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Justice and Prayer
By Administrator | October 29, 2007
Justice and Prayer
By the Reverend Alicia S. Rapp
October 21, 2007
Right away, before we can even dig in to this parable, we have to make a decision: what is the parable about?
Originally, Jesus probably just told the story. Luke, some forty or fifty years later, tried to make sense of it by adding the verses around it. Maybe he was even writing down what others had written or said about Jesus’ words. What we end up with is a conflicting interpretation, even within the writing itself. Is the story about prayer? Or is it about justice?
There are many things to consider as we wrestle with the question. The first is experience. Verses 1 and 7 frame the story as about perseverance in prayer. God’s people are told to pray and not to lose heart. After all, won’t God come to the chosen ones who cry out day and night?
The answer to that question is a big, fat “NO.” Almost anyone who is honest knows that. God does not answer our prayers as if by magic. If prayer worked that way, children would not die of diseases we have never heard of. If prayer worked that way, cancer would be a thing of the past. If prayer worked that way, people would be caring and trustworthy, there would be no more war, and addictions and violence would lose their hold on those we love. If prayer worked that way, Jesus, who prayed so fervently in the Garden of Gethsemane that he sweat drops of blood, would have been spared the cross.
Prayer is answered, in ways we did not foresee, cannot understand. Light shines in the darkness. Life comes out of death.
Experience tells us, however, that God is not ours to control, even with our faithfulness and perseverance. Though the unjust judge in the parable may eventually be moved to give the widow what she wants, God cannot be so manipulated.
So, the parable is either a dud, or else we have misunderstood. A second question, then, to bring to the parable is that of perspective. Who are these characters? There is a widow, a woman in her culture who did not have the right of inheritance and was therefore completely dependent on the men in her life—her brother-in-laws or adult sons, to provide for her. If they chose not to, she was left to the ways of the street—begging or prostitution. Only a judge could force these relatives to provide for the widow according to the law (quote). But this judge was uninterested in the law. He was a man of his day, living by bribes and what best suited him. In the end, the widow won her case not because of righteousness, not because the judge saw the evil of his ways, but because she wore him down, probably even made a scene and embarrassed him.
Who is this widow? Who is the unjust judge? Well the unjust judge is simple. He sure isn’t God! As the young people so aptly put it on Wednesday evening, this is “the man.” This character represents all who are unjust, all who are sticking it to the little people, all who hold power over the lives of others. Who is the unjust judge? Governments, corporations, and the people who have enslaved themselves to the destructive cycles of these institutions. Churches can often participate in these systems, caught in rituals of human design, placing further burdens on the poor and condemning those who do not fit nicely into a church pew.
The unjust judge represents all of those powers which fly in the face of God’s good creation. I have a Jewish friend who told me why she doesn’t believe Jesus was the messiah. “Look around,” she said. “There is no peace on earth.” I had to give her a point for that one. After all, that’s what Christianity seems to be selling—quick fixes. A Jesus who saves the world. Feel-good faith.
I’m not sure where we came up with that. The gospel is about people like this widow woman, scrapping and fighting and even putting life on the line in the pursuit of justice. Who is the widow in the parable? God’s people. Those who would, at all costs, day and night, persevere against the powers, against “the man,” until God’s will is done, until the prayers of the weak and voiceless are answered. The final question of the parable, then, becomes the operating one: “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” In other words, “will God’s kingdom really come? Will God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven?”
On Wednesday, October 10, the President and General Minister of the United Church of Christ, along with the executive minister for Justice and Witness Ministries, delivered over 60,000 petitions along with a pastoral letter to bring an end to the war in Iraq. They had successful meetings with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House Minority Leader John Boehner. They were turned away at the white house, where they had requested a meeting with the public liaison office—not the president, the vice president, but the public liason office. Standing on a sidewalk outside the white house gate with their arms full of petitions and refusing to move, John Thomas and Linda Jaramillo were both arrested. As they were led away, protesters sang hymns of peace and then gathered for prayer.
It’s a little embarrassing, seeing two of the top ranking officers of the United Church of Christ in handcuffs. What’s more, these are two usually-calm even in the most tense of circumstances, highly-intelligent, thoughtful theologians. What were they thinking, getting themselves arrested?
I suppose a couple of things might have come to mind. First, as embarrassing as it might have been to them, imagine what it means to the white house to have the president of the UCC arrested on your sidewalk because your public liaison officer won’t meet with him. This, especially, after the house and senate have rolled out the red carpet. It is as though the widow is giving the unjust judge a black eye.
Second, Mr. Thomas and Ms. Jaramillo had to be considering that the extremity of their actions was nothing compared to the insanity that continues to be the war in Iraq. The news is bad and getting worse. We are not saviors in that country, bringing justice and peace. Reports suggest we are getting a black eye, covering up truth, bringing fear and more corruption to a place where we were meant to bring order. Meanwhile, we keep sending good men and women over to fight, to kill, often to die. How long, O Lord, as the Psalmist says, How long will we let it continue with our mouths closed?
This is a hard parable Jesus told all those long years ago. Is it about prayer? Or is it about justice? The answer seems to be yes, to both of the questions. Prayer does not, sadly, work by magic. Prayer works when God’s people align themselves with the weak and the poor, with those who are like the widows, to work for God’s justice and, as the kids say, “stick it to the man.”
Listen: when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? Or will war prevail, the children continue to die, the widows starve, the voices of the poor remain unheard? When the day of judgment comes, what will God find?
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