Printer Friendly VersionNow [Jesus] was telling them a parable to show that at all times
they ought to pray and not to lose heart, saying, “There was in a certain
city a judge who did not fear God, and did not respect man. And there was
a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me legal
protection from my opponent.’ And for a while he was unwilling; but afterward
he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, yet
because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, lest by continually
coming she wear me out’” (Luke 18:1-5).
One need not be a biblical scholar, nor an expert in parable
exegesis, to ‘get it’ as to what’s going on in this intriguing
little story: that is, we are the petitioning widow and God is the reluctant
judge. The point of the parable is that we ought to pray hard. Thus saith
all the commentaries I’ve read and preachers I’ve heard, including
Bill Hybels, pastor of the Willow Creek mega-church, whose sermon on this
parable I listened to on tape.
If that is the case, I know about that kind of prayer: prayer
as hard work. I remember my first experience with this kind of prayer. I volunteered
to pray an hour during our church’s 24 hours of prayer in preparation
for a revival. Oh, that felt so good. Here I was, only 16, and already a spiritual
giant: I was going to pray for a whole hour. I’m sure the old saints
thought, “What a fine young man that is.”
At 2:45 a.m. my wind-up alarm clock awakened me. I washed my
face, fixed a cup of hot cocoa, and at 3:00 a.m. sharp I knelt beside my bed
with my long prayer list in front of me. I began to pray. I prayed for all
my family. Since my father was the oldest of ten and my mother the youngest
of eight, I had lots of uncles, aunts, and cousins to pray for. I prayed for
everyone in our church I could think of. I prayed for all the missionaries
around the world. I prayed for the lost. After praying hard for the longest
time, I peeked through my fingers: it was seven minutes after three! Oh no!
The next thing I knew, my mother was shaking me and asking, “What in
the world are you doing sleeping on the floor?” Oh, I know about prayer
as hard work.
I believe I’ve met that widow—that persistent, pestering
widow. The Greek behind v. 5, “I will give her legal protection, lest
by continually coming she wear me out,” reads literally, “lest by
continually coming she hits me under the eye.” Now there’s an ‘in-your-face’
widow.
I live and work in a wonderful Christian University community
loaded with widows: that is, with persistent students; students who pop into
my office at all hours of the day, who waylay me on my way to class and wait
for me after class, who intercept me as I’m walking across campus and
who call me at home. I wish they were seeking me out to discuss some fine
theological point, or tell me how my lecture changed their lives. But such
is rarely the case. Like this poor widow, they are pleading, begging for me
to reconsider their grade, or give them an extension on their paper, or tell
me why they missed class.
Like the freshman student who explained why he was handing in
a messily hand-written rough draft of his term paper instead of a neatly typed
copy. He had taken it to his girlfriend to type the day before but she had
refused. “Why?” I asked. Sheepishly he responded, “I broke
up with her last Saturday night.” I thought to myself, “Young man,
you’ve just given me a new definition of the word dumb!” He should
have waited until she had typed the paper and then broken up with her.
I believe I’ve met that judge in the Nevada desert, on
a stretch of Highway 95 that time passed by. I noticed in the distance a car
coming at me with skis on top. Alas, they were not skis but lights. I glanced
at the speedometer and knew Judgment Day had come. Sure enough, the officer
glared at me as he burned rubber putting on his brakes, did a U-turn behind
me, spat out gravel as he accelerated—didn’t have to do that. By
then I was going three miles an hour. He could have walked and caught up with
me. Surely he would take the average: a little over but a lot under the speed
limit. But, no. He flashed on those red and blue lights which hurt my eyes.
For added effect he tapped his siren, just enough to send another shock wave
coursing through my already traumatized nervous system. Now you are going
to find this hard to believe, and may even question my fitness to teach at
a Christian college when I confess to you that as he wrote me up, it simply
never occurred to me to sing, “Cops are so good…”
No wonder people by the billions have fled in terror, like Adam
and Eve, from the heavy footfall and accusing voice of a God full of wrath
and fury. I can understand why people avoid our church like the plague. After
all, who wants to spend an hour in the presence of the great cosmic judge
of the universe who makes laws beyond number—who can know them all much
less keep them?; who has His omniscient radar fixed upon you day and night,
recording not only actual transgressions but even the thoughts and intents
of your heart; the omnipresent cop from whom you cannot escape; the omnipotent
God who tracks you down like the hound of Heaven; who violently seizes you,
arrests you, locks your hands behind your back with cold steel handcuffs,
and throws you into the slammer? Not only is God the policeman but the prosecutor
who hauls you into court in chains, who indicts you, and has drawn up a long
list of serious charges. But God is not only the policeman and the prosecutor
but the judge before whom you stand, and the jury who meditates behind closed
doors upon your many sins, always coming back with the verdict: GUILTY! God
is not only the policeman, the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury, but the
executioner who damns your soul to an eternal hell.
