Prayer 8: God’s Justice

Don: A few weeks ago, Jason raised with us the parable of the importunate widow, also known as the parable of the unjust judge, in Luke 18:1-8. It touches upon one of the building blocks for the “wall of prayer” or “wall of faith” we are trying to build to help us understand prayer and faith:

Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart, saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me legal protection from my opponent.’ For a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge said; now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

Notice: (1) That the judge himself does not follow the Law to love god with all his heart and his neighbor as himself, and he freely acknowledges his disdain. He is practically the Antichrist. He stands in sharp contradistinction to god. (2) That in the society of that time, a widow is among the lowest in social standing. (3) That she is seeking something quite specific. (4) That the words “wear me out” imply, in the original Greek, an almost physical pummeling. The judge’s motive in acceding to her request is to avoid being pummeled. It is purely selfish and has nothing to do with the justice of the widow’s claim.

But it seems to me the story is really not about either the widow or the judge. It is about god. It could be mistaken as mixing grace with effort—as meaning that persistent effort will be rewarded, that god will respond favorably to prayer even if at first he is disinclined to do so. The temptation is to think that we can finish something that the spirit has begun, that the spirit inspires us to pray, initiates the prayer, so that we can step in to finish it. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus is both the author and the finisher (“perfecter”) of our faith, but this story seems to imply that we have a role in the finishing.

The story is told not to inspire us to strive for things in our own strength. In Matthew 6, prefatory to delivering the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus told us to keep our prayers short, whereas this parable seems to be saying keep them going. While it is certainly a compelling human story, insofar as there is a feisty underdog who will not quit her search for justice, it is a story more about god who, in contrast to the unjust judge, is good and merciful and gracious.

Prayer needs to be seen as a conversation with a very dear friend, someone to whom one can say whatever one wants without fear of rebuttal or rejection or ridicule; someone to whom one has total, free, and unstinting access; someone who will not mind if you repeat yourself over and over. In the parable, it takes no faith to identify with the widow in her plight. It’s a good human story, but it’s a really a story centered on the goodness and grace of god. It may reflect a triumph of the human spirit, but it does not say anything explicitly about god’s grace. I don’t think Jesus told this story in order for us to revel in the triumph of the human spirit, with no help from god. Ben Franklin’s saying that “God helps those who help themselves” is not in the scriptures, and indeed is antithetical to the fundamental meaning of grace, which is that god helps those who cannot help themselves.

In this parable, Jesus is in fact implicitly (not explicitly) telling us to rely on the graciousness of god. In the preamble, he tells the disciples that the parable is given to show that “at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart.” The Good News Bible translates the Greek as “they should always pray and never become discouraged.” To me, this reflects the real meaning of the parable and indeed, the real meaning of the power of prayer: To wit, that through our prayer life, we can find ourselves in a position of relief from despair and discouragement. In those days especially, a lonely and destitute widow had every reason to be discouraged, but the good news is that god’s justice is always close at hand.

God’s justice parallels his righteousness and grace. This is the end product of prayer. In verse 7 of the parable, Jesus says:

“…now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly.”

In Amos 5:24, god tells the Israelites that he will

“let justice roll down like waters
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

And Isaiah 30:18:

Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you,
And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
How blessed are all those who long for Him.

These explicitly link god’s justice, righteousness, and grace.

Harry: I don’t see this parable as being about prayer as we know it today. It starts in Luke 17, where Jesus talks about the Second Coming. There are two ways of looking at the story: Either from the perspective of his audience at the time, or from the perspective of a later audience, including ourselves. His audience at the time had other potential Messiahs—not just Jesus—vying for the position. In his writing, the Jewish historian Josephus gave about as much time to John the Baptist as he did to Jesus. To his contemporary audience, he was talking to a people who had been devastated by Rome and whose importunate prayers to be freed from the Roman yoke had fallen on deaf divine ears.

