Genesis 32.22–31 Jacob Wrestles at Peniel
2 Timothy 3.14-4.5 The
man who is dedicated to God becomes fully equipped and ready for any good work
Luke 18.1-8 The parable of the
unjust judge
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Today’s gospel reading features a parable that challenges
and stretches and, perhaps, even baffles us.
And that’s what parables are there to do.
They don’t give ready answers but as we explore them
meaning is generated and their point and purpose sinks in.
The purpose of this parable, Jesus tells us, is ‘[our] need
to pray always and not to lose heart’ (Luke 18.1).
The parable takes us to the first century equivalent of the
Small Claims Court.
It focuses on the persistent woman who stands ringing the
doorbell of a judge who just can’t be bothered to deal with what he clearly
regards as an insignificant case brought by an insignificant bothersome person:
a woman; a widow.
Her persistence is rewarded when the judge relents and acts
justly
It’s usually assumed when this parable is heard that it is
us, you and me, who are being likened to the persistent widow.
Surely her persistence exemplifies the need to pray always
and not lose heart.
We readily assume that the unjust judge in the parable is
how God is; not really that interested in hearing what we have to say.
But what if our assumptions are all wrong?
What if we need to flip it around?
After all, we humans are the ones who more often deign to
sit in judgement on God: why does he allow this; why did he permit that?
Some philosophers and many in our culture today even have had
the audacity to declare God to be dead.
St Paul warned about this in our second reading:
3For the time is coming when people will not put up with
sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves
teachers to suit their own desires, 4and will turn away from
listening to the truth and wander away to myths. (2 Timothy 4.3-4)
We are the ones who ‘neither fear God nor have respect for
people’ (Luke 18.2).
We are the ones more likely to be caught up with our own
preoccupations, thinking about what we want first before we ponder the
mysteries of God or consider the needs of others.
We are the ones who are more likely to deny the claims of
justice, if those claims impinge on what we want.
Like Jacob, in our first reading, we wrestle with an image
of God that we want to control.
When we try to shake God off in our lives we will end up
limping along, like Jacob.
The judge is deaf to the woman’s claims; so often we are
deaf to the just claims of God.
It is God who is the persistent one.
Through history his prophets have proclaimed God’s message
of fidelity to the covenant, God’s justice and righteousness, and through
history even God’s people wander and stray.
He then sent his own Son. Who, as St Paul says:
6
…though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And
being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2.6-8)
That is persistence: God’s passionate, persistent, pursuit
of us.
Yet still we fail to embrace him wholeheartedly, still our
prayer is not persistent, and we lose heart and faith in him.
On reflection, then, fellow sinners, it is more
characteristic of we fallen human beings to be the ones who turn a deaf ear to
the persistent Lord who loves us and calls us, gently and yet insistently.
A saint is one whose life is shaped by prayer, that radical
openness to the mysteries of God, knowing that like the unjust judge the human
heart can be softened, and when we have a heart of flesh, not a heart of stone,
then great things begin to happen.
Like Blessed Mary we say ‘yes’ to God, we say ‘be it unto
me according to thy word’.
Mary heard the call of the Saviour.
Listen.
Open the ears of your heart.
The Lord calls you; knocks at the door of your heart; he
calls you go step forward and move deeper into his life, for there you will
find life in all its abundance. .
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