The Judge and the widow

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent many years in the prison camps of Siberia. Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in all kinds of often extreme weather. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking labour and slow starvation, and this intense suffering eventually reduced him to a state of despair.

One particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much for him. He saw no reason to continue his struggle, and no reason to keep on living. He felt his life made no difference in the world. So he gave up. Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.

As he waited, with his head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible. Solzhenitsyn slowly rose to his feet, picked up his shovel, and went back to work.

Outwardly, nothing had changed. Inside, he had received hope. And that is what the other prisoner did for him – he gave him a desperately needed renewal of hope, and that is one of the things that Jesus is doing for us in the parable that we have heard in today’s gospel reading (Luke 18:1-8).

Often it is portrayed as a parable urging us to be constant and persistent in prayer, and there is no doubt this is true. Jesus is reminding his followers, people who probably had trouble with prayer occasionally, probably just like us, that whatever they felt God was hearing their prayers and attending to them.

And prayer whenever it comes, or however we do it, is an important thing. A young man went into a confectioner’s shop to buy 3 boxes of chocolate: small, medium, and large.

When the confectioner asked him about the three boxes, he said, “Well, I’m going over to a new girlfriend’s house for supper. Then we’re going out. If she only lets me hold her hand, then I’ll give her the small box. If she lets me kiss her on the cheek, then I’ll give her the medium box.

But if she lets me kiss her properly then I’ll give her the big box.” He made his purchase and left.

That evening as he sat down at dinner with his girlfriend’s family, he asked if he could say the prayer before the meal. He began to pray, and he prayed an earnest, intense prayer that lasted for almost five minutes. When he finished his girlfriend said, “You never told me you were such a religious person.” He said, “And you never told me your dad was a confectioner!”

But if persistent prayer is all that the parable is about then perhaps we will reach a fairly disturbing conclusion as well, because that suggests that God hears persistent prayer better than he hears one-off prayers. It suggests some sort of reward for keeping-on ! But this isn’t the case at all.

This parable isn’t a call to persistence for the sake of it, but rather a call to keep trusting the God who has promised to hear all of our prayers. I’m sure we have all prayed for things and it has seemed like those prayers haven’t been heard or at least answered – but what Jesus is saying here is that God is listening and answering however it looks to us at times !

Prayers are heard and answered in God’s way, not always in our way, and not always in a way that we can even understand. And so we have a call to remain faithful and trusting in God. But I think the parable goes even further. The 2 central characters of the parable are particularly important clues to this.

There is the nasty judge. A man who has no respect for people or for God. A man who is not particularly interested in justice. Though the Jewish law made it clear that widows should be cared for, this wasn’t often the case, and it certainly wasn’t so with this man. And then there was the widow, defenceless against the power of the judge. Without his help she had no chance of helping herself. But she did all that she could do – she kept on, she pestered him so much that eventually he gave in and granted her the justice she deserved.

She did it herself, but perhaps this parable is also calling us to stand up for and help the disadvantaged, those who are unable to fight for themselves, those caught up in all kinds of misery, those without a voice in our society today. Individuals, like this widow, are all around us, fighting for some sort of justice, fighting for a life – some will keep going until they get it, but for others the battle will be too long and too difficult. As Christians we are surely called to be alongside them….

And there is a third element to the parable as well. There is a call to trust God, a call to be there for our neighbours, whoever they may be, but Jesus ends with a challenge as he effectively sums all this up in that last sentence, ‘And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’

Jesus has promised that prayer will be heard, and he has promised that God, at least, will deliver justice to all, but what about our response ? Are we faithful in prayer, do we put our trust in God? And are we practising the kind of faith that is not just concentrating on a relationship with God or with the Church, but on a relationship with everyone around us, are we practising the kind of faith that makes a difference, not just to ourselves, but to others in our communities and throughout the world ??

Simone Weil, the French philosopher and mystic, once said, ‘"If you want to know whether someone is truly religious, do not listen to what they say about God, listen to what they say about the world" Perhaps we could even take that a stage further, and think not just about what we say, but about what we actually do…

We can be sure of God’s strength and power, and we can be sure of God’s love for us and for all people, seen in the life of Jesus, who came amongst us to offer hope, even to those in most despair… And so strengthened by his power, may we go about offering this hope, and a message of peace and salvation available for all.…

I read the following Benediction during the week with which I would like to finish : ‘Go into this week rejoicing in the knowledge that God's love permeates every fibre of your being,

that Jesus' love is deeply inscribed on your heart,

and that the Holy Spirit's love is the inspiration of your life.’ AMEN