Proper 24, Year C | Luke 18:1-8
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
October 16, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
For a lot of us, prayer is a difficult or confusing concept. Some wonder how to start praying in the first place—especially when it feels like you’re just talking to yourself. Others aren’t really sure what to pray about. Even those used to prayer often wonder about the mechanics of the whole thing, and being consistent is a challenge for almost everyone.
Reformed theology posits an unchanging God with absolute control of everything in the universe, to the point where everything that happens, all the way down to subatomic levels, is under God’s direct and precise attention and control. Everything happens exactly how God has planned it, and there’s no possible deviation from the path that’s set. Under that philosophy, the only prayer God answers is one that’s already in line with what’s destined. Nothing we say or do can alter God’s plans. When everything is fated, prayer is kind of a waste of time—just wishful thinking. The only thing it might be good for is to let off steam.
Some people look at things from the opposite extreme. In their understanding, even if God wants to help, Deity has its hands tied at some points[1] and may not be capable of doing anything regarding a particular situation. In that case, prayer is like trying to solve an internet outage. I can keep rebooting our router or resetting all our devices, but if the network itself is down, nothing I do will change anything. No matter how hard I try, the internet still won’t work. Likewise, no matter how hard I pray, God can’t respond with anything more than sympathy.
While there are many differing viewpoints along that continuum, when it comes down to it, prayer often just doesn’t make sense. With a quick read, Jesus’ parable of the Unjust Judge confuses things even more, presenting God as a petty tyrant who responds only once annoyed. That’s not a particularly comforting idea. And frankly, that’s not exactly a God I’m interested in worshipping or serving.
This parable has several unusual features. One of the strangest, structurally, is that the narrator gives us the interpretation of the story before Jesus even has a chance to speak. Normally a parable isn’t explained until after the fact, if at all. So Luke clearly intends to focus our attention in a specific direction even before we know what he’s going to say.
Another oddity is that, for us, the description of the judge—who Jesus clearly holds up as a negative example—doesn’t sound so bad. As a secularly governed society, we don’t want our judges to be influenced by their individual religious or political views. An ideal judge makes every attempt to interpret and apply the actual laws as they stand, whether or not they agree with them, so not fearing God or respecting people sounds like a pretty good thing. For us, an unjust judge is one who does allow their personal opinions to sway their rulings.
Historically, the Church has tended to read “justice” and “justification” as argumentative or legal terms. Is an action in accordance with the law? Then it’s technically “just.” Is your explanation of what happened adequate to excuse why you acted outside the rules? If so, we say you’ve “justified” yourself. In religious circles, particularly Protestant ones like ours, people say that when God “justifies” someone that person has been “declared righteous.”[2] But there’s another usage of the word “just” that we need to apply here.
If you’ve ever used a word processor—or even read a newspaper page—you’ve run into the concept of text justification. Do you want the side of the paragraph to line up along the left margin, like we do with most Western languages? Then you make them “left-justified.” Some other languages, like Hebrew or Arabic, read from right to left, so it’s helpful to have that text right-justified. Centered text is aligned—“justified”— to a point evenly matched between the page’s margins.
This “alignment” aspect of justice is significant in understanding what the Bible is saying, both in our parable and throughout the New Testament. It’s also helpful in understanding ideas behind Justice Ministries: something can be legally justified, but if that same action doesn’t align with the patterns God has set for us, then no matter what our law says, that action is wrong—it’s morally unjust.
Turning back to the story, we find some other important details. The judge is, more literally translated, “not terrified of [or by] God,” and, basically, has no sense of shame regarding what people might say or think. This is an individual who rules exclusively according to his own internal compass. His decisions may or may not follow any specific legal or moral code; they mostly reflect his own opinion in the exact moment that he gives them. If he likes something, he rules for it, but if that same thing gets in the way of his interests—even a few seconds later—he’ll rule against it. He’s utterly divorced from any measurable standard of right and wrong; reality itself changes to conform with his whims. He becomes his own god—“a law unto himself”—accountable only to his own narcissism.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably always assumed that the persevering widow is the hero of this story. But it turns out that she isn’t necessarily a good guy, either. We read that the widow is seeking justice against an opponent, which by itself sounds perfectly honorable. But the text more directly tells us she’s demanding the judge “avenge” her against her “enemy.” We have no idea if what she’s asking for is legitimate. To me, the language and broader situation suggest that it isn’t—no one here appears to be aligned with anything but their own interests. However, we do know that she’s persistent—more than persistent, to tell the truth. The judge may not fear God or have any sense of shame, but he’s genuinely afraid of this widow. He doesn’t just think she’ll just “wear [him] out” with her nagging. His internal dialog uses boxing terminology, suggesting that the widow is either threatening physical violence or has already begun to assault him!
So what do we do with that? How do we apply a parable about an anarchist judge and a (potentially) unhinged widow to our prayer relationship with God, as the Gospel writer clearly wants us to? After all, if God really is like the judge, acting according to whatever’s convenient in the moment, then I would have to assume the laws of time and nature would break down on a constant basis, making life—much less math or logic—impossible to sustain. And unlike the widow, none of us are in a position where we can effectively threaten God—reality simply doesn’t allow for it.
So what is Luke’s point, then? Why does he want us “always to pray” without becoming discouraged?
What I really think this all comes down to today is that the passage is trying to alter our perception of prayer. We generally come to God rather like the widow, asking (or demanding) that God arrange everything according to our desires. If God were like the judge, responding only to persistence and threats, that might work, but it would also lead to chaos, just as if people really could make trees or mountains move into the sea at will. But God, as the ultimately Just One, has set certain standards according to which the entire universe aligns.
So what if prayer is less about us aligning reality to our desires—our common, practical-in-the-moment, self-focused idea of “justice” (or vengeance)—and more about aligning ourselves with God’s standard? What if the way “prayer changes things” isn’t so much about external reality complying with a personal request but internal realignment instead, about conforming our desires and being to the standard of a loving God? Prayer then becomes less about getting our way or altering the world to match our hopes and wishes—the very thing which leads to the seemingly pointless aspect of prayer in the first place. Instead, it functions more as a way to place ourselves as directly into the flow of God’s will and desires.
To borrow from Eastern teachings (and from our Western perspective, Jesus was indeed an Eastern teacher), prayer becomes a method of aligning with “the Way,”[3] the force and flow of reality we often fight against but to which all must ultimately submit. Prayer transforms into a pathway, but it doesn’t leave us as passive observers: just as the physical universe is always moving, God’s Way and everything within it is always active, always flowing. The Reign of the Heavens succeeds not through force or threat but through the joined action of all. In conforming us with God, prayer leads to gratitude and contentment, of aligning our own expectations to reality, allowing each of us in the end to become “justified” with and before God.
[1] Or may have tied its own hands
[2] “Justice” and “righteousness” are essentially the same word in Ancient Greek.
[3] Chinese 道 (dào)