My sermon this week is from a parable of Jesus often called “The Persistent Widow.” It is not one of my favorites but seemed worth wrestling with. What I found is the title shares the story short. There’s a lot going on in the parable worth talking about.
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I grew up in a family that thought if a story was good–really good–then it was worth repeating, especially to people who had heard it before. Kind of like a good recipe, in a way. You don’t make a dish you really like one time and then stop for fear of serving the same meal to your family and friends. In our house, stories were that way as well.
I don’t mean you told them once a week, but you didn’t have to flinch when the story came to mind and seemed perfect for the moment. You just told it again so everyone could enjoy it.
I know I’ve told some of you this story, I’m sure. It’s worth repeating.
My friend Terry, who lives in Durham, North Carolina taught me how to deal with customer service calls when you need help. You know the kind I am talking about. You have an issue and you spend what feels like four hours on hold listening to the same thirty second loop of music and the occasional robotic voice thanking you for your patience and then finally a human being answers and tells you that you are being recorded for training purposes.
I have had a long and checkered history of conversations I wish had gone differently because my anger and frustration got the best of me in one of those moments of helplessness and frustration. I voiced that one day to Terry and he said when he called and finally got a human being on the other end of the line, he said, “Hi, my name’s Terry. I am calling because I have a problem and I need to know if you are the one who can help me or the one who needs to connect me with the person who can help me,” offering an invitation for the person to be an ally rather than an adversary.
That story changed my life as far as customer service calls go because it works.
I tell you that story (again) because we could categorize the parable we read this morning as a kind of New Testament customer service call, before there were phones and Muzak and robots. Jesus said there was a judge in a certain city who didn’t have any regard for God or for other human beings, and so he was known for abusing his position of power. There was also a widow in that city. Most of the time when widows show up in scripture, it is their helplessness that gets underlined. But this was a widow who was tenacious and persistent in her demand for justice, though we are not told who had harmed her or what kind of justice she was demanding, other than she had an adversary. Nevertheless, she persisted and, after a while, he gave in saying, “I know I don’t care about God or anybody else, but I am going to do what she wants because she is making me look bad.”
(Our translation says, “she keeps bothering me,” but it literally means, “she keeps giving me a black eye.”)
Can’t you picture the widow saying, “Are you the judge that is going to help me, or the one who is going to connect me with someone who can?”
That’s the whole parable. Nothing is resolved. It is even more puzzling that Luke sets it up by saying that Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray continually and not be discouraged, which could set us up to think God is the judge in the story, so it matters that we remember a parable is not an analogy or a fable. It doesn’t unpack that easily or make such direct connections. We are supposed to be puzzled. Jesus told parables to get people to raise questions they had not thought to ask that would allow them to see God and themselves in new and hopeful ways.
The way Jesus described the judge (and the way the judge described himself)—as one who “neither feared God or respected other people”–gives us kind of a baseline of what justice is by giving us the definition in reverse. When we show our awe for God by the way we respect and love other people, we live justly. We help create a more just world. That fits the definition of justice I heard from Dr. Cornell West: justice is what love looks like in public.” It also follows Micah 6:8, which we repeated once again in our call to worship this morning: What God requires of us is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
The man whose job it was to mete out justice knew he was not up to the task. And seemed to be not too bothered by that. He had the power and money he wanted. He saw no need to be concerned.
The widow who had nothing left to lose kept knocking on his door. She was relentless in her pursuit of justice and was determined to keep going until she got what she wanted, but my guess would be that she was as surprised as anyone that the judge actually did the right thing. She didn’t expect to win; that’s why she kept knocking. She knew she was probably not going to see things set right, so she might as well die trying, trusting that somehow it mattered to persist.
And it did.
As we work to hear what this strange story has to say to us, I want to add a line from one of my favorite Dire Straits songs says, “sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.” Well, I want to paraphrase it: sometimes you’re the widow, sometimes you’re the judge.
Another thing I have repeated more than once is that our faith in God, who is Love, calls us to trust that Love wins in the end; if Love has not yet won, then it’s not the end. To trust that those words are true is to be like the widow: to keep working for justice even when we know the ears we need most to hear our please are not listening very closely; we keep reaching out to others when they don’t offer much regard for our invitations and trust that God is at work in ways we cannot see comprehend.
On the other hand, sometimes we’re the judge. By that I mean, sometimes we need to ask ourselves, who is pleading that we are not hearing? Who is calling for our help that we are not answering? One commentator put it this way: “Can our communities be the one place where we recognize that while issues and causes matter, the people behind them and affected by them and advocating for or against them matter even more?”
Sometimes we are the people answering the phone when someone like Terry calls and asks, “Are you the one who can help me, or the one who needs to connect me with the person who can?”
How do we answer? How long does it take for us to be willing to help?
Notice that Luke set up the whole parable by saying, “Jesus was telling them a parable about their need to pray continuously and not be discouraged.” Jesus followed the parable by saying, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. Won’t God provide justice to the people who cry out day and night?” Jesus wasn’t comparing God to an unjust judge. Jesus was saying, if an unjust judge could be shamed and pestered into giving justice, how much more can we trust that God will bring justice to every last one of us.
Don’t give up. Keep knocking. Keep showing up. Persist in justice, in kindness, in trust that there is more at work than we can see or understand. If we long for relationships to be healed, keep longing and looking for ways to reach out. If we have trouble reading the newspaper without feeling heartbroken, keep reading and looking for ways to offer healing and hope to those being crushed by the system. If Love has not yet won, it’s not the end.
In that sense, we can understand this parable as Jesus asking us to see that prayer and the need to cry out for justice are kind of the same thing. Prayer is not simply asking for our personal needs to be met, or only holding up those we love and who are in need. Prayer, at its core, is about asking for justice; about crying to those in authority until all are treated equitably; about lamenting the systems and institutions that dehumanize so many; about looking at whoever we see and not seeing adversaries or enemies; but seeing people who hurt like we do; about listening to the voices God puts in our ears and answering them in love.
In that sense, part of praying is to be the one answering the phone and saying, “I am the one who will do whatever I can to help you get what you need.”
If we truly show our awe of and love for and devotion to God by the way we love and respect other human beings our hearts will be changed by prayer, whether we are the widow or the judge. That’s a story worth repeating. Amen.
Peace,
Milton