Luke 18:1-8

Prayer: Sustaining Faith

Luke 18:1-8 - Parable: A Widow and an Unjust Judge

The insight that would motivate both sustained motivation in the present and commitment to hope in the future would be derived only through urgent attention to the inner journey of spiritual growth. Luke reverted once more to this theme.

¹ Jesus then told then a parable

to address their need to keep on praying consistently

and not lose heart.

² He said, "In a certain town there was a judge

who had no reverence for God

and no respect for others.

³ In that town there was a widow

who kept coming to him and saying,

'Give a verdict for me against my opponent'.

Read in relation to the previous section, the context of the story seems to suppose that, wherever the Kingdom is not somehow operative, life is inevitably experienced as unjust and oppressive (represented by the case of the widow).

⁴ And for a long time he was unwilling to do so.

But after a while he said to himself,

'I do not reverence God

and I have no respect for others,

⁵ but because of the trouble this widow keeps giving me,

I shall give her her verdict

so that she will not eventually come one day

and hit me in the eye'."

⁶ Then Jesus said, "Did you hear what the unjust judge said?

Judges – Just and Otherwise

Judges were part of life in the Galilee of Jesus’ day. In every city or major town the administrative authority appointed judges for settling arguments between citizens. In Galilee Herod, the puppet king of the area, appointed them. In Judea they were appointed by the Jewish Sanhedrin, the administrative body of chief priests and elders, who exercised everyday authority under the watchful eye of the Roman occupiers. In smaller villagers, the elders handled minor disputes.

Judges could act unjustly in two ways:

cooperating in the administration of unjust laws
or favouring the rich at the expense of the poor, the powerful at the expense of the powerless

History. Israel had a long history of injustice. The original vision of the founding patriarchs, where every family was allotted its fair share of the country, was rarely implemented. Once the monarchy was established, wealthy elites flourished and injustice grew.

Many of the Hebrew prophets were unrelenting in their condemnation of injustice and the flouting of the rights of the poor and powerless.

Isaiah had criticised those:

who acquit the guilty for a bribe,

and deprive the innocent of their rights! (5:23)

and had gone on later to warn:

Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees,

who write oppressive statutes,

to turn aside the needy from justice

and to rob the poor of my people of their right,

that widows may be your spoil,

and that you may make the orphans your prey! (10:1-2)

In Jesus’ day in Galilee there had been a gradual but constant take over of the adjoining land by the wealthy elites resident in Sepphoris and Tiberias, at the expense of the smaller landholders, who were reduced to tenant farmers or day labourers. The poor had little recourse to justice and were at the mercy of the corrupt establishment.

Even in the best of administrations widows particularly had no status.

Luke had already identified the story as a parable. There was more to it than met the eye. It had unsuspected depths.

The parable was not primarily concerned about the unjust judge. He simply provided the background. It was about the woman. Luke had already said that its point was to illustrate the need to pray consistently and not to lose heart. The woman was a wonderful character. She started from nowhere. She had absolutely no leverage from the point of view of “honour”: she was a woman; she was a widow, with no husband to present her case and presumably no sons.

But she had spirit. She was not deterred by society’s narrow judgments of shame and honour. She was outrageous. The word translated as hit me in the eye is literally translated.. She was a woman whose desire for justice was irrepressible. In this she was a model for disciples, whom Jesus had just referred to as longing to see one of the days of the Son of Man.

The point of the parable was not to illustrate how perseverance in prayer might lead God to a change of heart. It conveyed its sense of God by providing an example not of similarity but of dissonance. Whatever about the behaviour of an unjust judge, God was certainly not like that! An unjust judge might be slow to respond to genuine need – not so God. An unjust judge might be won over only by persistent perseverance – not so God. There was no need to interest God in justice. That was always God’s concern.

The woman’s determination was the fruit of her deep desire for justice to prevail. Such desire was essential for every disciple. Desire in its turn required indomitable hope. Such hope would be drawn not from any unrealistic optimism but would be anchored firmly in faith in God’s unrelenting commitment to justice. Faith would be the context in which desires could flourish. What the parable illustrated was how perseverance in prayer would provide the indispensable nourishment for continuing faith.

⁷ Now will not God vindicate his chosen ones

who cry to him day and night?

Will he keep holding back his anger on their behalf?

⁸I tell you, he will see justice done for them speedily.

Yet for all that, when the Son of Man comes,

will he still find faith on earth?"

Desire, Hope, Faith and Prayer in the Face of Delay

Luke had introduced the parable by his invitation “to keep on praying consistently and not lose heart”. The reason “not to lose heart” in prayer linked back to his account of Jesus’ discourse on the coming of the Son of Man. It did not rely on the fact that God might eventually be persuaded.

The parable served to provide the answer to how to respond to the delay of the definitive coming of the Kingdom.

God’s Desire. Jesus assumed that the prayer of the just would be the prayer that justice be done. That certainly was the will of God. That was what Jesus had taught his disciples to ask for when they prayed: “Your kingdom come”. The cry for justice did not originate in the heart of God’s chosen ones but in the heart of God. The initiative for the advent of God’s Kingdom – the coming of the Son of Man - was God’s.

Jesus shared that same fierce desire. It was the animating force of his ministry, of his reaching out to the marginalised, of his compelling need to teach the Kingdom and to share with others the hope that burned within him. Through his parables he hoped to stir people’s imaginations, to stimulate their reflection, to identify and to purify their desires.

Human Co-operation. Commitment to the Kingdom would be the fruit of people acquiring the heart of God, and seeing the human situation with the eyes of God. Yet God’s Kingdom presupposed the responsibility and the free choices of creatures. Though God was constantly calling and empowering the disciples of Jesus (there would be no delay in God’s helping them), God would not violate their own or other people’s freedom and cooperation. God’s help would not be delayed, but the advent of the Kingdom might well await the outcome of human choice.

Prayer. Given the possibility of delay, particularly when the interim proved to be a time of suffering, the only way to maintain hope and “not to lose heart” would be by keeping close in faith to the heart of God. That was the point of persevering in prayer: not that God might be swayed but that human hearts not lose faith and rather be sustained by their intimacy with the loving God: “when the Son of Man comes, will he still find faith on earth”? That was Luke’s fear. It had been the fear of Jesus before him. The only way to ensure perseverance was to “pray always”.

Next >> Luke 18:9-14