Knock

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
October 16, 2022

24 Proper C

          In the days before everyone had caller ID on their phones, back when every phone call we answered was an adventure, one of our frequent callers in the church office was a woman named Rose.  I recognized her voice before she identified herself, if she identified herself, and to this day I can see her face and hear her voice.  She was a slight woman.  A person who at least claimed to be her husband was always hovering in the background whether Rose called on the phone or showed up at the office door.  Rose always needed something: food, gasoline, a night in a hotel, a bus ticket somewhere.  The list of needs seemed endless, and even when we sprang for the bus ticket out of town, a week later Rose and her husband would be back needing something more.  Sometimes we could help.  Many times we could not.  But Rose was nothing if not persistent and she would call or knock until her needs were met.

I am reminded of Rose when I hear Jesus’ parable this morning.    Jesus seems to tell his disciples to be as persistent in prayer as the widow was in demanding justice against her opponent.  In Jesus’ time, judges were entrusted with protecting the poor, the widows and the orphans. Widows had no way to support themselves.  They were totally dependent on God and the justice of the judge for their survival. In the parable, the judge tries to ignore the widow’s request, but because the widow will knock until her needs are met, the judge finally grants the widow justice so that she will go away. At the end of the parable, Jesus 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." Jesus seems to be telling us that if we pray long enough and hard enough, if we are persistent enough and if we refuse to take "no" for an answer, eventually we will wear God down and get what we want.

There are at least two problems with this parable.  First, how many times have we prayed with all the persistence we could muster and yet our prayers seemed to go unanswered?  Did our loved one die, or our problem not get resolved, or our relationship remain broken because we did not pray hard enough?   Secondly, this parable makes us out to be spoiled children who, if we pester God long enough and hard enough, will get whatever we want so that we will go away.  Somehow I don’t think either of these is what Jesus has in mind.  So how can we understand this parable?

The reading from 2 Timothy reminds us that all Scripture is given to us for our learning.  I find this troublesome.  Does God really want us to stone our children when they talk back to us, as Deuteronomy 21 suggests, or refrain from wearing blended fabric as Leviticus 19 and Deuteronomy 22 suggest, or hate our mother and father, brothers and sisters, or even life itself as Jesus suggests in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. But the writer of 2 Timothy is not talking about every individual verse of Scripture, nor is 2 Timothy talking about taking one verse of Scripture and using that single verse to interpret all of Scripture. 2 Timothy is telling us that the whole of Scripture is inspired by God and given to us for our learning. God invites us to use the fullness of Scripture to understand a single difficult passage, so that we don’t have to rely on just our own experience and the words of a single passage of Scripture to figure out what God is calling us to do and be.

So, in this morning’s parable, we have a widow and an unjust judge. When we think about all of Scripture, we remember that over and over again in the gospels, especially Luke’s gospel, Jesus identifies with the poor and the outcast, the widows and the orphans. In Matthew’s gospel, we hear Jesus say that whenever we minister to the hungry and the thirsty, to those on the margins of society, we minister to him. In the book of Revelation, we hear Jesus say "Behold, I stand at the door and knock."  In the Hebrew Scriptures, the one who cares passionately about justice is God.  On the other hand, throughout Scripture, typically the ones who act unjustly and exploit other people, are people, not God. In the parables, typically, the bad king, the rude guest, the corrupt manager, or the stingy farmer represent people, not God. So, in the context of all of Scripture, perhaps there is different way to understand the parable of the unjust judge.

Perhaps God is the one knocking so persistently, demanding justice, and perhaps WE are the judge. Perhaps the persistence in this parable is God’s persistence, the knocking that will not stop until justice has been served. And in this parable, suppose that we are the judge, the ones empowered by God to bring about justice, to care for the poor and the oppressed, the outcasts and the victims of injustice. The persistent knocking is Jesus standing at the door of our hearts and knocking so that we may see and hear and feel the injustice of the world and be inspired to do something about it. Perhaps prayer is not about continually pestering God to do something about all that is wrong with our lives and the world until God gives in just so we will go away. Perhaps prayer is, at least in part, our listening and watching for God to show us all that is broken in this world and how we are to work on God’s behalf to bring about justice, healing, and peace.

I imagine that Rose continues to knock on the door or call the church office, always in need of something more.  Rose reminds me, and Rose reminds us, of the persistence of God that will continue to knock until we, like the judge in the parable, get out of our metaphorical beds, and do what God is asking.                                                                                      Amen.