October 19, 2025
Exodus 17: 8-13 + Psalm 121 + 2 Timothy 3: 14-4: 2 + Luke 18: 1-8
When compared to others who were employed like my father, we lived simply. He was frugal, and even though we had the first television on our block, color television was about to begin before it was replaced. We traveled some, but a downtown hotel with room service was out of the question. We stayed in motels where the highway noise kept us awake most of the night. When he died suddenly I was shocked to see what he left behind and how he carefully he had planned for mother to continue living comfortably and safely.
Just before the verses of this Gospel we proclaim today, Jesus has informed his disciples that he is going away. Yet, he wants to provide for them. Like my family without our father, those disciples will have to negotiate life without his physical presence, being faithful to all they have been taught. How they will survive and remain faithful without him is the big question answered in today’s Gospel. They will pray. With that, Jesus gives us an example of how we are to negotiate life without his immediate physical presence.
It is easy to be distracted by this Judge, but he is not focus. He is not there to tell us something about God. If anything, he is there to tell us about the world in which we live, a world not much changed since the first telling of this story. There are still Judges who care nothing about God or what others will say. There are still women and countless others who cannot find justice, who are abused and trafficked. They cry out and nothing changes, at least not very quickly. What are we to do while we wait for God to act, knowing full well that God acts on God’s time.
Even though, in this story, the woman gets her justice, multitudes today are still going to their graves being denied the satisfaction of seeing their adversaries dealt with. I believe that the answer to this dilemma is not found in what we expect from God but, rather, in how we struggle like this woman for justice in the hopelessness of seeing justice denied in our lifetime. We have to decide if we are going to just wait for God to act and meet our needs or if we might be called to do justice for those crying out among us. Rather than wait for a miracle from God, it might well be that we are called to be the miracle for which others pray.
My friends, we are called to seek justice, not because it is easy or because in the end we will win. We are called regardless of the consequences for the sake of justice. We don’t fight for justice like this widow because we know we are going to win. We fight and work for justice for the sake of justice alone even if we do not see it in our lifetime.
I love this story, unique to Luke’s Gospel so populated with women and widows of all sorts. It would seem that in Luke’s estimation, the church and this world can never have enough of women like her. Every woman in this church, in this city, country, and world should learn from her not just a lesson on prayer, but on perseverance in the face of injustice.