The Judge and the Widow: Luke 18:1-8 (I)

"Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4 For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Introduction

One of the reasons I love the Bible is because its stories can often be read at more than one level. There is a surface or obvious meaning, which is true and sound but, if you dig deeper, you sometimes find the text opening in directions you didn't anticipate. Such is the case with our story today. The basic point, which you no doubt pick up immediately, is that one should faithfully persist in prayer. But, as you investigate the twists and turns of the language, you discover also that the way Jesus gets to that point implicates the major theme in Luke about status disparity and the divine "preference" for the "little people." Indeed, as I argue in the next essay, there is a good deal of humor in the judge's words. Let's hear the text anew, both in its clarity and its dim suggestiveness. This essay speaks of its "clear" message; the next tries to "read between the lines" of the parable.

II. Clarity--Pray and Not Lose Heart

This is one of the few parables, perhaps the only one, in Luke which begins with the point clearly stated. It is as if the author doesn't want us to miss the point. The fact that he says so at the beginning suggests to me that the parable Jesus is about to tell can be subject to multiple readings but that the author, as it were, wants to "guide" our interpretation even before telling the story. I have two reactions when someone does this for me. On the one hand, I provisionally accept their point because they initially are "closer" to the situation and text than I. But I reserve judgment, in large measure, because I want to give the text my own "go" before I rush to the safe and approved interpretation of the story.

But let's begin by putting on the interpretive lenses of Luke. Jesus tells a parable so that people will pray and not "lose heart." The verb translated "lose heart" is rather frequent in Hellenistic/Biblical Greek but has a slightly different meaning in Classical (earlier) Greek. It also appears, for example, in II Cor 4:1, 16 where Paul speaks about not losing heart in his ministry. The meaning of losing heart also shades into "being weary" or "despairing." But in Classical Greek the word suggest a more active sense--that of "behave remissly" or "culpably omitting" something. Thus, in the evolution of language the word engkakeo has gone from something suggesting active human culbability for a thing to rather passive "loss of heart," as in this passage.

But if we try to combine the history of the word in its reading in Luke 18:1, we can say that the mere act of losing heart in prayer is an expression of remiss action. Thus, we play for higher stakes when we understand something of the history of the word; it is not simply a sort of neutral "disheartenment" or discouragement that is in view here but a culpable omission or negligence.

So we are told that the parable is going to be about the "necessity always to be praying" (a literal translation) and not being remiss. This advice is consistent with other Biblical exhortations to "pray constantly" but the addition of the verb connoting 'necessity' in Luke 18:1 seems to raise the issue above just the exhortation for personal piety and place it in the realm of eschatological urgency. That is, our parable appears in the section of Luke's Gospel (17:21-18:8) where concern about the coming of the Kingdom of God reaches a fever pitch. We are told that the Kingdom of God is something all around us (17:21) as well as something that will be coming in the future (17:22-37). Our parable appears in the midst of this dual emphasis on current reality but future hope. We are to see the need (the verb is deo, which carries with it the notion of necessity) of always (pantote) praying and not being negligent or remiss.

Though this is no doubt good advice for one who is caught between the Kingdom's present and future dawning, it is also salutary for us who might not feel the same urgency with respect to the Kingdom's coming. It is good advice for us precisely because we tend to lose heart and, as a result, act negligently in faith. We lose heart in prayer because we don't "see the results." There often seems little connection between earnestness of prayer or depth of human need and a divine response of any kind. We lose hope in prayer because it is often too difficult to be a person of honesty and directness and also a person of faith. The honest and direct person can tend to look at life and say, "Well, if this is the way life is supposed to work" (i.e, prayer gets "answers"), then why should we keep praying if we don't seemingly get "results"?

But our own wisdom must be placed to the side for a moment as we hear the exhortation always to pray and not lose heart. We don't often see the results of our effort right away. Indeed, as I have lived longer, I would say that the earliest that you often see the fruit of a briliant idea is 15 years. Ideas are incubated for decades before they seem to catch wind and be taken up in popular culture. The same can often be said about art. Often what we will later honor as amazing or breathtaking art wasn't well received even in the artist's lifetime. Witness the reception of the Dutch artist Vermeer's work. In his lifetime he was shunned or not widely known; now we make films about him (Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)).

With this exhortation ringing in our ears, about the need always to pray, let's turn to the engaging story, in the next essay.

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