Exodus 17:8-13
2 Timothy 3:14-4:2
Luke 18:1-8
Some of the most memorable movies have a surprise ending, a twist that makes us look at everything we’ve seen so far in a new light. Think for example of the original Planet of the Apes, almost sixty years old. Given its age this is not exactly a spoiler alert but the final scene of the movie shifts the narrative in a different direction. Astronauts (Charleton Heston in the lead) think they have flown to a new world where apes are ascendant and homo sapiens is subordinate. As Heston flees the apes he comes to a ruined Statue of Liberty and realizes that they have not traveled in space but in time. The planet of the apes is future earth after it had been ruined during a nuclear war. Surprise!
While Jesus does not give a surprise ending he often gives a twist to the parables he tells. Today’s story of the Unjust Judge and the Widow at first seems pretty straightforward. St. Luke introduces the parable as a lesson about “the necessity to pray always without becoming weary.” The widow keeps badgering the judge until she wears him down and he delivers “a just decision for her.” The lesson seems to be if a judge who is unjust will respond to a fervent plea from someone in need how much more will the just and loving God respond to those who cry out to him. That’s a good lesson but the final line of the parable shifts is meaning. “When the son of Man comes will he find faith on earth.” The parable is not about, or not only about, praying always. It also about keeping the faith. If you think on it, prayer really is about faith – faith that God is for us, that God cares about us, that God listens to us. When we pray we are showing our belief that God is not above it all, sitting on the throne beyond the concerns of mere mortals. Rather, God cares about us so much that God chose to become one of us in Jesus, to bring the whole of human experience into the realm of divinity.
That raises the question: why do we need to pray always without becoming weary? Doesn’t God know what we need already? Doesn’t God care for us as a loving Father? Why do we have to keep banging on heaven’s door so that God will do what needs to be done? Asking those questions suggests that we might look at the parable in a different way. What happens if we reverse the roles – if the unjust judge does not stand for God but for us and if the widow should be looked upon as God pleading with us? We are certainly like that unjust judge who “neither feared God nor respected any human being.” We want what we want when we want it, irrespective of God’s will for us or how it will impact other people. My happiness, my comfort, my security are what matter. I’ll do my thing and if you and God can fit into my plans all the better but I’m not waiting for that. And how is God like the widow? God is constantly calling us to follow him. Remember the famous picture of Jesus standing at the door and knocking, waiting for us to open and let him in? Like the widow God never gives up on us but continues to invite us again and again into a life of repentance, into a life of grace. There is a famous poem by Francis Thompson called “The Hound of Heaven” that begins: “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him.” We can flee from God but God never gives up on us. We might imagine that we can do without God but no matter where we turn God’s love and God’s mercy will confront us.
Is this re-imagining of the parable with the dramatis personae switched a valid interpretation of the words of Jesus? I must confess that I read several commentaries and none of them suggested it. Even if it is stretching the parable to the breaking point, this reading does suggest something necessary in the Christian life. To be a disciple, to be a Christian, to encounter Jesus confronts us with the need to change, to conversion. The constant temptation is to simply add the faith to the list of things which make me me. I’m a man, I’m old, I’m an American, I’m a religious, I like baseball, I like to cook, I go to plays, oh, and I am a Christian. The hound of heaven does not pursue us down the labyrinthine ways so that faith can be added onto the rest of my life like a hobby. No, faith demands a re-orientation of our lives so that everything we do, every idea that we have, every relationship we are in, every value that we hold flows from God and leads back to God. When the hound of heaven catches us, we surrender our old life in order to live the fuller life that God desires for us.
We know how this works because this is, in fact, very similar to something we are familiar with – falling in love. When you fall in love the whole world looks different. How you spend your time, where you spend your money, what political opinions you hold, the books you read and the shows you see are all viewed through the eyes of your beloved. Your world is remade because of the love which fills your heart. That is how a grace-filled conversion works. When we fall in love with God we want always and only what God wants. How wonderful it is to finally give up making our own way and surrendering into the loving arms of God for that is where true peace and joy can be found.
