Permission to nag God

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Luke 18:1-8

I can’t help smiling every time I read this story. On the face of it, it’s almost as if Jesus is comparing God himself to a crooked, hard-hearted judge who is nagged and pestered by a widow to get the justice she’s entitled to.

Of course that isn’t really the message. Taking the Bible as a whole, that simply isn’t what God is like.

True, many of Jesus’ parables work by drawing a comparison between God and a human figure – the story of the “Prodigal Son” is a good example, where God is represented by a loving, compassionate father who, dropping any vestige of dignity, runs down the road to greet his returning, wayward son.

But this story works by drawing not a comparison but a contrast; it’s one of those “how much more” stories, where the point is: If even a bent judge can be expected to deliver justice from time to time, albeit from bad motives, how much more can a perfectly just and holy God be expected to deliver justice to his chosen people who cry out to him?

I have always thought of the story as “The parable of the unjust judge”, which is how various translations and commentaries entitle it. But I notice that it’s more common now (as in the NIV) to see it entitled as “The parable of the persistent widow”.

I think that’s better, because it is surely the widow on whom the spotlight mainly falls, not the judge. Yes, we can focus on the judge to reflect on the misuse of power, or the way that people in positions of influence tend often to bully and treat with injustice those who have no power (why do I find myself thinking of P and O?).

But the real point is the need for God’s people to be stubbornly preserving in prayer. Luke spells this out right at the start: “Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up”.

You couldn’t put it plainer than that, and it’s specially relevant at the present time, as the agonising situation in Ukraine goes grinding on from day to day.

Both on a world-wide scale, and in our own personal circumstances, there are times when the only weapon we feel we have is faith expressed in persevering payer: prayer when we feel like anything but praying; prayer when we feel, frankly, like giving up; prayer when our faith is weak and our doubts are strong; prayer when our prayers seem to be achieving precisely nothing.

I see I’ve used the word “feel” there more than once. I didn’t intend that, but it’s worth thinking about, for it reminds us that the way we happen to feel on any given day is completely irrelevant to our need to pray. Putting that another way: the effectiveness of our praying doesn’t depend on the way we feel. Indeed, you could say that the fact that we don’t feel like praying, but do so anyway, is a good sign that our prayer is motivated by genuine faith.

There are times when it’s relatively easy to pray – we feel spiritually strong, and things are going reasonably well with us. But the real test is that we keep on praying even when we feel flat and inwardly dead. To pray then takes faith! - to pray, if I can put it like this, through gritted teeth.

Looking again at the passage, you can’t help feeling that the final sentence could easily have been left out. Jesus rounds the parable off with a question: “However, when the Son of Man comes (that’s him, of course), will he find faith on the earth?”

Now, why did Jesus add that question? It’s not an ordinary question, of course, the sort where our purpose in asking is simply to get some information (“Did Palace beat Liverpool yesterday?” or “What’s the weather forecast for Saturday?”). No, it’s what’s known as a “rhetorical question”, where the reason for asking it is to make the other person think, or to throw out a challenge.

Jesus asks this question not in order to get his disciples scratching their heads and coming up with a logical, doctrinally correct answer. (After all, of course there will be true believers when he returns in glory! Who else would he be coming for?)

No: he asks it to challenge them, as if to say: “How will you stand on that day? Will you be waiting for me? Will you be ready for me?”

And that challenge applies as much to us today as it did to them then.

Christian, Jesus is coming back – so live every day in the light of that truth!

Lord God, help me to take a lesson today from that feisty old lady in Jesus’ story, so that when he returns I will be ready, waiting, and busily serving and praying. Amen.