Proper 24, 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Luke 18:1-8
Jeffrey Bowyer
This reading today and several readings from the last few Sundays tend to focus on some difficulties we face and necessities of continuing our Christian life.
Firstly I must reflect on the reading by Donald a few weeks ago. He told us about the terrible events taking place in Gaza. Better known by the U.N. as a genocide. Last week on the BBC news they showed a video sent out from Gaza. The Israeli government doesn’t allow reporters to enter Gaza. This showed a young boy of about 10 or 11 leaving an area where all the buildings had been bombed and destroyed and we heard by translation that his mother and one sister had died during this destruction. I was very moved by watching it, that surprised me. Perhaps my Christianity was affected. When they switched back to the commentator, by her face, it appeared she was also moved emotionally.
I
In our gospel reading, Luke chapter 18, there are a lot of voices in today’s parable: Luke the author, who tells us in this parable the need to pray always and not to lose heart, the voice of Lord Jesus who tells us the story and the window and the judge. Especially the Judge who shows a bad side here, because people in authority were expected to have a special care for the weak and the unprotected in society, for example windows and orphans.
Now some commentators have misunderstood the reading and say that Jesus’ parable is about a widow who badgers an unjust judge until she wears him down and he relents. The point being they say is something along the lines of ‘Be like the widow’- incessant, dogged an unafraid to pester.
But this characterization of the widow – bothersome and annoying comes only from the Judge’s opinion of her. What Jesus says about her is that she comes a number of times to the judge and saying ‘grant me justice against my opponent’. That’s it. Jesus at no point calls her hysterical of hot headed.
In addition to this the Judge in our reading is described as neither fearing God nor respecting the people. In other words, he is arrogant and self-seeking, with little or no regard for people less important than himself.
II
It has also being noticed that she wasn’t the only widow in the gospel of Luke. There are several others. In the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, there’s the widow Anna, who has been fasting and praying day and night in the Temple for more than sixty years, waiting, longing for the good news of the arrival of the redeemer. When she sees Mary and Joseph bringing the baby Jesus to the Temple. Then, in Luke 7, there’s the widow of Nain, whom Jesus meets when her son has died and is being carried out of the town to be buried. Jesus has compassion for her and raises her son, her only son, from death. Lastly there’s the poor widow, whom Jesus sees putting her last two coins into the temple treasury, “all she had to live on” (Luke 21:2-4).
So maybe Lord Jesus tells this parable because Jesus is like this widow in his parable. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, he will be on trial before a bunch of unjust judges. The widow in the parable goes before an unjust judge to obtain justice against her opponent. Jesus goes before unjust judges to obtain salvation for an unjust world. The parable is not about badgering the Lord until the Lord gives us what we want. But it is about persistence, especially in prayer in a hostile world that Lord is intent on saving.
III
The second reading today from Timothy 2 lays it out clearly. And the Gospel reading show us the widow, who is not giving up. There are many Christians out there and some devout who are deeply puzzled by what they think is Lord’s indifference to their fervent pleas for spiritual favours, which to them appear essential in their journey heavenwards.
This and many similar questionings arise in our minds because our limited, human intellects can see but one small section of the immense tapestry which Lord God is weaving for the human race. As the Minister in Kobe said a few weeks ago: We are finite and Lord is infinite. Our divine Lord teaches us, in this parable, to be near the Lord: the need for perseverance in prayer. This perseverance develops our trust and confidence in our Lord God. And during our lifetime, the trials of life, spiritual or temporal, which the Lord allows us to suffer through are not obstacles to our spiritual progress but rather stepping-stones without which we could not cross the rivers of life at all.