You want me to sing, “God is so good?” With honey
butter and maple syrup on it? You want me to pray to a God like that, without
losing heart?
I recall the pre-ministerial student who preached a two-point
sermon in our student chapel: the first was, “You’d better watch
out, Satan is going to get you!” After elaborating on that edifying theme
for a while, he launched into his second point: “If Satan doesn’t
get you, God will!”
Which is why I have a problem with the traditional interpretation
of this parable. While God as judge fits so many people’s image of Him,
it bears little correspondence to the God who has disclosed Himself fully
and finally in Jesus . . .
A God who loves the world so much that He gave His only Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
A God who sent His son into the world not to judge the world
but that the world through Him should be saved.
A God who is not willing that any should perish but that all
come to repentance.
A God in Christ who says to the woman taken in adultery, “Neither
do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”
A God in Christ who refused to call fire down from heaven upon
the recalcitrant Samaritans and burn them to a crisp as the disciples wanted
Him to do, but who rather rebuked them by saying, “You do not know what
kind of a spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come into the world
to destroy men’s lives but to save them” (Luke 9:56).
A God who would rather die than destroy, who would rather die
than damn, and who did.
This concept of God as the judge in our parable bears little
resemblance to the father who, when he sees his wastrel son in the distance,
does something no Eastern patriarch would ever think of doing: he gathers
up his robes, races across the fields and down the road, and embraces his
son with a bear-hug that nearly cracks his ribs. And before his son can even
get his rehearsed confession out of his mouth, the father is already shouting
ahead to his servants: “Kill the fatted calf! Hire the musicians. Call
out the dancers. Put my finest robe on my son’s back and a priceless
ring on his finger. Let’s celebrate! For this my son who was lost is
found. He who was dead has come to life.”
To image God as cold, distant, and heartless, who will only
relent under extreme prayer pressure flies in the face of everything Jesus
teaches us about God as our merciful and compassionate heavenly Father. Jesus
asked, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good
to those who ask Him?” (Matthew 7:11).
So, how do we go about solving the puzzle of this parable? Our
son-in-law, Paul Kinsman, is an artist—in fact, he teaches art at Point
Loma Nazarene University. One of the techniques he will sometimes use to help
students see things from a different perspective is to have them study a landscape
upside down: that is, encourage them to look at it through their legs. I thought
I would try that. Oh, what a difference: I observed colors and shadows and
shading in ways I never saw when looking at it straight-up. After about 20
seconds, however, I passed out and broke my neck—well, almost.
So I thought to myself: Why not try that with this parable?
What would happen if I stood on my head to look at it? I was shocked by what
I saw.
For starters, the description given of this judge twice in these
five verses, as one who “neither fears God nor respects man,” simply
does not work when applied to the God reflected in and refracted through Jesus,
but it fits me right to a ‘T.’ Like the time when I grew increasingly
irritated at a student in my theology class who sat right on the front row
but never took a note and spent most of her time just staring straight ahead.
Consequently, she was failing the class. I spoke to her after class one day,
and as gently as I knew how asked her why she never took a note. In exasperation
she said to me, “I CAN’T SEE! I’m losing my sight.” She
told me that I was just a blur in her left eye and everything was fuzzy in
the right. Alarmed, I asked if she had been to an ophthalmologist. She had
but he couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and so had referred her to
a neurologist with whom she had an appointment that week. He put her through
a whole battery of tests.
Of course, I prayed with her and walked with her and her preacher-father
as closely as I could through this terrible time. Several weeks later, the
diagnosis came in: she was already in a fairly advanced stage of MS (Multiple
Sclerosis). My heart sank to the center of the earth. When I recalled how
I had judged her as a student who was sloughing off, can you imagine how I
felt? I don’t know about you but when I take it upon myself to judge
another, be critical of those in high places and low, those far away and near,
about 86% of the time I’m dead wrong. I really don’t have a clue.
But there is another reason why I fit that description of a
judge. Who is it that shuts their eyes to the plight of the powerless? Who
is it that is deaf to the cry of the poor, disadvantaged, discriminated against,
and the marginalized? The widow cries out for justice on behalf of the oppressed
but is that what I’m up to? When was the last time I interceded in prayer
on behalf of migrants who are being bled by an economic system so that I can
buy cheap lettuce? When was the last time I cried out to God on behalf of
those young people (and some who are not so young) who sweat over hot grills
and breathe the fumes of boiling oil in fast food restaurants for a wage way
below the poverty line just so I can have a cheap hamburger and fries? Who
is it that has become so numbed by the omnipresent television and media images
of wars and disasters, suffering and starving people, that since all those
crying needs cannot be met, ends up not doing anything for anybody?
