Readings: Exodus 17:8-13; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2; Luke 18:1-8
In our second reading, Paul writes to Timothy,
“be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient.”
And in today’s Gospel, the unrighteous judge
obviously finds the persistence of the widow inconvenient.
Fearing neither God’s law nor human opinion,
he is one of those people who rise to power
by sheer force of their shamelessness,
who care nothing for justice,
but use power for their own benefit.
But he meets his match in the persistent widow,
though she is the most powerless sort of person
in the patriarchal culture of Jesus’s day:
a woman alone with no male protector or advocate,
and no money with which to bribe the judge.
Yet the inconvenient persistence
of this powerless widow
defeats this shameless man.
In her relentless quest for justice
she eventually bends him to her will,
and out of nagging or shaming
or a fear of being punched
(or perhaps a combination of all three)
he is persuaded to act, against character,
in a just manner
and give her what she asks for.
There is much inspiration to be drawn for our own day
from this story of the persistent widow,
much to be learned about the power of the powerless
who have the courage to be inconveniently persistent.
But, at the same time, there is something puzzling here.
Jesus tells this parable to encourage his disciples
“to pray always without becoming weary.”
Is Jesus comparing God to an unjust judge
who cares nothing about his petitioners,
but can be bent to our will
by nagging or shaming or a fear of being punched?
Jesus’ point, of course,
is that if even an unjust and shameless judge
can be swayed by inconvenient persistence
then we should believe that a just and loving God,
will answer our persistent prayers.
And, of course, we do not believe
that God needs to be cajoled
into granting our prayers;
we do not believe
that we need to wear God down
with our inconvenient persistence.
We do not believe it,
but it sometimes feels that way.
And I think that may be part of Jesus’ point.
While our faith may tell us that God
is always more ready to give than we are to ask,
our actual experience of prayer
can be a frustrating one.
We may often feel we are trying to cajole
a God who seems not unlike the judge in the parable:
someone who holds what we want
for ourselves and our suffering world
tightly in his stingy grip,
someone who perhaps might loosen that grip
if only we persist long enough in our praying.
But how long?
How long, O Lord, must I feel so alone?
How long, O Lord, must I resist this temptation?
How long, O Lord, must the hungry go unfed?
How long, O Lord, must the poor endure injustice?
What more must I do before you answer, O Lord?
Such prayer is spiritually exhausting;
it is impossible to pray in this way without growing weary.
Let me suggest two things that might help:
one having to do with how we understand God,
and one having to do with how we understand ourselves.
First, regarding God,
the 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich wrote,
“some of us believe that God is almighty and may do everything,
and some that he is all wisdom and knows how to do everything;
but that he is all love and willing to do everything—
there we stop short” (A Revelation of Love ch. 73).
This “stopping short” is what Julian calls
“doubtful dread”:
the fear of God that leads us
to doubt God’s goodness,
to see God as a powerful and clever
but ultimately unloving
and unconcerned with our well-being.
The cure for this doubtful dread, Julian says,
is to see God through the cross of Jesus,
to see God as one who wills
to pour himself out in love for us
with an eternal persistence,
to see God as one
whose answer to our prayers is never “no,”
though it may be “not yet”
or even perhaps “I’ve got a better idea.”
Second, with regard to ourselves,
we should see that our struggles
to persist in prayer
come not from God’s unwillingness
to answer our prayers
but from a kind of blindness—
our doubtful dread that God
is an unrighteous judge
who does not will our good.
We struggle to persist in prayer,
we struggle with doubtful dread,
because we are human,
living the mystery
of our common journey
to God’s eternal kingdom,
a journey of faith, and not of sight.
We struggle to persist because it is hard
to surrender our wills to God’s will,
to forego our plans for God’s plans,
to seek not our answer but God’s answer.
God does not judge our doubtful dread
but heals it with relentless persistence
that opens our eyes
to see God’s love revealed in Jesus.
We can persist because God persists with us.
The God who endured the pain of the cross
knows our struggles and gives us the grace
to share in God’s eternal persistence,
to utter one more prayer when all hope seems lost,
to listen to the silence in which God’s answer is spoken.
May the inconvenient persistence of God
sustain us in our prayers this day,
heal our doubtful dread,
and open our hearts to hear God’s words of love.
____________________________
Click here for a video of this homily.
