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Holy Fools
A sermon on the foolishness of God that confounds the wisdom of the world, and the radical call to love our enemies.
Delivered at Immanuel Church, Tel Aviv — November 8, 2025
Readings: Luke 18:1–8a
The Widow Who Cannot Hide
A widow in first-century Judea, standing outside the courthouse. No husband to speak for her. No wealth to hire representation. In both Jewish law and Roman practice, a widow was the definition of vulnerability.
The Torah itself recognised this — again and again, God commands: care for the widow, defend the widow, do not exploit the widow. Why? Because she had no protector. No social safety net. She was, in the most literal sense, defenceless.
And yet here she is, Scripture tells us, approaching an unjust judge — a man who "neither feared God nor respected people."
Here she's using the only thing she has: her voice. Her persistence. Her ability to keep showing up and being a nuisance. The judge himself says it — "because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming." She has discovered the one power available to the powerless: the power to refuse to go away.
Jesus presents this example stripped of all nuance and loopholes: the widow desperately needs justice, the judge is indifferent, and yet she receives help because she is persistent. And Jesus doesn't leave us to puzzle over the meaning. He explains: if an unjust judge can be moved by persistence, how much more will our Heavenly Father hear us when we cry out to Him?
The Widow's Posture: Helplessness Turned into Faith
Now, let's look at what made this widow's demands effective. Not eloquence. Not moral standing.
She had one man who could grant her justice, one door to knock on. So she knocked.
Her helplessness gave her clarity. Her persistence wasn't born from confidence or willpower. It was born from the desperate mathematics of having nowhere else to go.
This is what Jesus wants us to see: she responded to her situation with clear-eyed realism. She was powerless, yes — but she knew where power resided. And from that conclusion flowed everything else — her persistence, her refusal to give up.
The widow's clarity was unique in a way — Jesus has given us an imaginary, simplified example, drawn in stark lines. But this parable worked immediately for His audience because it was recognizably close to their lives.
Most of Jesus's first hearers survived on things they couldn't control. Rain for crops. Safe roads. Successful fishing trips. Health without modern medicine. Their daily lives weren't quite as desperate as the widow's, but they were on the same spectrum. They understood helplessness not as an abstract theological truth but as a lived experience.
Our Modern Self-Sufficiency: The False Wealth
But step onto a morning train in Tel Aviv. Look around. Everyone has headphones in. Each person is absorbed in their own specialised world.
All of us have built something the widow never had: layers of protection. Our bank accounts. Health insurance. Professional networks. Retirement plans. Emergency funds. Education. We have learned how to make ourselves "un-desperate" and feel secure.
Our world isn't just more secure than theirs — it's vastly more complex. There are thousands of professions now where there were dozens then. Thousands of ways to invest resources and spend your time. We are rich in alternatives and the ability to solve our own problems — or at least to feel like we can.
And here is the spiritual danger: the more layers we build, the less we feel our need for God.
These layers are not evil. A bank account is not sinful. Health insurance is not a lack of faith. The danger comes when the layers become substitutes for God. When we live as if our security comes from our strategies rather than from the One who gives us breath.
No matter how much money we have in our accounts, how indispensable we are at our jobs, we remain creatures, not the Creator. Our days are still numbered. We need food, water, air, sleep — and we cannot add a single hour to our lives. The widow had nothing to hide behind and couldn't avoid this truth. We can avoid it for decades, building such elaborate systems of security that we live as functional atheists — saying we believe in God while our daily lives suggest otherwise.
Faith as Dependence: The Heart of Prayer
Which brings us back to Jesus's parable and the question it forces us to ask: what is faith, really?
We often think of faith as certainty — believing that God exists, that Jesus is Lord, that Scripture is true. And these things matter. But Jesus's parable suggests that faith is something deeper than intellectual agreement with theological propositions.
Faith, in its essence, is recognition and sustained dependence on God.
Look at what the widow does. She has correctly identified where help comes from. She acts on that knowledge. Her dependence is visible in her feet, in her persistence, in her refusal to give up even when the judge keeps refusing her.
This persistence toward an unjust judge — this is what Jesus says faith toward God should look like. Not intellectual certainty, but sustained, persistent dependence.
Jesus tells this parable, "to show them that they should always pray and not give up." Prayer, then, is the fruit of faith. We pray because we have concluded that we need God. That we cannot save ourselves. That there is no other help for us.
Listen to Psalm 121, which has been prayed by God's people for millennia: "I lift up my eyes to the mountains — where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth."
From the One who doesn't sleep, the One who watches constantly.
This is what faith looks like in practice: knowing where help comes from and persistently turning there, even through delay.
True prayer isn't about convincing God of anything. God knows what we need before we ask. Prayer is about confessing our dependence. It's about coming back again and again to the One who is our help.
Persistence and God's Timing
If God already knows what we need, and if God is good and loving, why must we be persistent? Why does Jesus tell us we "should always pray and not give up"?
Jesus answers this directly: "And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly."
God will bring justice soon, Jesus promises. But "soon" is measured in God's time, not ours. We are bound to time — we count minutes, we age, we wait. God is eternal. His "soon" is decisive and certain, but the timing is His.
So why persist in prayer if God's timing is His own?
Because persistence in prayer is about remaining in a relationship with God through the waiting. We are refusing to walk away when the answer doesn't come immediately. We are training our hearts to turn to God first, and not as a last resort.
The widow didn't have a backup plan. She didn't diversify her strategy. She kept coming back because there was nowhere else to go.
Conclusion: Will He Find Faith on Earth?
Jesus ends this parable with a haunting question. It's not in today's reading — we stopped at verse 8a — but I cannot help but hear it echoing underneath everything we've said. Jesus asks: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
Think about that question. Not: Will he find churches? Will he find people who believe correct theology? Will he find moral people? But: Will he find faith?
What kind of faith is he looking for? I think he's looking for faith like a widow's conviction. Faith that has concluded its own helplessness. Faith that has nowhere else to go and so keeps knocking on God's door. Faith that persists through silence and delay because it has no backup plan.
And the question presses on us: In lives as distracted and "secure," is there still room for faith?
Or have we made a faith that fits comfortably within our layers — a faith that asks God to bless our plans rather than acknowledging we need Him to live at all?
So how do we, with all our complexity, recover the widow's clarity?
There is only one way: we must see ourselves as we truly are. Strip away the illusions. Whatever our place in society, whether we have many resources or few, we all breathe the same air. We are all mortal.
This is not comfortable. But it is true. And it is, strangely, liberating. Because when we stop pretending to be self-sufficient, when we stop exhausting ourselves building layers to feel safe, when we acknowledge our helplessness — that's when we can finally rest in the arms of the One who has always been holding us up.
You who have come today carrying burdens your layers cannot solve, you who are tired of pretending to be in control, you who are beginning to see your helplessness — there is One who hears, who doesn't sleep, who will bring about justice for you.
Keep knocking. Refuse to go away. Not because God is reluctant, but because that persistent knocking is what faith looks like when it has nowhere else to go.
Lord, strip us of our false confidence. Teach us to pray with desperation that trusts Your justice. Give us the clarity when we pray. Make us people who have concluded our helplessness, not as a sad fact but as the beginning of true faith.
Give us faith to keep knocking, not because we are strong, but because we have nowhere else to go. And when Your Son returns, may He find in us that faith — stubborn, persistent, utterly dependent — that refuses to let You go until You bless us.
In Jesus' name, Amen.