Coming even closer to home, how sensitive am I to hear the cry
of real, live widows and widowers, of singles and the formerly married in
my own church and community? The aching loneliness of those who never have
anyone invite them out to lunch, who never have anyone stop by to visit, who
rarely have anyone call, or write a note, or send a card of encouragement?
I have met the judge and he is me! Ouch!
If God is not the judge, then what would happen if we cast Him
as the poor widow? Would that work? Who is it, that though He was in the form
of God, thought equality with God was not something to be grasped, but instead
emptied himself of all but love? Who is it that took upon himself all the
vulnerability of a tiny baby, the stigma of illegitimacy, the fragility of
childhood, the insecurity of homelessness, the lowliness of a servant? Who
is it that suffered the pain of rejection, the injustice of a hostile ecclesiastical
establishment, the condemnation of authority figures, the rage of the mob,
the savagery of soldiers, the guilt of sinners, the torture, and the indescribable
agony of crucifixion?
He could have called 10,000 angels,
To destroy the world and set Him free;
He could have called 10,000 angels,
But He died alone for you and me.
If God is the widow and we are the judge, then who is it in
our story that is praying hard? Pleading the cause of widows, of the poor,
vulnerable, and marginalized? Is it not God?
So, why do we pray? We pray not to get God’s attention
but so that He can get ours. And that is, precisely, what God is doing. Jesus
said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hear my voice
and open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me”
(Revelation 3:20). Prayer is opening the door and letting Jesus in. Prayer
is union and communion with God through Jesus the Son by the Holy Spirit.
Brennan Manning tells about the knock on his apartment door in New Orleans.
It was a woman in obvious need. As he walked with her a block or so to her
house, she told him that her father was desperately ill, and though he had
been a life-long member of a large church with several pastors, she had been
unable to get any of them to come over and pray with her father. Brennan was
ushered into his upstairs bedroom. Seeing an empty chair by the head of the
sick man’s bed, he said, “I see you were expecting me.”
“Who are you?” he responded, obviously not having
a clue. So Brennan introduced himself as a pastor. The old man waved for him
to shut the door. He said, “I want to tell you something I’ve never
told anybody, including my daughter. For most of my Christian life, I’ve
tried to pray but have gotten nowhere. I asked my pastor for help on how to
pray but he just handed me a book. When I had to look up nine words in the
dictionary the first three pages, I gave it back.
One day I asked my friend, “Joe? Do you pray?” “Yes,”
he said. “It’s one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.”
I told Joe about my frustrations with prayer. “Joe says to me, ‘Why
don’t you invite Jesus to sit down in a chair and then chat with Him
as a friend to a friend? Sometimes you’ll talk to Him and sometimes He’ll
talk to you. Like good friends, sometimes you will just sit in silence and
enjoy each other’s presence.’”
“I tried it,” he said. “Just five or ten minutes
a day. Soon Jesus and I were talking two hours every day. This is Jesus’
chair, right here beside my bed. Now we talk, off and on, all day and most
of the night when I can’t sleep. Sometimes He leans over me so He can
hear even when I whisper.”
Deeply moved, Brennan anointed the dying man with oil, prayed
for him, and pronounced a blessing on him.
A few days later, the same woman was back at his door to thank
him for visiting her father. He had just passed away that morning. “But
there was something strange beyond strange,” she said. “When we
went into his room, we found him leaning half out of the bed, with his head
on that empty chair.”
So why pray? We pray until our heart beats with the heart of
Jesus. If we listen, we will hear Jesus pleading with us on behalf of widows
desperately crying in the night. All sorts of widows: the disadvantaged, the
discouraged, the disgraced, the depressed, the disillusioned, the despairing,
the despised.
So it was with our son, Dean, who heard the plaintive cry of
a widow, literally a widow: a bag lady in the ghetto of Indianapolis, who
while leaning over the edge of the dumpster behind his Shepherd Community
Inner City Mission, digging for aluminum cans, had fallen in. He pulled her
out, loaded her down with new clothes and food, and invited her to come to
church. Which she did. She was beautifully converted. She resurrected long
unused talents as a cracker-jack pianist and singer—she had spent years
entertaining in bars—and Helen Devine became the regular entertainer
for their Wednesday night dinners for the poor and destitute. Jesus so changed
her life that she became known as the Angel of the Inner City.
