Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ 4 For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
– Luke 18:1-8 (NRSVUE)
The parable of the widow and judge reveals the power of movements of the dispossessed to create an unsettling politic in a world where power begets power, and empire feeds on the poor. In light of today’s Poor People’s Campaign, a movement of the poor and dispossessed in the United States focused on the leadership and agency of the poor as essential to creating a more just society, the power and agency of the widow, who courageously “keeps coming” at the unjust structures in her time, is a witness to Jesus’ imagination for justice. Following other parables illuminating the kingdom of God among us (Luke 17:20-21), Jesus tells this parable about the “need to pray always and not to lose heart” in a short, somewhat comical story of a judge, a widow, and God.
In small towns, like the one our parable is set in, it was not unheard of for the colonizing governments to appoint one of the prominent locals as judge overseeing monetary matters, among other things. However, and unsurprising both in story and in evidence of human history, the “varied elites” appointed by empires are doubly corrupt: not fearing God nor respecting God’s creation.
Therefore, it is helpful to position this story and the relationship between the widow and the judge within the context of (the Roman) empire. Ancient empires often exercised control over their territories by using these elites as middle-men who were given authority over the population, maintaining their loyalty through a limited access to power that other locals in those territories did not have access to.
No wonder then—the text calls the man unrighteous (adikias , 8:6); unrighteous here most likely in terms of his dealings specifically with money. Luke uses the same Greek word when talking about “the dishonest steward in Luke 16:8″ (Brad Young, The Parables, 57). It is not hard to imagine how the corrupt judge might have been dishonest with finances. Powerful men have a long track record of only protecting the interests of their wealthy counterparts over and against the cries of the widows, orphans, and marginalized. That is how the system is set up to work. Empire thrives on wealth, power, and abundance for the few at the top, often appropriating theological language to justify its unjust practices and policies.
Jesus, a member and organizer of the poor and oppressed, knew there was something that worked against the money and power hoarding and theological malpractice of men in power: movements made up of and led by the poor.
One of the ways that Jesus’ life was lived out in resistance to empire was through organizing and empowering the poor to challenge the structures of injustice in their time through his teachings and stories. This parable lifts up the widow’s “continual coming” at the judge, who protects and benefits from unjust structures, as a positive example of the power and actions one can take as a dispossessed person. As Ashley Wilcox phrases it, “Jesus is encouraging people to persistently seek out justice for those on the margins, including advocating for themselves” (The Women’s Lectionary, 2021: 141).
In April of 1967, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. signaled a huge shift in his organizing when he gave his famous Riverside sermon, Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break the Silence. There he criticized the war in Vietnam, saying, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” His vision was to organize poor folks across the country and empower them to challenge the unjust economic structures of their time, signaling what he called a move from civil rights to human rights.
A couple of days after visiting Marks, Mississippi in March of 1968, where King was moved to tears in the streets after witnessing first-hand the poorest county in the country and schoolchildren without food for lunches or shoes on their feet, he announced: “We’re coming to Washington in a poor people’s campaign.” A month after King’s assassination, his vision culminated in the poor and their allies caravanning across the United States, mostly in buses, but the folks from Marks, Mississippi arrived triumphantly on a mule train. There they set up a camp on the Mall in D.C., built a tent city they called Resurrection City, and lobbied for what they called an economic Bill of Rights.
The widow in our parable, just like the Poor People’s Campaign, embodied what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “a new and unsettling force” made up of the dispossessed:
The dispossessed of this nation — the poor, both white and Negro — live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty.
The only real revolutionary, people say, is a man [or widow] who has nothing to lose. There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life.
King’s vision sheds light on the widow’s actions as a “new and unsettling force in the complacent life” of this unrighteous judge and the structures which incentivize his corruption. To speak of the widow in terms of unsettling force is anything but a stretch in this text. In fact, I think you might be surprised at the turn that is coming.
In the translation of the NRSVUE, the judge finally grants the widow justice so that she “may not wear me out by continually coming” (v. 5). However, the Greek text phrases it even more strongly. Instead of “wear out,” the Greek term hupopiazei literally means, “strike under the eye,” just like a boxer giving their opponent a black eye! This really is a widow who has nothing left to lose. Why translators insist on the weaker translation “wear out” is beyond me.
Jesus’ widow means business. She intends to either literally or metaphorically blacken the eye of the judge, disgracing him in front of the whole town where he would hear these cases. If he will not hear her case she will “keep coming,” and she does not fear the confrontation it will bring.
In all of this, the widow wants to be “avenged.” The Greek term edikeso means “to procure justice for someone” (Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, 672). Given this and the larger context, Marshall argues that “what the widow wants is not the punishment of her opponent but the payment of whatever is due her” (672). It is important to stress the wordplay in Greek which strengthens the contrast between the widow who is described as just, “edikeso,” standing in direct contrast to the judge’s “adikias,” un-justice.
However, we know from our own time that empires rarely give into the demands of the poor, and would rather have them killed, imprisoned, or forcibly removed from the streets and country than accept responsibility for creating the “cruelly unjust society” that leaves more than 140 million Americans living in poverty. But if the poor can “keep on coming” as a new and unsettling force, and as today’s Poor People’s Campaign envisions, I believe they can be avenged.
But what does this have to do with “always praying and not losing heart?” Part of the comedy of the parable is the character reversal. Jesus pokes at the disciples, unmasking their inner theology about God who they have sometimes thought of as and treated like the unjust judge. Thus, the parable shows them what God is not like, so they can believe in the contrast. God is a loving and just judge who not only hears the cries but avenges the poor and outcast.
Brad Young expands upon this juxtaposition nicely:
The problem with prayer is God. Heschel has made it clear that the supreme barrier one faces during prayer is not the words or the liturgy but rather the way one understands the nature of God.In order to challenge one’s concept of God, Jesus employed humorous story parables to make his listeners redefine their view of God’s character…The parables role-play with the divine image. By exaggerated characterizations of action unlike God, they make the listeners understand the divine nature… The exaggerated behavior of the person who refused to help a friend in need and the judge who did not care about a helpless widow is reversed in the divine character. Yet when it came to prayer, the disciples prayed as if God were like an untrustworthy friend or an evil judge, unconcerned about their needs. The parables challenge one’s concept of God while they teach expectancy in prayer. (Young, The Parables, 42)
The hidden shock of this parable is found in the unsettling force of the widow to challenge empire head on, as though striking under its eye, encouraged as a positive witness in Jesus’ story. The poor are empowered to “keep coming” in order to challenge unjust structures. Even more empowering: the poor may be face to face with unrighteous societal leaders, but God as a just judge stands on the side of those crying out day and night. If there is faith on earth, it is there that it will be found.
Some questions for reflection:
- Where is God in the midst of unholy, brutal rulers who deny, and even worse, exploit the poor and marginalized?
- Where is the kingdom present among those struggling in the face of a man who has no respect for God or any human but himself?
- Where are the poor organizing movements of liberation and freedom against unjust structures?
- What does it mean to “pray and not lose heart” today?
