Trinity 18 (Proper 24) – Eucharist – 16.x.2022
(Genesis 32.22-31; 2 Timothy 3.14-4.5; Luke 18.1-8)
I know I’ve said before that I once met a priest at a meeting where we had to introduce ourselves - and he started off by telling us his name and parish… before adding “and I took the Archbishop of Canterbury to court 28 times.” Actually it might not have been exactly 28 times - it might have been more and might have been less. But it was a lot of times. The issue was this priest’s opposition to the ordination of women. He felt so strongly over the matter that he kept taking out lawsuits to try to halt the Church as it made its way rather slowly to ordain the first women priests in the 1990s. He had qualified as a lawyer himself so perhaps this kept his court costs down. It must have cost the Church of England hundreds of thousands of pounds to defend its side. In the end the judges got fed up with him and he was ruled a “vexatious litigant,” so that he could no longer bring legal actions - at least of that nature. Nevertheless, since then his parish has gone to court with an extremely tenuous case in an attempt to lay claim to some land outside its boundaries. I wasn’t surprised to find he was still Vicar - nor that the case was thrown out. And still more recently he’s been to court to argue against having to retire from his parish at the mandatory age of 70 - just last month the judges have ruled that he has no case to argue. He’s now 72. He has no job. He says he has no money. But I wonder if he’ll ever give up?
Was the widow who kept nagging at the judge in Jesus’ parable vexatious? She kept going back to court until finally she got her way. What is she doing? - and I wonder how she managed to do it. These days civil courts of law seem to be there largely for people who can afford to use them. If you’re a millionaire you can go to court and keep appealing regardless of the justice of your case, because you’ll probably find a legal argument or loophole somewhere along the line. Look at those high-profile divorce cases where millions of pounds are at stake - or other instances where powerful people bring cases to court because they don’t like what their critics say about them. Keep going back and you might just wear down your opponents - or at least they might run out of money to pay their lawyers before you’ve run out of different levels of the court system to appeal your case. People who take out libel actions in the courts are almost always rich people who have the resources to do it. People who take out injunctions to stop people hearing details of their lives or doubtful actions are the people who have the cash to go to a lawyer in the first place. That’s how it is now. I imagine it was much the same in the time of Jesus.
So there’s a serious point to the parable we hear in today’s Gospel reading. The widow in the story is a poor woman. We have to assume that she has right on her side. The problem for her is how she might get justice. She keeps going back to the judge… not because she is a pain in the neck, not because she is argumentative, not because she wants to make money at someone else’s expense, but because she wants what is right. She knows that the odds are stacked against her. The judge himself doesn’t seem to care for what is right or wrong. We’re told that he “neither feared God nor had respect for people.” But she keeps going back to him until in the end she wears him down. And the outcome is not that he gives in and makes a ruling like those who simply have money and influence might want… He gives in and grants her justice. The poor woman with right on her side makes the rich judge - who couldn’t care less - see what justice demands.
We need to remember that parables are not there merely to be explained. They’re there for the impact they make on those who hear them. This one begs the question, where is justice to be found? What is the integrity of those who administer the Law? Are the odds stacked against the poor? Does the legal system favour those who have the money to keep going back with more and more specious arguments? How remote is the whole system from ordinary people? I wonder how the widow in the story even gets near to the judge to plead with him. She can gain access to him for the sake of telling the story - but could she do so in real life? - or would she be more like that character in another parable, the poor man, Lazarus, lying with festering wounds at the rich man’s gate and never even noticed by him?
This is not just about the legal system either. It’s about the sort of society we want to live in. Is there justice in terms of access to health and social care? - or is it a lottery depending on where you live, on being able to argue for your rights, or in having the money to buy your way in? Are our children equitably served by our schools and the wider education system? - are young people from poorer families put off from trying to get into Higher Education by the fees and other costs they will face? And how do we treat those who are unemployed or suffering from disabilities when they find themselves sanctioned or deprived of benefits through delays in Universal Credit, or told they should be able to work by people who are quite unqualified to assess their true health? How can politicians argue that poor people should have to take their share of the pain in government cuts when already they can barely make ends meet? - how much can the less well-off be expected to give up?
This is not the time for politicking - but I think we have to see that the Gospel has political implications. The quest of the widow for justice in today’s parable isn’t just a fiction that doesn’t touch us. It begs the question what does justice require now? Only if we ask that question can we be serious about seeking justice from God - about expecting that he will hear our prayers… because what are we going to pray for?
If the parable has a single point it’s simply to say that Jesus is making a comparison between an unjust judge who finally gets worn down to do what is right, and a righteous God who is always on our side. If the poor widow finally gets her way by her pleading, then we should be ready to call on God - and keep asking because he hears our prayers. It may not always seem that way. But that is the message we can take away from the story.
That’s the message in our first reading from the Book of Genesis too. Jacob is on a journey back to his homeland. He’s fallen out with his father-in-law. He’s cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright. He can’t know what reception he’ll get when he gets back home. And suddenly he finds himself on his own. Then a stranger appears during the night - and without any explanation, without any apparent conversation, they get into a fight. And they wrestle all night until daybreak. The stranger strikes Jacob with a disabling blow, but still Jacob won’t let go. Only if the stranger blesses Jacob will he release his grip on him, he says. The stranger gives the blessing - and part of the blessing is to give Jacob a new name: he calls him “Israel,” literally, “He has struggled with God.” We never discover the stranger’s name - but then we realise how Moses hears from the Burning Bush a voice which gives no name for God except “I am who I am.” Jacob had had a vision of a ladder between earth and heaven on which the angels had ascended and descended. Now he recognises how God has come face to face with him. And Jacob has held on. There’s no clear way forward for Jacob, except we’re told that he can now continue on his way limping because of the blow to his hip. It’s a reminder to us that we can hold on in all our struggles and find it’s God we are wrestling with, discover that it’s God who is holding us - and though we might limp on feebly, we find that life is changed because God travels on with us.
Back to the Gospel reading for today…
“There was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for his people.” This is the worst sort of person there could be in Jesus’ book. Because when Jesus sums up the Law he says,
The first commandment is this:
‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord.
You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your
soul, and with all your mind,
and with all your strength.’
The second is
this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’
There is no
other commandment greater than these.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
So fear that God
who is to be loved - hold on to him, as already he holds us. Show that you love
your neighbours by seeking justice for
them. That’s the Law - and it’s free for all.
