Prospector
“But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Luke 18:8
Find – It’s the 1890’s. The California gold rush is in full swing. People from everywhere pack up mules and head for the Sierra Nevada mountains, hoping to strike it rich. But gold doesn’t grow on trees. It takes digging, panning and searching, with just the right eye, to find gold and to know when you’ve found it. If you’ve ever done a great deal of searching to find something you valued like gold, then you know the diligence required.
Heurisko is the Greek verb for “to find”. Sometimes it means finding by simply coming upon something when you’re not looking. But in other cases, like the one in this verse, it has the sense of a diligent search. It is intentional discovery. You look, but not randomly. You look expecting to discover what you came to find. There is anticipation here. And there is potential disappointment.
Jesus asks this open-ended question. Will he find faith when he comes again? The question comes at the end of a parable about the judge who was callous toward justice but relented because the aggrieved women would not stop pestering him. Jesus proclaims that God, who is not an unjust judge, will speedily bring relief to His chosen ones when the time is right. If we were in the crowd listening to this story, we would all be saying “Amen to that”. We all want speedy justice for our causes. We want God to step in and make things right. If Jesus stopped talking at the end of the story, we would have gone away consoled. God will deliver. But Jesus did not stop. He went on to ask a very perplexing question. “Will the Son of Man find faith?”
Why would Jesus ask such a thing? Even more importantly, why does he ask but not give an answer? Does Jesus really think that he might not find faith on his return?
It’s a sobering thought after a joyous proclamation. Our emotions soar with the promise of God’s justice. Then we are immediately confronted with this daunting possibility. Will I be found faithful when He comes? The lesson in the parable is not the justice of God. That is a given. The lesson in the parable is the persistence of the woman. She just won’t give in. She won’t stop pleading. She won’t be deterred until she gets what she came for. Jesus’ question puts it to us. Are we staying the course? Are we prepared to keep digging and panning and tunneling until we find that gold no matter how long it takes? Or are we “blessings believers”, faithful as long as the blessings keep flowing?
Heurisko. To discover after a search. When Jesus comes, will he find you waiting?