If Jesus were telling the story for the benefit of later generations, such as ours (which is what we assume when we read the bible) it similarly has no justification in fact. Importunate prayer failed six million Holocaust victims, along with countless others through the ages. So if the parable as told is to have any meaning, I think it can only refer to the End Time. That is when importunate prayer may get a response. Or maybe not.

Jason: Yes, the story perhaps transcends time. I see it as a story about not becoming discouraged. The parable does not say that if you badger god you get what you want. At the end of the parable, it is clear that what you are going to get, whether you badger him or not, is god’s justice, which I tie to god’s will: If you are open to god’s will, your prayer will be fruitful. Even Holocaust victims may have had fruitful prayer, depending upon whether they sought deliverance from the horror that surrounded them or simply sought the blessing of grace and peace that comes with acceptance that god’s will be done. This parable is about one’s approach to prayer.

Michael: The widow is asking for justice with respect to some enemy, some oppressor or persecutor. Against whom should we be seeking god’s justice? The devil? The bible suggests that the outcome of prayer—what god gives—is limited to his spirit, but it also seems to promise deliverance from evil.

Harry: What one prays for has no bearing on the outcome. As Jay just said, it’s all about the spirit in which we approach prayer. “Practical” mercy and justice in this life—deliverance from worldly evils such as a tornado, or a Holocaust—can only come from the community, not from god.

Don: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego asserted, as did Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, that while god was able to deliver them from wordily evil, he was not obligated to do so, and that therefore faith should not depend upon deliverance from worldly evil but rather upon god’s deliverance of justice, righteousness, and grace.

Jason: When a mother kisses a child’s “boo-boo” (small bruise or scratch) to make it better, we know it cannot heal the injury but it’s also observable that the child, who has unconditional faith in mom’s ability to make it feel better, does indeed feel better in some way. It feels comforted.

David: God answered Paul’s request to take the thorn from his flesh with “My grace is sufficient for you.” It is sufficient because we can actually experience it, as many of us can testify and have testified throughout history. But it seems to me we cannot possibly experience god’s justice; that we can have no idea what god’s justice is. As Harry said, the parable is probably an End Time story. I fail to find any enlightenment about justice in it. I understand god’s grace because I can feel it; but I cannot feel his justice and righteousness. They are alien concepts to me. If preventing six million agonizing deaths in the Holocaust is not god’s idea of justice or righteousness (which evidently it is not) then I can only conclude that god’s justice and righteousness are unfathomable at least until after death. But grace is here and now.

To me, the best can be said is that this is a parable about faith. The widow can expect no justice from this heartless judge. The justice she received can only have been the result of her faith. But it was worldly justice, since it was delivered to her by a worldly judge, and if the parable is saying that persistence and faith will bring justice in this life—worldly justice—then it is a fraud.

Michael: Can our prayer accelerate god’s justice? Is it always on tap, or only when we pray?

Robin: How can one believe in a god of justice when his justice is nowhere to be seen? Scripture tells a couple of examples where god intervenes to help widows down to their last piece of bread, as it were; however, god forgive me, I doubt that every widow who has been in such circumstances has received this justice. That may cause us to lose faith in a god of justice. The fact is, we cannot see the justice of god in this world; only after death, when we meet him face to face, will we know and understand his justice. In the meantime, we can know and understand his mercy, compassion, and love.

Jason: Is prayer about leveraging god’s justice, or just about knowing it? This question seems to me to be the crux of all we have been discussing over the past several weeks. To me, it’s the latter: It’s about knowing it, about understanding it.

Don: Can god be likened to a clerk at a 24-hour MacDonald’s, there to serve up whatever you order? Unlike a real human clerk, he knows what you want and the order is ready before you even arrive at the drive-up window. He knows you want no mustard and extra mayo.

Jason: God’s MacDonald’s doesn’t serve up what you order—what you want; rather, he serves up what you need.

Harry: When prayer finally removes all my fear, by convincing me that a just, merciful, and gracious god is in ultimate control, then I will be free. It won’t matter if there is a Second Coming or not. Nothing will matter, ever again.

Don: To be continued!

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