Excerpted from The Moral Teachings of Jesus: Radical Instruction in the Will of God (Cascade Books, September 2024).
And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 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 18:7–8
Text: Luke 18:1–8
This passage may offer the best example of a case in which a Gospel writer’s summary of the meaning of a parable may distract from what Jesus was trying to teach. Luke says this is a parable about “praying always and not losing heart” (Luke 18:1) or becoming discouraged. But this is only one possible reading of the parable’s meaning. The parable of the “importunate widow” or “the unjust judge” is also a parable about human justice, right here and now. Because Christians don’t often think of Jesus teaching directly about justice, this parable is especially important. We need direct evidence that Jesus noticed and cared about the human struggle for justice. That is present here.
We learn of a local judge in an unnamed city. His character is strikingly described as not fearing God and not respecting people (Luke 18:2). This is exactly the opposite of the kind of person that Israel wanted in judicial authority—or really, that anyone who cares about justice should want in a position of authority. NT scholar Joel Green writes, “Within this world, the world of Luke, neither fearing God nor having regard for persons signified one’s thorough wickedness.”
Judges need to respect people because they have grave and unique responsibilities in relation to human well-being. In any justice system, much depends on the moral compass and ethical vision of judges. At least from a Jewish or Christian perspective, judges need to fear God so that they recognize that they too are under authority, that they too will be held accountable for their own conduct before the God who is watching them.
That was Israel’s understanding (cf. 2 Chr 19:7), and for many centuries the understanding of the “ministerial” authority in Christian countries as well. Public authorities exist to serve people and the community under the ultimate watchful authority of God (cf. Rom 13:1–7)—not a god we make in our own image, but the true God whose law and will transcend culture and self-interest and challenge everyone to meet the standard of justice.
But this judge, completely violating biblical expectations of justice and the role of the judge, has none of that—no respect for God, no fear of people. Still, people have no choice but to come to him for justice. Our first customer today is a widow who is in some kind of legal dispute. “In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent’” (Luke 18:3; Gk:antidikos). This Greek term generally means opponent or adversary in a legal matter. The word translated justice here (Gk:ekdikeō) means to execute right or justice, and can carry the connotation of avenging, or obtaining vengeance. We know three things in one sentence: the plaintiff is a widow, she seeks justice against an adversary in a legal matter, and she comes to the judge repeatedly.
Jewish listeners would immediately hear echoes of the numerous teachings in the Law and the Prophets about the special vulnerability of widows—along with orphans, aliens, and strangers, people who generally lacked social power—and the obligation to attend especially to their needs (Exod 22:22; Deut 10:18; Isa 1:17; Jer 22:3, etc.). They might also think about the various plucky widows found in stories in the Hebrew Bible, such as Naomi and Ruth.
The widow in this story appears to be harassed and harassing. She badgers the indifferent judge with constant visits, and in the end, she “wears him out” (Luke 18:5; Gk: hypōpiazō), until he grants her request. Amy-Jill Levine argues that the NRSV is far too bland and polite here. A better translation of what the judge fears—sometimes showing up in footnotes—is “she will beat me up,” or “strike me in the face,” or “give me a black eye.” The judge appears to fear being struck by the widow who is demanding justice. Whether that fear is realistic is not stated. Close reading of the Greek here makes the widow a tougher and more formidable character than our stereotypes often allow. Ultimately, the judge reluctantly grants her request, perhaps for his own protection.
In Luke, Jesus makes this a parable to encourage persistence in prayer. Believers are to be like the “importunate” (desperate, pleading) widow, to be the kind of people who pray day and night for God’s justice to prevail. Jesus wonders at the end of his parable whether faith will hold out till the end, till he returns: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).
In this parable, we find a classic “lesser to greater” or “how much more” (qal vahomer) argument. If even a heartless, careless, unjust judge will ultimately respond to a widow’s persistent “prayers” for justice, how much more will a good and loving God respond to our prayers? We should not read the judge as being anything like God, but as an all-too-human object lesson.
The final line of the parable also shows Jesus’ awareness that persistent injustice is a threat to faith in God. That is one of the most important things about this parable. The Jesus that we meet in the Gospels speaks from the margins, from below. He speaks of a coming kingdom, one of whose characteristics will be justice—at last, justice. He looks up, up, up at the social order, the human hierarchy, those above, with their money, power, and indifference to everyone else. He sees their characteristic indifference to those below them.
Jesus knows that for the beaten down ones of this world, who cry for a justice that their hearts know is due them, and that the Scriptures themselves say is God’s will, the grinding reality of injustice can indeed be a threat not just to their morale but to their faith in God. Think of the enslaved Jewish people crying for justice for four hundred years, and the enslaved African American people crying for justice for 250 years in what became the United States of America. Surely many lost their faith along the way. Jesus is asking his followers not to lose faith as they cry out for justice.
This brief, powerful story reveals the dynamics of garden-variety injustice in the world, the desperate efforts some must undertake to get basic justice needs met, and the grinding challenge of injustice to faith. God’s long silences in the face of our cries for justice do indeed threaten faith in God. NT scholar Pablo Gadenz notes that this story “reflects the lived tension between the promise of prompt justice and the experience of delay in God’s response to prayer.” This became very clear to me in reading Jewish post-Holocaust theology. I heard it again while writing this chapter and sitting with a child of Holocaust survivors.
In the end we might be reminded of Jesus’ own sad cry of dereliction: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46). This Jesus understands what it is like to believe in a God of justice in an unjust world. In this way, like so many others, he understands us—while, in the end, offering a paradigm both of faith and of faithfulness.
Content taken from The Moral Teachings of Jesus: Radical Instruction in the Will of God, by David P. Gushee, ©2024. Used with permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers: www.wipfandstock.com.
