Jesus’ parables involve ordinary people and ordinary situations—a widow pleading for justice, a father longing for a wayward son, a farmer sowing seed, a manager cheating the boss. Antonieta is a living parable, a widow turning prison visits to her son into service of a wider family of many others. Parables use ordinary people to invite us as hearers beyond the ordinary and awaken us to holy mystery, to God ever near in our lives.
Many widows found a home in Christian communities as Luke reports in Acts 6.1 and 9.36-41. Perhaps it is Christian widows like these who preserve the parable at the heart of Sunday’s gospel. Only Luke tells it. However, he also confuses its meaning by framing the parable with a message about how to pray.
As the parable begins, Luke tells us its point—pray always and don’t lose heart. Then follows the four-verse parable about widow seeking her rights and an indifferent judge. In the last three verses Luke reinforces his message about praying and believing our prayer will be heard.
Reading the story with Luke’s frame around it makes it hard to see the unjust judge as anyone else but God. His character implies that God will hear us only if we pray persistently, that God has to be persuaded to listen to us. This is not how Jesus presents God in his other parables. So why here?
And what about the widow? We all know widows and how hard their lives can be. One of the first actions of the early Church after Pentecost was to provide for widows and their children (Acts 6). But the widow in this parable is not asking for food and basic necessities. She is seeking her “just rights.” The word in Greek, ekdikeo, is not the usual term for justice but a word that means settling with an adversary or even seeking vengeance. The judge is arbitrating in a lawsuit. We have a widow with the means and the moxie to take someone to court. How does seeing her like this affect how we hear Jesus’ parable?
The judge neither fears God nor respects human beings, which makes him an unworthy person in Jewish eyes. When he finally acts, it is because he is afraid the widow will disgrace him. The Greek word here means to give him a black eye. This vivid image may mean the widow will make him look too corrupt in others’ eyes or it may mean literally she can beat him up. At any rate, the judge only gives in because her actions threaten him. Does this sound like God?
- Why do you think Jesus tells a story like this?
- How do Luke’s framing sentences affect how we see the characters?
- Who, if anyone, is like God in the parable?
Many of us want to rescue the widow. We imagine her as weak, poor, nonviolent, and in need of protection herself. The parable takes this stereotype apart. Instead of giving us a widow in need, Jesus gives us a widow of voice and action. She wants a ruling against her adversary. She won’t be silenced. She gets what she wants by persistence and social pressure.
If we read this parable with Jesus’ vision, we see through the eyes of people who have very little access to power and status. The Syrophoenician woman with the sick daughter, the ten lepers, demoniacs—they appeal to Jesus for healing and inclusion. But no one demands a settlement as the widow does. We trivialize her appeal by hearing it as nagging. She may not have power, but she does have voice. She persists in using her voice to seek justice.
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina gathered to bear witness to the “disappeared” whom the military dictatorship in power had kidnapped and killed. Fourteen of these mothers gathered in April 1977. By Mothers’ Day in October there were 237. Their number increased as the number of the disappeared grew. These witnessed every Thursday in the main plaza in Buenos Aires until 1983 when the regime collapsed.
Candy Lightener formed Mothers Against Drunk Driving, MADD, after a drunk driver with a previous incident hit and killed her 13-year-old daughter. She turned anger and grief into active work to end drunk driving. Today MADD has chapters in every state and claims a 50% reduction in deaths since its 1980 founding.
A segregationist murdered Myrlie Evers’s husband Medgar to stop his civil rights work in 1963. She never stopped hers. She persisted. Widowed with three small children, Myrlie Evers became the first woman to lead the NAACP.
As a lawyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg won equal pay for equal work for women and equal benefits for widowers and widows raising children. As a Supreme Court judge, Justice Ginsberg inspired young women to persist in the work of equity.
- How is the widow a model for the Christian?
- What evils does the judge represent that Christians must resist?
- Who do you know who protests as the widow does?
When we read Luke’s framing message and Jesus’ parable together, the gospel challenges us both to pray and act. Luke reminds us to pray as if all depended on God. Jesus’ parable shows how to act as if it all depended on us. And although the widow pursues her case alone in the gospel, we can imagine that she belongs to a group like the Mothers, MADD, or the NAACP.
Our challenge is to be single-hearted for God’s kingdom, for the peace and justice that are possible. When it feels as if God is not standing with us, we still need to keep our commitments. Perhaps our reward is a deepening sense that our journey is valuable for the whole community.
- Whose persistence do you admire?