One summer day, this destitute widow lady gave my son a $5.00
bill. I was there and saw it with my own eyes. He held up that $5.00 the next
day at their district assembly and told the story behind it. They passed the
plates and raised nearly $35,000 on the spot to purchase a roofing company’s
warehouse right next door to the church to turn into a day-care center for
the homeless. The Indianapolis Builder’s Association heard about that
widow’s $5.00 gift and took on Dean’s mission as their special project
for the year. They came in, renovated, furnished, and equipped that drafty
warehouse, transforming it into one of the finest inner-city mission facilities
in our country today. Altogether, they donated well over half a million dollars
in labor, supplies, and equipment. Why? Because Dean and all those associated
with that mission, prayed until they could hear the desperate cry of a homeless
widow in the night.
I remember the student who came into my 7:45 a.m. class red-eyed
one Monday morning. She wept off and on throughout the class. Before I could
get to her after class, she disappeared out the door. Her pastor-father, however,
was waiting for me in my office. He told me this story. His daughter, one
of our fine pre-ministerial students, had been hired by a California church
to be their summer intern; that is, until the church board belatedly discovered
that the youth intern their pastor had recommended, and they had approved,
was a female. They called a special board meeting and over the pastor’s
strong objections rescinded their action. The embarrassed and heartbroken
pastor had called Jennifer the night before, after church, and her father
had driven from his church nearly all night to be with her and comfort her.
I was shocked. Appalled. But not surprised. For the church continues to be
the last bastion of institutional discrimination against women—women
in professional ministry, women in church leadership.
There was a pastor in this church, however, and a youth minister
who heard the plaintive cry of a very vulnerable and now devastated young
woman. Like a mother bear running to the side of a wounded cub, they gathered
her up in their loving arms and offered her a summer youth internship in this
church, a ministry which she fulfilled admirably. That’s what happens
when we pray. We are sensitized to the desperate cries of the widow, the discriminated
against, and the despondent. When we pray, we can hear their desperate cry
in the night.
I thank God that I am privileged to be a part of a praying church
community, where all sorts of people are responsive to the desperate cry of
the distressed in the night, and who respond in countless acts of loving care,
of kindness, and of generosity. I’m thinking now of our own pastor Bob
Miller, who was on his way to Boise with his son, Jeff. He received a call
on his cell phone that a young mother had just lost her husband very suddenly.
He took the next exit ramp off and headed back up the freeway to West Valley
Medical Center in Caldwell, to pray with her and her family.
So why do we pray? Why do we keep a chair or a room, or reserve
a time and a space for friendship and fellowship with God through Jesus by
the Holy Spirit? It is not to beg God to do something about widows but in
order to give God an opportunity to beg us to do something about widows. It
is being ready to invite someone out to lunch who is not part of our inner
social circle, to make that phone call, to write that letter, to send a card,
to make out that check, to take a fresh-baked pie, to wire flower . . . whatever.
It is to be the lips and hands and feet of Jesus, reaching out to enfold them
in love, in care, in concern.
Who knows? Maybe in responding to the widow’s desperate
cry in the night, we may save the life of someone very near and dear to us.
I am indebted to Ed Snyder, one of our ministerial students, who is working
with our children this morning, for sharing this true story with me.
Greg O’Leary was walking down a dimly lit street late one
evening when he heard muffled screams coming from behind a clump of bushes.
Alarmed, he slowed down to listen and panicked when he realized that he was
hearing the unmistakable sounds of a struggle: heavy grunting, frantic scuffling,
the tearing of fabric. Only yards from were he stood, a woman was being attacked.
Should he get involved? He was frightened for his own safety
and cursed himself for having suddenly decided to take a new route home that
night. If he intervened, he might get himself killed. Shouldn’t he run
to the nearest phone and call the police and let them take care of it?
Although it seemed like an eternity, the deliberations in his
head had taken only seconds, but already the girl’s screams were growing
weaker. He knew he had to act fast. How could he walk away from this? No,
he could not turn his back on the fate of this unknown woman, even if it meant
risking his own life.
He admits that he is neither a brave nor athletic man. He doesn’t
know where he found the moral courage or physical strength. But once he had
finally resolved to help the girl, he became fearless. He ran behind the bushes
and with a strength beyond himself pulled the assailant, much larger than
himself, off the girl. Grappling they fell to the ground where they wrestled
for a few minutes until the attacker jumped up and ran. Panting hard, Greg
scrambled upright and approached the girl, who was crouched behind a tree,
sobbing. In the darkness he could barely see her outline–couldn’t
have been more that ten or eleven years old. But he could tell she was trembling
with shock.
“It’s OK,” he said gently, as he moved slowly
toward her, not wanting to frighten her more. “The man ran away. You’re
safe now. I’ll take you to get help and make sure you get home safely.”
There was a long pause and then he heard her words, words uttered
in wonder and amazement, in a voice he instantly recognized:
“Daddy! Daddy! Is that you?”
