Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday October 20, 2019
Scripture:
Luke 18:1-8
Preacher:
Kate Jones
So was anyone else
here a fan of the TV show, The Big Bang
Theory?
*knock, knock, knock* “Penny”
*knock, knock, knock* “Penny”
*knock, knock, knock* “Penny”
Today we read the
story of a persistent widow. She
believes that she is owed justice, and so she returns again and again to the
house of a judge to plead her case. And
eventually she wears him down, just as Sheldon wears down Penny in The Big Bang Theory, and the judge gives
in.
*knock, knock, knock* “Hey judge!”
*knock, knock, knock* “Hey judge!”
*knock, knock, knock* “Hey judge!”
Jesus tells us that
this is a parable about prayer, and on the surface, it seems as though we are
to be like the persistent widow, pestering God with our prayers, wearing God
down until we get what we want.
*knock, knock, knock* “Hey God!”
*knock, knock, knock* “Hey God!”
*knock, knock, knock* “Hey God!”
I’ve got a couple of
problems with this interpretation, with this reading of the parable. First of all, there’s the depiction of the
judge. Jesus describes him as a person
who neither respects God nor respects people.
Remembering that Jesus tells us that the two most important things are
to love God and to love our neighbours, this judge is almost being set up as an
anti-Jesus – the one who does the opposite of what Jesus wants us to do. And so right off the bat, I’m troubled by the
idea of comparing God to this unjust judge.
Problem #2 comes in
how prayer is presented in this parable.
If we think of the widow’s persistence in pestering the judge as being
how we are to pester God in prayer, then are we supposed to be continually
presenting our wish list and arguing for why we should get it?
Those of us who took
part in the Pastoral Visiting Workshop watched a video about prayer a couple of
weeks ago (Content Warning: mild language). In this
video, Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber is talking about prayer, and she refers
to this type of prayer, making requests and expecting God to fulfill them, as
the Santa Claus model. “Please, Santa
Claus God, give me this. I’ve been such
a good girl this year!”
And so not only do I
have trouble with God being compared to an unjust judge, I also have trouble
accepting prayer as a constant stream of requests to a Santa Claus-like god.
So if that reading of
the parable doesn’t work for me, how else might be approach it?
Some scholars suggest
that a different way of approaching it might be to see it as a parable that
teaches us what we should pray for.
Remember that in the parable, what the widow is asking for from the
judge is justice. We don’t know any of
the details about where she’s coming from; we don’t know any of the details of
exactly what sort of justice she is asking for; we just know that she wants the
judge to do what she knows is the right thing.
Therefore this parable teaches us to pray for justice, rather than
presenting a personal wish list.
And there might be
something in that. After all, praying
for justice is part of our prayers. We
know that God has a vision for the world – a vision of a world that is governed
only by love and by peace; a vision of a world where the whole community of
creation is in harmony; a vision of a world where there is no more pain, no
more tears; a vision of a world where all of God’s children live with dignity,
and where there is an abundance for all.
And when we pray, we
plead with God that this vision might be fulfilled soon. We pray for justice and for peace and for
love that reaches to every corner of the world.
Like the widow, we are pleading with God for this vision to be
fulfilled.
And this reading sits
a bit better with me than the first one.
I’d rather see us pleading for justice, pleading for God’s vision to be
made real, instead of presenting our Christmas wish list to God.
But it still isn’t a
reading that I’m 100% comfortable with, because it implies that God, like the
unjust judge, isn’t going to do justice unless we wear God down with our
pleading. But I believe in a God who
truly desires this vision of justice and peace and love. I believe that God can’t do or be anything
other than justice and peace and love.
So where does that
leave us with this parable?
I wonder what would
happen if we were to completely flip this parable upside down? What if, instead of identifying ourselves
with the persistent widow, we were to identify ourselves with the unjust
judge? After all, we as humans do tend
to like judging others; and we don’t always love God and love our neighbours in
the way that God wants us to.
And if we were to identify
ourselves with the unjust judge, that means that God is like the persistent
widow. God is continually pestering us
to do justice. As we sang at the start
of the service, God calls us to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly
with God. God isn’t going to stop
pestering us until we truly listen.
Have you ever had an
earworm – a song that embeds itself in your brain and won’t leave you alone? I usually end up with several every week – in
fact, that opening hymn is one of my common earworms, so I’ll probably be
humming and whistling it for a couple of days now.
And I think that God’s
voice might be a bit like an earworm.
That nagging voice we can’t get rid of; that persistent widow pestering
us, that voice telling us to do justice, to love our neighbour, to be in
harmony with one another and with all of creation.
And that is where I
see this parable as a parable about prayer.
When we are in prayer continually, the ears of our heart become attuned
to listening for God’s voice. When we pray,
we are training our heart to listen for and to pay attention to God’s voice.
If you watch that video that I mentioned earlier – the one where Nadia Bolz-Weber talks about
prayer – she describes prayer as being like a silken thread connecting us
all. When we pray for others, we become
connected to them by this invisible gossamer thread. When we pray, we become more and more
connected to God by these invisible gossamer threads. And the more we pray, the more we can’t help
but hear God pleading with us to live well in the world, and spread God’s love
in the world.
God is pleading with
us, like the persistent widow. Do
justice. Love God. Love your neighbour.
Will we have ears to
listen?
The Persistent Widow is knocking -
will we have ears to listen and a heart to do justice?
Photo: flickr.com CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Awesome explanation thanks. Susan
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