Luke 18:1–8
Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, 'Grant me justice against my opponent.' For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
I wonder... This story seems sorta - . . . negative.
Where is God in this parable? While I’ve heard it suggested that God is like - not the judge, but the widow - it seems to me, that is sorta a stretch.
I doubt any allegorical reading will help.
But, this parable makes me think.
A man is dying.
Much too young.
He signed up for Hospice. So he can get the care he needs. . . So he can seek to live his final days with his eyes wide open to whatever blessings these days will hold.
His wife got him to quit Hospice.
She figures they need to keep hoping for a miracle.
That’s the sort of idiotic piety that has been nurtured here for 20 years.
Lotta good it’s doing them.
Might this parable remind us - that the answers to our prayers sometimes are not what we want - that the faith that waits for justice sometimes waits and waits? And that the faith that the Son of Man will find is a faith that waits on what God does, and not on the prescribed path of healing and prosperity that we have laid out for God?
I don’t know.
I’m mostly just sad for these folks, and thankful to those who have pointed me to the theology of the cross. God is here. Not in the way we hoped. But in the God who hides Godself in suffering and death.
6 comments:
My interpretation of this text can't help but be influenced by the reading from Genesis that is its companion. It is such a powerful image of wrestling, struggling, holding on, etc. and in the end being both blessed and wounded. At the very least these texts suggest that the journey of faith is going to have its difficult periods, anfechtung, doubts (even Mother Teresa had them), questions about the apparent absence of God. In the face of such spiritual adversity we are not to be surprised, as if the Xn life were all sunshine and roses. But neither are we to give up and walk away. What do we do when the life of faith becomes a struggle? Keep struggling! Transformation, wounding, and blessing await.
How rich to think that in the encounter with God we are both blessed and wounded.
How few can even imagine it that way.?!
- I don't want to claim a gnostic sort of "we're so much wiser" stance but it is true. Often my own self included there - we don't perceive the both/and-ness of life with God. . .
[this is a blog I can make up terms like both/and-ness]
Keep struggling!
thanks PNT, thanks
I too will go with the theme of persistence and courage. This gospel text reminds me of the Syrophoencian woman who is persistent in the face of Jesus' negative words directed towards her being a Gentile. She fights back like the widow towards the judge.
But where does this courage come from? We can't just tell people: "Have courage." There needs to be something behind that, something outside of ourselves. The widow was motivated by both her desire for fairness and her sense that the judge could fix things. The Syrophoencian woman saw in Jesus his ability to heal her daughter. What is the gospel message for us that inspires us to hold on, fight the good fight, persevere in the midst of suffering.
I am a wounded soldier. . .
Didn't Brother Void have something to say about wounds?
Well, some time ago, I got this from Brother Void's website - Daily Afflictions
The agony of being connected to everything in the Universe
What is to give light must endure burning. -Victor Frankl
Many of us have set out on the path of enlightenment. We long for a release of selfhood in some kind of mystical union with all things. But that moment of epiphany-when we finally see the whole pattern and sense our place in the cosmic web-can be a crushing experience from which we never fully recover.
Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. You can not turn away. Your destiny is bound to the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.
To seek enlightenment is to seek annihilation, rebirth, and the taking up of burdens. You must come prepared to touch and be touched by each and every thing in heaven and hell.
I am One with the Universe and it hurts.
I thought this was powerful
from a sermon by
J. Mary Luti, a freelance writer, former associate dean at Andover Newton Theological School.
Christian Century, Oct 7, 1998 by J. Mary Luti
In an age of self-referent individualism, it's not often that we get a chance to enter the evocative amplitude of a communal sensibility, that time-confounding solidarity our biblical ancestors presupposed. A friend of mine who teaches world cultures in junior high recently did. His class was studying ways in which personal, familial & communal memories create identity & belonging. In one exercise, he asked students to share their earliest recollection. The answers came as you might expect--my dog, riding a pony, my mom, the cottage at the lake. But then it was the Jewish kid's turn. Without pausing, Mark Shapiro said, "Abraham." Angels descending sucked air from the room. Had 12 other kids not been yelling, "Abraham who?," the teacher would have cast himself in terror to the floor. As it was, he hardly breathed. Who knew little Mark was part of a people?
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