As we move toward the upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump, I am aware that many in this country feel trepidation and fear. People of color, women, sexual minorities, disabled persons, and immigrants all came under attack during Trump’s campaign, and in the construction of his cabinet, President-Elect Trump has done little to signal support for those who lack power and voice in our political system.
What does the church have to say to those who are not sure justice will be on their side?
In Luke 18 Jesus tells a parable of a persistent widow and an unjust judge. Luke prefaces the parable by saying that “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart” (18:1). Unlike other parables that present us with a loving father awaiting the return of the prodigal son, a woman gently kneading leaven into her bread, a lowly seed destined to become a mighty tree, or a shepherd searching for a lost sheep, this parable presents us with a figure who is not particularly likable and certainly not intended to be directly compared to God.
What we have in this parable is a man in a position of power who “neither feared God nor had respect for people” (18:2). And we are asked to contemplate what can be done when such a person holds authority.
In the parable, we are invited into the perspective of the widow—one who was doubly dispossessed in her time, first by being a woman and second by being a widow and thus without the male support that would have given her social and financial stability. In that state she was easily taken advantage of, and when that happened and she sought recourse from the man who was supposed to provide justice, she was rebuffed.
It is easy to imagine that the widow would give up hope, that she would retreat in frustration, that she would give the judge what he wants, which is not to have to deal with people like her. As we imagine ourselves into the parable, we can certainly empathize with the woman’s frustration, with her sense of powerlessness, with her fear the the world is simply stacked against her and that those in power do not care for her well-being, indeed, that they are willing to look the other way while she is exploited and mistreated.
But this woman does not give up. She keeps coming to the judge; she keeps demanding justice; she makes her voice heard; and she wears him down.
He says, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming” (18:4-5). The woman without political position, without power, without money, eventually receives justice because she refused to give up asking for what is right. She refused to lose heart.
We are told in the parable that God is not like this unjust judge; God will “quickly grant justice” (18:8). And yet, in this world, in this time between the times, we need the assurance not only that there will be quick justice in heaven but that our prolonged struggles for justice on earth are not in vain. The parable gives us reason to hope for both. Jesus encourages us to push against unjust and uncaring authorities even if we have no tool other than our indefatigable determination.
In addition, he tells us to pray always. We are invited to open ourselves to the transforming presence of God who strengthens us for this seemingly futile work. Our prayer is not a way of convincing God to care, or provoking God to intervene along the lines of a puppet-master who will now pull some different strings. Rather our prayer is a way of putting ourselves in the way of God, so that our activity in the world, our unending cry for justice, can draw upon the deep wells of divine love and energy that undergird all things.
Rowan Williams describes the relationship between prayer and divine action by asking this question: “Can we imagine certain circumstances in which the action of God in relation to … the world is, to use a rather weak analogy, … closer to the surface than it habitually is?” He answers the question this way:
We may not be able to understand what the rule of that is, or the regularity of that is, but if what is sustaining every reality is the energy, the action, of God, then is it so difficult to believe that from God’s point of view and not ours, there are bits of the universal order where the fabric is thinner, where the coming together of certain conditions makes it possible for the act of God to be a little more transparent? And when we talk of miracle, it’s that.
We pray always so that our very lives might constitute places where the fabric is thinner and God’s transforming love and grace can change things that seemed unchangeable.
At the same time we, like the widow in the parable, cannot stop asking for justice from those who would dismiss the weak or the strange or the different as beneath their attention or as objects of contempt. If those in power do not listen, our path is not to respond in kind with contempt or hatred or violence, but to agitate, to congregate, to protest, to wear them out with our unending demand that justice be done for all people.
Pray always, Jesus tells us, and do not lose heart.
How do you see the connection between prayer and justice in your own life and context?
What are your anxieties about the coming presidential administration and what will it take to not lose heart?
Are you ready to be as tenacious in your quest for justice as the widow in the parable?
Scott Bader-Saye (@ScottBaderSaye) serves as academic dean and holds the Helen and Everett H. Jones Chair in Christian Ethics and Moral Theology at Seminary of the Southwest. He joined the faculty in 2009 after teaching for twelve years at the University of Scranton, a Jesuit university in Scranton, PA. His academic interests include political theology, sexual ethics, ecology/economy, and Jewish/Christian/Muslim dialogue.
