Luke 18:1–8

Luke tells us Jesus told this parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge, “In order that we might pray always and not lose heart.” The widow in the parable may be trying to claim her inheritance, or perhaps to recover property that her deceased husband’s family won’t give back to her. The judge, we’re told, “neither feared God nor had respect for people.” This woman may not have the means to bribe him; perhaps her opponent does. What she can do is pester. The NRSV translation of the passage says the judge doesn’t want the woman to wear him out, but the Greek verb literally means to beat until black and blue. The woman is harassing the judge until he feels like Mohammed Ali doing the rope-a-dope. Finally, the judge says to himself, “Even though I couldn’t care less about God and can’t stand people, I’ll give this woman what she wants, just to get her out of my hair.”

What on earth does this story tell us? Is it as simple as, “Even though the world may look broken, unjust, and corrupt, if we just keep praying, things will work out”? If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?

If we’re honest, we know that many of us, including the vulnerable, outcast, and oppressed, are already praying “always” for the coming of God’s justice. We pray and we pray and we pray some more that God will transform the hearts, institutions, and structures of our world so that they reflect God’s shalom, and yet here we are. The wolf does not live with the lamb. Nation continues to lift up sword against nation. So maybe this is not a story that tells us that if we just pray long enough and hard enough, we’ll get what we want.

Maybe this is a parable about the character of God. Here’s the contrast: on the one hand, the sleazy, compassionless judge; and on the other hand, God, whose desire for all of creation is shalom, a peace that is not mere lack of conflict, but rather wholeness, justice, reconciliation, healing. If this crooked judge will grant justice to those who seek it, how much more so will God. The God of shalom is with the widow. God takes sides; God is on the side of justice, and on the side of those who need justice, and we can trust that. And we can trust that God is drawing the world toward that vision of shalom, because that is who God is. Praying, then, is asking God to be God, the God of shalom.

In a world where the powers that would threaten shalom assert themselves so constantly and destructively, it is easy to lose heart. We need support from outside ourselves, and prayer calls on that power. When we pray, we experience faith; we become more engaged in our faith. Debie Thomas writes, “I can only speak from experience, but I know that when I persist in prayer – really persist, with a full heart, over a long period of time – something happens to me. My sense of who I am, to whom I belong, what really matters in this life, and why – these things mature and solidify. My heart grows stronger. It becomes less fragile and flighty. Once in a while, it even soars. And sometimes – here’s the surprise – these good things happen even when I don’t receive the answer I’m praying for.” In other words, prayer helps us not to “lose heart.”

According to an African proverb, “When you pray, use your feet.” Prayer is our resource for the power we need to use our feet – to act in partnership with God by doing what God needs us to do. Here, the widow serves as a role model for us. She wouldn’t have had to argue her case if there had been even a single male relative in her family willing to argue for her, so there must not have been one. She wasn’t intimidated by the reputation of the callous, corrupt judge. She broke social barriers and stood up to a system of oppression in her quest for justice. She broke the mold, and the result was a just verdict.

But there’s another angle, which is that maybe Jesus isn’t talking about what Anne Lamott calls our “beggy” prayers, our “Please, please, please, God” petitions. Maybe Jesus – and Luke – are talking about something else when Jesus says, “pray always.” Richard Rohr writes, “Prayer is indeed the way to make contact with God …, but it is not an attempt to change God’s mind about us or about events. Such attempts are what the secularists make fun of – and rightly so. It is primarily about changing our mind so that things like infinity, mystery, and forgiveness can resound within us. The small mind cannot see Great Things because the two are on two different frequencies or channels, as it were. The Big Mind can know big things, but we must change channels.” Maybe Jesus is telling us to change channels. I love that Rohr included forgiveness in his short list of things that are incredibly hard to grasp without holy help, that we need to “change channels” in order to do.

Why do we pray? Maybe we pray to stay connected to God. Maybe we pray to “change channels.” Maybe we pray in order to have the faith we need to keep on keeping on. Often, I think we pray simply because we must – because we have nowhere else to turn with our longings and hopes and fears that must be given voice. According to this parable, we pray so that we will not lose heart. In the end prayer is a mystery because we are in relationship with a mysterious God. But the passage gives us the simplest reason of all to pray: Jesus said, “Pray always.”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Richard Rohr, The Naked Now (New York: Crossroad, 2009).
Debie Thomas, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2016-09/october-16-29th-sunday-ordinary-time
William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Louisville, KY: Westminister/John Knox Press, 1994).
Shannon J. Kershner, https://fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/101616.html.