Rev. Tessie Mandeville
February 4th, 2007
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, GA 30033

I recently saw a wonderful movie called, The Pursuit of Happyness. In that movie, Chris Gardner, who is played by the actor, Will Smith, is having a difficult time. He’s working hard as a salesman but he can’t seem to sell enough products to make ends meet. His wife is working double shifts at the Dry Cleaner’s and their son is in a Day Care center where he watches “Bonanza” and “The Love Boat” instead of learning his ABC’s. They can’t pay their bills on time nor can they pay their rent. Chris learns that a financial company in downtown San Francisco, known as Dean Wittier, is looking for interns. Chris has no college education and no formal training in financial work. He just knows he’s good at numbers and in high school he “used to be smart.” He decides to pursue the internship. Chris’s wife decides she can’t take the stress of their lives anymore, so she leaves him and their son and moves to New York.

Chris starts the internship at Dean Wittier only to find out that the job doesn’t pay. He tries even harder to sell the medical equipment because now that his wife is gone, it’s the only income he and his son have. But he still can’t pay his rent so the landlord evicts him and his son. Through a variety of circumstances, he and his son end up homeless on the streets of San Francisco. What follows is a very moving story of this father’s determination to keep his son safe and to follow his dream of working at Dean Wittier so that he can provide for his family. He had the audacity to hope for a better life.

One of the most moving scenes of the movie, and there are many, takes place on the basketball court. The son actually makes a basket but then the father starts talking to him. He says, “You know son, I’m not very good at basketball which means that you won’t be good at basketball, because sons are like their fathers.” And he proceeds to tell him how he won’t ever be good enough and won’t succeed. In that moment, Chris has an epiphany and he realizes what he just said to his own son. He stops, looks at his son, and says, “Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something—not even me.”

The widow in our gospel story had a similar experience, I believe. She lived in a patriarchal society which said that women’s identities were tied to men. Since this woman had no husband or son to give her value, what she would’ve heard was, “Because you are a woman and a widow, you are powerless and you have no voice. You don’t count.”

What I love about this story though is that she didn’t buy into those messages. She had the audacity to hope. Instead of calling the story, “The Persistent Widow and the Unjust Judge,” I think we should use the title another New Testament scholar gave it: You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down!

This woman would not heed what society said to her. She had a claim; she needed justice in her life and she would not stop until she got what she wanted. She presented her case over and over again until the judge, probably to maintain his own sanity, gave her what she asked for. The fact that this woman persisted in her request shows that she never gave up hope that justice would be done.

This parable in Luke begins with prayer and ends with faith and we might be tempted to think this parable is only about praying enough and then our prayers will be answered. Oh, but it’s much more than that. This parable begins with prayer and ends in faith. In the middle is a lot of action.

Some of the most profound prayer experiences I have had united prayer with social justice.

The year was 1996, and it was a difficult period of time because many of our brothers in San Francisco were dying from AIDS. This disease had ravaged the Castro and so many other places in our world. The City of San Francisco said that it was illegal for people to use medicinal marijuana. But the truth is, for some of these men, medicinal marijuana was the only thing they could use that would help them eat. They were emaciated and sick and dying and the one thing that could possibly help them was taken away. So our local MCC’s, MCC San Francisco and Golden Gate MCC, took on this life and death battle. These two churches made the decision to distribute medical marijuana because it was a social justice issue and it required action. Inaction would have led to more deaths, and there had already been enough. MCC San Francisco, the church that I came from, lost over 500 people to AIDS. There were times when we had five funerals a week. And if distributing marijuana would save one more life, then by God, we had to do it. It was the only hope they had at that time and we were obliged to give it to them. We were audacious. Bold. Daring.

There are times to resist. There are times to protest. There are times to be audacious. The parable of the Persistent Widow does not tell us that prayer is a substitute for action. Hands folded in prayer need feet ready to walk. Folded hands and walking feet joined together are empowered by their union. This is where we find hope. We find hope by staying in the struggle.

Our brothers and sisters in the Civil Rights Movement taught us that our prayers need audacious action. Our prayers need feet ready to walk. The Montgomery Bus Boycott officially started on December 1, 1955. That was the day when the African-American people of Montgomery, Alabama, decided that they would boycott the city buses until they could sit anywhere they wanted, instead of being told to sit in the back of the bus when a white person boarded. This boycott ended up lasting over a year, and in that year, African-American people chose to walk where they wanted to go rather than to accept the injustice any longer. That audacious boycott started the Civil Rights Movement. That was where hope was found. They found hope by staying in the struggle.

This parable of the persistent widow begins with prayer and ends in faith. In the middle is a lot of action. Hands folded in prayer need feet ready to walk. Folded hands and walking feet joined together are empowered by their union.

Last Saturday people put feet to their prayers and took to the streets in Washington, DC, to protest the “troop surge” that President Bush is calling for. Tens of thousands of people gathered there—civilians, movie stars, former soldiers, and even current soldiers. I truly believe that no matter where we find ourselves in this complex situation, we pray for the same thing: that our soldiers will come home soon and that Iraq will not fall into terrible chaos and further civil war. I believe we all hope this war ends soon, even though we may have different ideas about how to end this war. We must continue to pray with our feet and not give up hope. We protest and resist and we stay in the struggle because we have the audacity to hope for a peaceful world.

Not all of us feel called to take to the streets and to protest loudly. And that is okay. Sometimes situations themselves don’t call for such public displays. But what I offer to you today are the words from our sister, Alice Walker, who says, “Agitate where you are.”

Agitate where you are. The persistent widow agitated where she was and she agitated that judge until he gave her justice.

The widow yearned for change; Chris Gardner yearned for change; people in our country yearn for change. We all cry out for justice to be done. In real life, justice is not always done, but like the widow, we must fight on anyway in the hope that God will change human hearts. Or maybe we'll just wear them down! God is telling us, "Don't ever give up! No matter what the odds look like, don’t give up. When peace doesn’t come, don’t give up. When justice is delayed, don’t give up!”

Some of the most profound prayer experiences I have had united prayer with social justice. Hands folded in prayer need feet ready to walk. Folded hands and walking feet joined together are empowered by their union.

That union of prayer and justice is the vision of an audacious people who batter at the doors of justice until there's an answer. Don't give up! Keep on praying. Keep on working. Keep on keeping on until we bring about change. Walter Wink, writing on political prayer says, "History belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being."

Let us continue to pray and act until God's future, a world of justice and peace, comes into being. Let us have the audacity to keep hope alive!

Let it be so. Amen!

Author unknown

Leo Hartshorn, Minister of Peace and Justice, Bethel Mennonite Church, Lancaster, PA

Alice Walker, Anything We Love Can Be Saved

Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Volume 3

Copyright © 2007 by Rev. Tessie Mandeville. Permission granted for non- profit circulation with attribution of author and venue. Other rights reserved