Why do we keep doing this?
Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller on the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost + Sunday, October 19, 2025.
As Marin’s family sang Happy Birthday to her, she leaned down to blow out the seven candles on her cake. “Stop,” her mother said. “Aren’t you going to make a wish?” Her older brother added: “you have to make a wish.”
Marin looked like someone had just kidnapped her favorite doll. “I don’t know why I keep doing this,” she said. “Doing what?” her mother asked. “Doing this wishing thing,” Marin went on, “last year I wished my cat wouldn’t die and it did. I wished my best friend wouldn’t move away and she did. This year I want to wish that you and Daddy would get back together.”
Her mother took a deep breath and added, “that’s not going to happen, darling. So don’t waste your wish on that.”
After a moment Marin replied, “I know it’s not going to happen. So why do we keep doing this?”
Why do we keep doing this? Going to church. Praying the same things over and over. Hoping for a better world. Protesting and voting and working for justice.
“Why do I keep on doing this?” surely the widow wonders as she stands up against a powerful judge who has no regard for God or other people. The system is against her. Maybe she recalls the scriptures she hears in the synagogue that names widows, orphans, immigrants and others as deserving particular care and respect.
This pesky and tenacious widow refuses to give up. Jesus tells the parable to encourage us to pray and not lose heart. In Jesus’ day the posture of prayer was standing up, arms out, eyes open, voice clear. Prayer as persistence. Prayer as lament.¹
How long must the widow knock on the door of justice? How long must the hungry, the tortured, the migrant, the unhoused continue to plead? How long must we wait and hope when thing never get any better? How long must the terrified Jacob keep wrestling with God, begging for a blessing? How long must we keep struggling and not find relief?
Chicago is in the news. Not just here but around the world. Our beloved city is called the most dangerous city in the world, a hell hole, a war zone. Not far from here, persons with brown skin are racially profiled, not given the dignity of a human being. Neighbors live in fear, staying away from work and church. One attorney laments that public officials sworn to serve our country are using violent, brazen tactics, violating rights, patrolling the streets with covered faces, and terrorizing people of color. A painful parallel to the days of Ku Klux Klan, he adds.
Is all of this to prevent violence or to incite it--so there can be more railing against cities like ours. Yet what we see in Chicago is brave and courageous people resisting.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, an African American journalist who covers civils rights in the U.S., calls this an era of unchecked discrimination that looks eerily like the past. An America where Black people and other marginalized groups receive virtually no protection from the federal government. Where we are chipping away at the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. Where Black people nearly disappear from our textbooks and museums. Where whites are considered victims. Making our country great again is becoming an assault on all that has been accomplished for racial justice in the past 125 years.²
There was a time when the very point of our country’s experiment in democracy was cherishing diversity and welcoming refugees. Now the project seems to be White Christian Nationalism in which only certain people are true Americans. No wonder a Latino theologian at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago recently said that he did not even want to use the word “Christian” for himself anymore, because of what it implies today. He describes himself as simply a “follower of Jesus”.
So why do we keep on doing this? Praying? Showing up at church? Working for racial justice and healing? One spiritual writer calls herself a contemplative activist. Though she would rather see progress with peace, justice, human rights, and care for Planet Earth, she believes she and other contemplative activists were born for a time such as this. On one hand, like Buddhists, holding the painful realities of our world. And at the same time, protesting, listening to the other, modeling compassion, advocating for the less fortunate, donating to those in need, writing our representatives.³
In the end, the unjust judge does give the blessing. He finally agrees to the widow’s request. To get her off his case. We miss the slapstick tone in the Greek when the judge implies, “because the widow causes trouble for me, I will give her justice, so that she may not, in the end, give me a black eye by her coming.” And in the end, Jacob does receive a blessing, though his nighttime struggle with the mysterious figure leaves him with a lifelong limp.
It's tempting to think of the judge in the parable as God, but the widow models God’s relentless mercy and persistent love.
There is a Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy tries to encourage Charlie Brown. “Look at it this way, Charlie Brown,” she consoles. "These are your bitter days. These are the days of your hardship and struggle . . ” The next frame goes on: “ . . . but if you just hold your head up high and keep on fighting, you'll triumph!” “Gee, do you really think so, Lucy?” Charlie asks. As she walks away Lucy says: “Frankly, no.”
Do you identify with Lucy sometimes? Then you are welcome here! We keep on doing this—together—to practice resistance to a message of hopelessness and doom.
So people of God, keep on keeping on, borrowing a phrase from the civil rights movement. Keep on this doing this. Holy Trinity’s commitment to antiracism and reparations is about the long journey toward racial justice, toward healing, toward wholeness. Not only for those marginalized. But for us as well.
Keep on doing this. Keep on keeping on. Never let them steal your joy. Never let them destroy your hope. Keep on singing. Keep on praying with your feet that you yourself become the prayer Keep on showing up at the courthouse, like the widow. Keep on showing up in this sacred place, gathered around God’s mercy. Around God’s wide welcome. Around words of compassion and grace.
For each Sunday, here in this place, we receive a divine blessing as well. Mercy instead of judgment. Welcome instead of prejudice. Compassion instead of hatred. Forgiveness instead of guilt. Food for the journey. Songs to give us hope.
In baptism an oil-cross anoints your forehead. A sign of God’s faithfulness. Today a cross of oil will be anointed on your brow as well. A reminder of your call to keep on doing this: to pray and not lose heart. And to become the body of Christ for the sake of the world.
² Nikole Hannah-Jones, “The Second Nadir” in The New York Times Magazine, June 29, 2025.
³ Marcia Bentley, “Contemplative Activism,” Connections: The Public Square of Spiritual Companionship, August 2025.
