2 Timothy 3.14-4.5, Luke 18.1-8
The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, 19 October 2025, Church Action on Poverty Sunday
Austwick, Clapham (Easy Church)
“From childhood you have known the sacred writings,” wrote St Paul. Is that true for you? We all have our different stories when it comes to the background and the development of our faith.
I was brought up in a Baptist church, where each service begins with an elder carrying a big leather-bound bible into the sanctuary, whilst the congregation stand. It is a powerful statement of how important the scriptures are to that community of Christians. It’s like when, in our communion service, we stand to hear the gospel reading: a sign of our respect for the Word.
In my early years I valued the teaching I received from ministers and youth leaders who “unfolded the sacred writings” in ways which brought those words alive for me; who helped me to find scripture’s hidden wealth; whose teaching challenged me to apply what I’d heard to how I lived.
After all, there’s no point knowing about the scriptures if you ignore what they say. Paul wrote that “they instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus”. They instruct you for salvation: they show you how to walk in God’s saving way.
In my late teens and twenties I was especially challenged by teachers who opened up to me the image of a God who is alive and active in the affairs of the world and deeply devoted to justice and righteousness, justice focussed on the protection of society’s poorest and most vulnerable people; a God who demands that we live our lives in this way. As the letter of James puts it,
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” [2]
I think we can see that the woman in today’s parable clearly believed this. It would appear that she, a widow, thus one of the poorest and most vulnerable people in town, knew her scriptures, and believed what the laws of Moses said about protecting the likes of her from ruin. She was so convicted by this that she persisted in asking the judge for justice against her opponent.
Jesus didn’t say who her opponent was, or what type of justice she sought. He may have been her landlord who had evicted her with no explanation and without warning. Or he could have been her creditor who had increased the interest on her loan by a huge, unaffordable, amount.
Neither did Jesus say why the judge was so reluctant to grant the woman a hearing – only that “he had no respect for God or for others”, as he clearly showed by the way he treated this widow.
We can speculate that the woman’s legal opponent was an influential person in the same social circle as the judge, let’s say an old school friend or his pal from the golf club, who he would be naturally inclined towards helping. The woman’s opponent may have even given the corrupt official some financial inducement to guarantee that he would not hear her case. [3]
Clearly if the judge read the scriptures at all, he read them in quite a different way than the widow, for the powerful are adept at manipulating God’s laws to benefit themselves. But she held fast to her principles, repeatedly challenging his resistance to her appeals until she was eventually heard.
This is a parable about speaking truth to power. Most of the power in the relationship rested with the judge, and with the woman’s legal opponent who the judge demonstrably favoured. But the woman had something arguably more powerful than he did – she had her truth, which she insisted on telling, her persistence eventually wearing out the judge’s indifference.
The theologian James Cone wrote that this is what “Jesus’ life, teachings, and death were about – God’s protest against the exploitation of the weak by the strong.” [4]
I think the scriptures can give confidence to people today who want to challenge the powers that be, about the situations that are causing them harm. Today is Church Action on Poverty Sunday, an opportunity to reflect on the work of that organisation. Years back I helped to organise an event which we called the Liverpool Poverty Hearing, just days before the 1997 General Election.
On that occasion, held in a city centre Friends Meeting House, eight people with direct experience of living in real poverty in Liverpool were courageous enough to share their stories with an audience of the city’s decision-makers, business leaders, and parliamentary candidates. Their truthful, expert, voices were for once given a platform to be heard. The powerful ones were there to listen, and learn.
Karen from Norris Green spoke of the pain of having to face leaving Liverpool to gain meaningful work and move out of the poverty trap she was in; Barbara from Everton suggested that poverty now was worse than in earlier generations because of an increase in social isolation; Matt from Everton spoke of life on invalidity benefit – no cinema, no books, no means to make provision for his long term illness – and asked, “do I have to live in poverty all my life?”; Jo, a graduate unable to find work, described life on £44 a week; Dawn from Kirkdale, a mother of four, her partner on a wage just £1 above unemployment benefit, described the pain of being unable to provide properly for her young ones; Ann, homeless through events linked to her estranged husband’s violence against her, said that she’d be dead if she’d stayed with him and asked, “Why, because I chose to stay alive for the sake of my children, should I be forced to live a life in poverty?” and Eric from Everton explained the ‘benefit trap’ that he and his wife were in because of her low income job. [5]
As a consequence of that meeting we formed Merseyside and Region Church Action on Poverty; and in the intervening years members have continued their campaigning, carried on organising events of these kinds. Some of our grassroots people have been to parliament to meet ministers face-to-face. And, in those rare and special times when the powerful truly stopped to listen, these consultations contributed towards some genuinely positive changes of policy.
Their work continues: their persistence is necessary. Government figures released this week show that 172,000 children are living in temporary accommodation in England, almost enough to fill Wembley Stadium twice over; conditions which have been linked to at least 74 child deaths over the past five years. As rents have risen by 8.5 per cent since April 2024, and councils are spending tens of millions in incentive payments to landlords, campaigners are calling for the government to unfreeze housing benefit in next month’s Budget, to publish their long-delayed homelessness strategy, and to ban the practice of no-fault evictions which continue to remove people from their homes. [6]
So, today, we give thanks for those who speak out with Church Action on Poverty and the people they campaign alongside; for they are doing the same work now as the woman in Jesus’ parable, whose persistence overcame the resistance of the powerful ones.
A prayer for Church Action on Poverty Sunday
God, we pray for your mercy upon those who hurt, those whose voices are silenced, those who faithfully persist in speaking truth to power:
We pray for those silenced for speaking out against corruption, and for those who continue to demand justice; for those silenced for speaking out against greed; and for those who continue to cry out for a fairer distribution of wealth. God, in your mercy, hear our prayer. [7]
Notes
[1] A rewrite of my earlier sermon Luke 18 – Our relationship with Scripture, preached in Croxteth, 2010.
[2] James 1.27.
[3] William Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed; pp.215-232, ’Justice at the Gate?’
[4] James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. p.115.
[5] John Davies, The truthful, expert voices. Notes from a Small Vicar, 17 October 2006. Church Action on Poverty: www.church-poverty.org.uk.
[6] Ceren Sagir,‘National disgrace’: children living in temporary accommodation hits record high. Morning Star, 16 October 2025; Geraldine McKelvie, Labour’s housing hypocrisy: councils serve almost 200 families with no-fault eviction notices. Guardian, 18 October 2025.
[7] Ana Gobledale, Prayers arising from Amos 7; quoted in Church Action on Poverty, Speaking Truth to Power resources [PDF], 23 February 2020.
