Proper 24C – George Yandell
In Luke’s gospel, women speak 15 times. Their words are given 10 times and not given 5 times. In contrast, men speak 100’s of times. There is a virtual din of male voices. But the number of women depicted in Luke and the emphasis on their presence in the narrative are surprising. There is a notable tendency in Luke to defend, reassure, and praise women, compared to the other gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Many of the passages presuppose their economic helplessness in a male-dominated society. [Adapted from Women’s Bible Commentary, Newsome et al editors, pp. 497 & 499.] I see them as standing for all the destitute people of Jesus’ day and place. Yet they often challenged the powers that were.
Today’s parable is often called the “Parable of the Unjust Judge,” but it could also be called the “Parable of the Pushy, Nagging Widow.” Did you notice she didn’t come on with flattery for the judge? There was no: “Oh noble and just sir, may I humbly ask you for your favor”! No! She came in shouting “Vindicate me!” And she kept it up until she wore down that shameless man. She was praying.
I think we often trivialize prayer by limiting it to what Phillips Brooks once called rather breezily “a wish turned heavenward.” God isn’t room service and I think God, like us, is not moved by wishing upon a star. Prayer, like faith, has to be integral to our being. Passionate. God expects not petitions but relationships. God expects us to be really there when we engage God. A prayer once uttered by St. Teresa of Avila says: “Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, it is no wonder you have so few of them!” Perhaps not the most pious of prayers, but she was full with God and she was fully engaged even if somewhat angry.
We have really to put ourselves into prayer to hear and be heard. Once a student had been visiting a retreat house and met with her spiritual advisor before leaving. “Why,” she asked, “has my stay here yielded no fruit?” “Perhaps,” the advisor replied, “because you have lacked the courage to shake the tree.” This is important not only for our prayer lives, but also for taking God’s Presence into the world. God intends us to cooperate with God through our own faith and prayer and actions. The church has inherited the role of judges to pray and work with God collectively to bring mercy and justice into the world and to ensure that the community protects those most in need of special protection. [The above 3 paragraphs adapted from William J. Albinger in Oct. 2013 Synthesis.]
The late Henri Nouwen believed that Christians need to stand up publicly against all that goes against God’s love, including war, poverty, and weapons of mass destruction. He wrote: “True prayer always includes becoming poor. When we pray we stand naked and vulnerable in front of Our Lord and show God our true condition. If one were to do this not just for oneself, but in the name of the thousands of poor people surrounding us, wouldn’t that be ‘mission’ in the true sense of being sent into the world as Jesus himself was sent into the world?”
Jesus uses the example of an official who is corrupt in using his judicial power to teach us about the reliability of God. The judge who “neither feared God nor had respect for people” resembles the modern ideal of disinterested jurist—impartial and unbiased, without prejudice and superstition. Should he be seeking election to the bench, we might vote for him. Yet Luke calls him “corrupt.” Whatever responsibility he had to the greater community to mete out justice, the judge had a special obligation to see that these “little ones”—such as widows without means of honest livelihood—received their just treatment.
The widow keeps coming to the judge with a plea for simple justice against her adversary. She seeks only what is her due. We do not see him taking the facts into account. But the widow continues to come to him and the judge knows he is being backed into a corner and must do something.
The perfect secular leader can be influenced neither by public opinion nor by religious principle; and yet this widow is able to get to him by hammering away. And so—how much more will the God of mercy be ready to come to the aid of those who are seeking help? The parable is one of contrasts and just desserts. But its central message admonishes us to pray with that very persistence.
We need to pray, not to inform the all-knowing God of our needs, but to impress into ourselves our own inability to meet those needs. Pray without ceasing—not for God’s sake, but for your own. As we pray we may be made aware of something in ourselves—or in the lives of those for whom we pray—which somehow stands in the way of God’s purpose. We need not always think that this is some sin unknown to us consciously— though that may indeed be the case.
More often, people may refuse to accept what God seeks to do in and for them because they feel unworthy; they may assume that God has better things to do than to care so intimately and thoroughly for their needs.
But God is infinite in love and capacity for caring, and nobody ever can be worthy. So our individual lack of qualification is not important. Therefore, persisting in prayer as Jesus instructs is not really to wear down God’s indifference or unwillingness to help us. Rather, the aim of true prayer is to wear down the unjust judge within ourselves. Jesus intends that whatever is wrong in us may be made right by God’s grace. Prayer is a dance between insistence and surrender, of missing the mark and hitting it, of selfishness and self-sacrifice.
Richard Rohr wrote in Immortal Diamond, “God is the ‘goodness glue’ that holds the dark and light of things together, the free energy that carries all death across the Great Divide and transmutes it into Life.”
I contacted my first spiritual mentor a few years ago. Ron DelBene is now retired from interim rector work. When I asked if he might come here to lead a weekend on spiritual growth he responded, “George, I have the beginnings of Alzheimer’s. I really can’t travel and teach anymore, but I will continue to pray for you. [Tale of sending Ron my prayer journal- his letters always ended with “Our prayers unite us.”] Our prayers unite all of us. Not in some ephemeral way, but in bonding us together, bringing spiritual wholeness and power. They unite us in the beating heart of the resurrected Jesus, who desires more than anything that we cooperate with God for God’s justice to be done in God’s world.