Pentecost 19C (Luke 18:1-8)

“...when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” asks Jesus.

It is a haunting question, one that unsettles us. What kind of faith is being spoken of here? Do I have it? Could I ever embody it?

As usual, Jesus does not offer us a neat theological definition but instead tells a story. His parable does not provide a concept, but an image. And this story is both paradoxical and almost comical. It is not about God rushing in to save, but about a widow who refuses to give up.

Notice what is strikingly absent: God. The parable never says that God intervenes on behalf of the widow. Instead, the one who finally does justice is an unjust judge—a man who neither fears God nor respects people. It is not divine lightning from on high that forces his hand, but the widow’s relentless persistence. Her continual coming—her refusal to let go—compels him to give her justice. And that persistence, Jesus tells us, is what prayer looks like: “pray always and do not lose heart.”

The widow’s strength does not come from wealth, position, or influence. She has none of those. Her power lies only in her perseverance, in her refusal to quit. And it is precisely within that persistence that God works. For though unnamed, unacknowledged, even seemingly absent, God becomes most present in her grit, her courage, her faithfulness.

Perhaps this is the deep mystery of the parable: God’s presence is revealed in and through the widow’s stubborn, ceaseless demand for justice. Her continual coming is not just her own striving—it is God’s continual coming, God’s own persistence embodied in her. In her voice crying “Grant me justice!” there rings the voice of God’s own longing for justice. Those who cry out day and night are already manifesting God, and in that action justice begins to take flesh.

So when Jesus asks, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”—might it mean this: will he find anyone like the widow? Anyone who, despite the silence of heaven and the injustice of the world, persists in prayer, persists in seeking justice, persists in making God present through their refusal to lose heart?

This question cuts into our own moment. Looking around, can we honestly say that our world has grown more compassionate, more just, more loving? We struggle to be generous. We fail to welcome strangers. We cannot even endure a minute’s patience with one another. If we are honest, something is deeply fractured within us and all around us.

And so, Jesus’ question remains urgent. Will the Son of Man find faith on earth? Not faith as theory, but faith as persistence. Not faith as wishful thinking, but faith as continual coming. Faith that insists, again and again, that God’s justice must break into the world—even if it looks like foolishness, even if everything seems absent, even if the only thing left is to cry out: “Grant me justice.”

For in that cry, God comes.