Luke 18:1-8
Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘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.’ ” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 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?”
This week Jesus isn’t doing a “Jesus living a story” sort of parable. This week we’re back to the more usual, “Jesus telling a story” sort of parable. But again, regardless of the sort, all parables are meant to tell us something about the way God works. Parables are also often a softer… sometimes even a tricksier… way Jesus uses to tell us something about how God works that we might have trouble swallowing if Jesus just gave it to us straight.
This week’s parable is one of those. The news, that as a judge, God is a complete and total failure might have been really hard for the people to hear if it had been given to them straight. It’s just hard to hear that God’s a failure at anything, isn’t it? But that’s where this parable ends up! That’s also why Jesus (unlike me) didn’t give away that ending at the beginning of the story!
So, let's go back to the beginning. God, in this parable is the unjust judge. It’s a judge’s job to hear a case and decide the case fairly, regardless of how people beg or plead or pester. Right? It’s a judges duty to give out fair and impartial verdicts and judgments without regard to feelings, emotions, or anything else. But in this parable, the only thing this judge is concerned with is whether or not he’s going to keep being bothered by this pesky widow. In the end this judge decides to completely flush all jurisprudence down the toilet, chuck fair and honest judgment in the bin, and instead just give this annoying woman what she wants... just so she’ll get off his back… for crying out loud!
In doing that, the judge in the parable has become a complete and total failure as a judge. He wasn’t giving a fair and impartial hearing of the case. He no longer ruled in favor of the side that the law and precedent directed him toward. He no longer paid attention to the facts. In short, the judge just stopped judging!
But this strange and uncomfortable parable is here to tell us something about the way God works, right? What this parable is telling us is that God too has stopped judging. God too, no longer gives an impartial hearing of our failings and shortcomings. God too, it seems, is no longer judging each of us by our actions or by the way we live our lives. In short, Jesus tells us, God has become a complete and total failure when it comes to judging us as well.
I don’t know what you want to say about God becoming a complete and total failure as a judge, but what I have to say about it is… Thank God! I mean, think about it. Where would we be if God gave us exactly what we deserved? What if God treated that "break one commandment and you’ve broken all of them" thing as an originalist? How would your case turn out if God was to judge you strictly by the letter of the law? What would happen to you if God was the most impartial and unswerving deliverer of Justice? I don't know about you, but I’d be doomed even before the opening arguments!
The Good News from this parable is that God has decided to become a complete FAILURE at being a judge. The Good News is that God has fixed it so there is no way we could ever possibly expect a fair trial from the Divine. Thanks be to God! But even with that Good News, Jesus knew this parable would be a hard sell. He knew people much more easily wrap their minds around a God of judgement than a God of love.
That’s where Jacob was in the first lesson for today. Jacob could not imagine his brother as someone who erred on the side of love and grace. He could, however, easily imagine his brother’s judgement. His brother was big. REALLY BIG! And Jacob had been a tricky, manipulative, jerk. A REALLY BIG tricky, manipulative jerk! God insisted that things would be okay, but Jacob insisted they would be anything BUT okay! So there in the middle of the river, Jacob fought with God for an entire night, trying to get God to understand how his brother and the world really worked! Grace and love was NOT how the world worked, Jacob insisted. Judgement and punishment was the way of the world. Jacob insisted for a whole night that God had NO idea how the world worked and finally, when God saw that Jacob would not let go of his insistence on judgement… when God saw that Jacob would not stop fighting no matter what, God kicked him right in the “hip-socket” and yes, Virginia, it was not the “hip-socket”… It was indeed the “HIP-SOCKET”! And then strangely enough after that, Jacob stopped fighting God… go figure!
This parable and that story about Jacob tell us something about the way God works. They tell us that when it comes to fair and impartial judgement… God is simply not interested. Whether that is because judgement is too much work, or because God is just DONE fighting with us, or simply because God enjoys doing grace and love way more than doing judgement and punishment, I don’t know. But I’ll take it!
What I do know is that you and I are the bless-ed recipients of that Divine decision to step down from the bench. You and I are the beneficiaries of the Divine judge’s judgement to permanently retire from the job of judging and just go with grace and love across the board. To THAT I say… Thanks be to God. Amen.
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