The Parable of the Unjust Judge and the Nagging Widow
Proper 24(29)
Luke’s Narrative Introduction (vs.1)
When Huck Finn heard about prayer, he put an empty shoe box under his bed and went to sleep praying for God to fill it. In the morning when he found the box empty, he said, “that was it between me and prayer.” Ole Huck had a confused take on both prayer & God. He’s not alone.
But he does remind us that unanswered prayer can be devastating to faith, especially in troubled times. In today's gospel Jesus is concerned about this very thing among his disciples as they experience a delay in justice; as they await the coming of God’s Jubilee kingdom.
So, he told this parable about the necessity to, “always pray and not loose heart.” The prayer Jesus has in mind comes not from people like Huck who want a god to fill empty shoe boxes, but from people who “hunger and thirst for righteousness/justice.”
Christians confess that God’s rule of justice and peace has been set in motion in Jesus Christ. That’s why we’ve been gathered here to pray in Jesus’ name. We gather to pray as he taught us, “Our Father...thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Jesus has just told his disciples that his dramatic and sudden coming as the Son of Man will bring justice, but it will not arrive immediately or without them first enduring injustice. That’s why he exhorts us here to, “not to give up,”
As we await the final coming of the Son of Man, our world has already been defined by his first coming. We no longer live in business-as-usual time. The future of the world has been definitively determined; the kingdom has come and is coming – so we are to watch and pray.
Now Huck gave it a night and a day, but when the church has been crying out to God day and night for centuries now, we can easily lose heart. When the wait gets long and the way gets difficult, we can start to feel punched out and consider throwing the towel into the ring.
After all, we can only knock so long at the door before our bloody knuckles hurt too much to “keep on knocking” (cf. Lk. 11:9ff) We can only listen to ourselves speak into the silence so long before we start to wonder if anyone was ever there in the first place.
And wouldn't it be nice to loosen the tension that Jesus has brought to our lives – that “in the world but not of the world” thing?” Wouldn’t it feel good to have a normal life like your neighbors? To no longer seem so strange – “too Christian?”
Unanswered prayer can cause us to back off - a little or a lot. Either we decide not to ask for too much or not to ask at all. Superficial prayers are less painful than those from a hungry heart. No prayer can seem the least hurtful of all - don’t ask; you’ll never be disappointed.
This is especially true if you share Jesus’ view that prayer is about more than spiritual platitudes & therapeutic effects. It's especially true if you think the Lord’s prayer is not the same as R. Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer. Jesus taught us to ask the Father for some action!
The Parable (verses 2-5)
Jesus' parable begins like a prize fight. “In this corner wearing the black trunks, repre-senting the powerful who don’t give a damn - the unjust judge. In the other corner, wearing the white trunks, representing the vulnerable and the powerless, - a widow. Let’s get ready to…”
Jesus’ characters and opening plotline set us up to expect a total miscarriage of justice. No one is going to place their bet on a featherweight widow mixing it up with a heavy weight “unjust judge.” She doesn't have a prayer.
Round after round, the judge holds out with a sort of rope-a-dope strategy. But the surprise in Jesus’ parable is that in the end this featherweight of a woman wins the bout by persistently holding out round after round.
She starts swinging away with daily calls and when he doesn’t pick up, she leaves him long voice mails. She turns to constantly texting him; then faxing him the details of her case and follows up it all up with a barrage of emails in his inbox.
When this doesn't work, she starts knocking at the door of the judges' chambers. And when he sees who it is through the little peep hole in the door and doesn't answer, she slides her complaint under the crack at the bottom of the door.
If she had money, she'd rent a billboard to state her case to everyone; or do what is typically done – bribe the crooked judge. If she had power, she’d ask some other movers and shakers to call in a favor for her with the judge over a game of golf.
She has neither, so she just repeatedly cries out, "Judge my case! Vindicate me against my adversary!" She makes it clear he can answer her now or later, but she’s coming back day and night until he gives her justice. She will not throw in the towel!
In the end, it’s the judge who goes down for the count! We miss the humor in our translations. The judge uses boxing terms for the widow’s actions. He says, “because this widow is pummeling me, I will see she gets justice, so that she doesn’t come and give me a black eye.”
The widow’s constant petitioning is like a prize fighter's constant pummeling. And if the judge doesn’t give her what she wants, he’s going to end up with a shiner, literally or figuratively, in the community!
“Hey Judge Jacob, oh wow, how’d you get that shiner?” “Well, uh...you know widow Elizabeth down street? “Sure!” “Well, she’s been on me to settle her estate after her husband’s death, but I haven’t come through for her. So she finally caught me with a right cross.”
While this judge couldn’t care less about this widow, or justice, or God; he does care about himself! And so, in self-defense he gives her a favorable judgment. He just wants to get this pesky widow out of his life, find a little peace and maybe get in a round of golf.
“How Much More...” (verses 6-7)
This parable is a gift from Jesus so we will, like the widow, keep persistently praying for Jubilee justice; passionately praying the Lord’s prayer; which is to say, so we will keep believing God has and will set the world right in Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ application of this comical little parable is a typical rabbinic argument from lesser to greater. If an unjust judge will grant this widow justice out of self-regard, how much more will the God who is Justice bring it about for his chosen ones. “Our Father...hallow your name...”
In Luke Jesus has already made this kind of argument, interestingly in connection with prayer. He said, “If you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
In both cases we are told we can count on God to answer our prayers because of who God is. God is a good Father; God is a just Judge. Faith in God is expressed in faithful prayer. Earlier in this chapter Jesus said we don’t need great faith but only mustard-seed faith in a great God.
In post-Christendom we find ourselves asking the Judge of Heaven and Earth to set the world right in Jesus Christ—not from a place of influence or authority (pace Christian national- ism) but from humility and persistent hope, trusting that God hears those who seem powerless.
What the persistent widow seems to know is that the most important time to pray is when your prayers seem to get lost in the ether. If you don’t throw a few punches at the judge, what are you going to do? Take to your bed with a box of Kleenex? Forget about God’s good future?
Unlike the unjust judge, Jesus promises us God will not keep putting us off, “I tell you that he will see that they get justice within a short time.” This promise is reassuring but living with a God with whom “a thousand years is but a day,” makes the notion of “short” a bit hard.
But “a short time” for the first disciples appears to have meant within their lifetime. According to many interpreters, the coming of the Son of Man in salvation & judgment occurred through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
And now God’s verdict stands over all of world history and all the unjust kingdoms of this world. The resurrection declares that Jesus is Lord. The Son of Man has come and is coming. God’s justice has come and will come - sometimes incrementally, but ultimately definitively.
So, Jesus gives us the gift of this story, so we will not lose heart but rather have a heart for God and God’s purposes for our world in Jesus Christ. God has and will indeed bring Jubilee justice to his people and to this place! He even uses our prayers as a means to this end!
So, the concluding question of our passage is not, "Will the Son of Man ever come and bring justice?" It is, “When the Son of Man comes will he find faith on the earth?” When the Son of Man comes will he find any praying widows continuing to chase after God’s heart?**
*Joel B. Green notes in his commentary “The Gospel of Luke” that Jesus uses prayer in this passage as a metonym to address what kind of people—those with certain character, commitments, and behaviors—are fit for the kingdom of God. It is used similarly in this homily-post while anchoring the themes of prayer and justice to “the Lord’s prayer” (Lk. 11.1ff) and Jesus’ announcement of the goodnews of Jubilee justice. (Lk. 4.16ff).
**Some of the wordsmithing in this homily is indebted to B.B. Taylor’s “Bothering God” in “Home by Another Way.”