends.  When you’re with someone you love, be truly with them.  Be persistent in your own self-care.  Drink that water.  Go to bed when you said you would.  Take care of yourself the way you want to.  Your persistence means your health.  Be persistent in showing up to church.  This community needs you.  This is the space where we get to practice holding each other in love.  How does that work when you’re not here?   Your persistence in these simple things will remind you that you possess the capacity to be persistent in other things, too.  Bigger things that may be harder. 

Those next steps will take some additional effort but here’s a start:

Persistently seek out news that is unbiased.  

Persistently support those in your community who suffer from the prejudice of others.  

Persistently speak up when you hear comments or jokes that de-value other people.  Be a persistent ally.  Not just when it’s convenient, but every time it’s needed.

Persistently reclaim your faith in a Jesus who advocates for the most vulnerable instead of propping up the powerful.  You know who Jesus is.  Be persistent in reclaiming this narrative.

Persistently pray to God that our world can and will be better and actually believe deep down in here that God hears your prayer.  Because God does.  

….

I saw a homemade sign yesterday from someone who was persistent. And it said this: 

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” 

In other words: Your persistence is your lifeblood.  “For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them.”

May you find your resolve.  May you walk in the streets.  May you see that you are not alone.  And may you find joy and songs and the laughter of babies who can be anything they dream along the way.  Amen.