October 16, 2022
Penelope Bridges
Last week in her sermon Maya talked about different views of faith: about the difference between an intellectual belief and an attitude of trust. Today’s Scripture reinforces the notion that our faith is not about intellectual propositions that can be proved or argued: it is about a relationship, about opening our hearts to the possibility that we are deeply and eternally loved. The Bible is a love story: the history of a partnership that has seen great heartbreak and great joy over centuries and across cultures.
Luke’s story of the unjust judge and the persistent widow paints a vivid picture of an almost comical scene. Jesus chooses a widow to be the unlikely hero of the story. In Jesus’ day a widow was the epitome of powerlessness: if there was business before a judge, a male relative would normally take care of it. Women weren’t supposed to involve themselves in the court system. But our widow evidently had nobody to speak for her. Technically she had no right to speak for herself either; but this woman was willing to break the rules, to make a nuisance of herself, to be inappropriate for the sake of justice.
The story conjures up recent images from the news, of protesters marching up and down outside the homes of Supreme Court Justices, waving placards and chanting “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” You can imagine how inconvenient and uncomfortable that is, for the judge, his family, and his whole neighborhood. Who is this woman who dares to protest all by herself, so persistent day and night that the judge even says he’s afraid she will give him a black eye – which, by the way, is a better translation than “she will wear me out”.
The judge knows himself. He is shameless about his lack of piety or respect. One wonders how he got so far in a theocratic community. But he recognizes persistence and perhaps he even admires the courage of the widow. And so, eventually, tired of apologizing to the neighbors and wanting the bad publicity to go away, he says that he will hear her case and give her the justice she deserves and demands.
Sometimes the only way to draw attention to systemic injustice is to make a nuisance of yourself, to act inappropriately, to misbehave. Organizations have used this insight to good purpose: think of Greenpeace disrupting the whaling ships, PETA throwing fake blood on fur coats, footballers who take a knee. Throughout history we have seen example after example of courageous people who spoke up, who made a fuss, who refused to behave, for the sake of justice, and who in the end made a difference in the world.
Many of the Christian church’s martyrs have followed the example of the persistent widow; Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, the women and people of color who insisted on being given the vote or being ordained or being allowed to practice as physicians; and of course the ultimate example, Jesus himself, who cried out for God’s kingdom to come and justice to roll down, and who made such a nuisance of himself that he was ultimately executed by the people whose corrupt power he threatened.
What does God’s justice look like? The prophet Jeremiah proposes that it looks like a new beginning: it looks like finding the courage and grace to put a painful past behind us, even when that past fills us with shame and regret. Jeremiah, speaking to Israel in exile, calls on the people of God to renew their covenant with God: God longs to be in their midst once again, even though they have abandoned God’s ways.
The prophet employs the language of the heart to make his point: a husband, devastated by his wife’s infidelity, decides to forgive and forget, making an unconditional promise that isn’t dependent on the spouse’s behavior. Justice as applied to God is not retribution: it is characterized by mercy. The unfaithful one doesn’t get what is coming to her: she gets a new start, a blank slate, a chance to live into the redemptive future that is freely offered.
At the newcomers’ class this week we talked about prayer: what it is and what it is not. We reframed prayer from a laundry list of requests, a transactional activity, to a conversation in the context of a loving relationship. To make this shift can be transformational in our faith journey: to move from expecting a certain response of God and being perpetually resentful if it isn’t delivered, to resting in the love of God and trusting that God cares for us and knows what we need better than anything we can ask or imagine.
We struggle to let God in, while trying to conceal the parts of us that we are ashamed of or afraid of. And yet God knows the secrets of our hearts. God already knows everything about us, as Psalm 139 reminds us: “Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar…”
The Bible as a whole tells the story of God’s persistent love in the face of humanity’s failures. What if we turn Luke’s parable on its head? Can we see Jesus as the persistent widow battering at the doors of our hearts? When will we finally relent and do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God?
Like Jeremiah, we must resort to language of the heart, because our God is a God of love, and our faith is a gift of the heart. John Donne served as Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in the 17th century. Here is one of his Holy Sonnets, a passionate and heartfelt plea for an intimate relationship with our loving, liberating, life-giving God.
John Donne from Holy Sonnets
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
