"But this woman's a nagger," Jesus says. (Now his audience is snickering and chuckling.)
"She just won't let go. And she's strong and aggressive besides. She comes back day after day insisting that she get justice against her adversary. And as the days go by, she gets more and more insistent -- and threatening. So much so that the judge starts getting worried about his own safety.
(Laughter from the crowd . . .)
"'While it is true,' he says to himself, "that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.'"
In other words, this macho judge is afraid of this poor widow; he's afraid she'll come and beat him up!
Can you imagine Jesus saying that without smiling broadly -- and without the crowd erupting in laughter?
Anyway, here's Jesus point: "If an unjust judge responds to the prayer of the poor like that, how do you suppose the All-Parent will respond when we ask for justice? The All-Parent will respond swiftly, Jesus says, because that's who God is -- the one who (as Martin Luther King put it) has established an arc of history that bends towards justice.
Prayer, then, is about reminding ourselves of history's divinely established arc. It's about, trusting that in the long run justice and truth will prevail. Taking that position in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, takes great faith that's harder and harder to find.
So Jesus ends his parable with the rhetorical question, "When the Son of Man returns, do you think he'll find that kind of faith anywhere?"
What I want to suggest here is that today we're more likely to find the widow's faith -- her kind of prayer -- her kind of persistence in women rather than in the men of power they oppose. The latter are more at home with Moses' way of praying than with the poor widow's.
Today we can see her type of prayer in the work, for example, of Medea Benjamin. Do you recall last May when she interrupted a speech by President Obama about the closing of Guantanamo Bay? Four times during his speech, she reminded the president that as chief executive he had the power to close the prison as he had promised during his campaign of 2008.
Clearly Medea's outspokenness called for great courage and exposed to an international audience President Obama's failure to keep his word. She was as intimidating to Mr. Obama as the widow-woman was to the unjust judge.
Then think about Ellizabeth Warren and her words addressed to "self-made men" who claim they owe nothing to government or community to explain their success. Senator Warren said,
"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there -- good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.".Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea -- God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."
Finally, Amy Goodman is another example of a courageous persistent woman committed to justice for the poor. In the face of mainstream media's refusal to cover significant grassroots events and issues, Amy's program, "Democracy Now," is must-watch daily source of news for the well-informed. It is an example of what can be accomplished for peace and social justice in the face of overwhelming odds.
In summary, the example of social activist Medea Benjamin encourages people of faith to find our voices in defense of the voiceless in U.S. prison camps throughout the world. Politician, Elizabeth Warren, calls us to pray always by calling into question received truths like those surrounding "self-made men." Amy Goodman and her "War and Peace Report" inspire us to renounce ideas of God that call us to "mow our enemies down."
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