The Judge

Proper 24 C—Text: Luke 18:1-8

A while back I was in Best Buy, looking through CDs, and if given the time, I will look through each section diligently. If you asked Rose, she’d tell you. Once I venture in, there’s no coming out for at least half an hour. This occasion was no exception. I started at the A’s and moved down the row and then moved back up the next, going through the E’s and up into the I’s. I noticed a woman nearby in the video game department. She had been there when I first got to the section, and she was still there ten minutes later. I only took notice because she was in her late 30’s and had three kids with her: one tugging on her pant leg saying “Mommy, look at this!”; the second was holding her mother’s leg like a tree trunk saying “Mommy can we go soon?” to which her mother responded “in a minute” each time; and the third, the youngest, was sitting in the cart, staring at seemingly nothing.

So I walked down the backside of the aisle, looking through the CDs again. This time, I was a bit distracted. Who is this woman, and why isn’t she responding to her kids? She was still there when I finished and went up to the registers.

I’m not a parent yet, but I know that if I capitulate to a child’s request he or she will stop asking that question. They no doubt will find something else to talk about, but that one request can be simply answered.

Our gospel is about Jesus instructing his disciples, but it includes this parable about the unjust judge. This guy doesn’t seem very nice, right? There are many names we could call him, but let’s settle on jerk. He’s a jerk. He doesn’t care about God and he doesn’t care about other people. And worse, he admits it. He knows this about himself. He recognizes his jerkiness and seems unmoved by it. But we also gather that he is shrewd and self-absorbed. He is thinking of himself only and that this widow’s pleas for justice are not ringing at all with him. If only there were a way to shut her up? I know, I’ll give her what she wants, he says.

We know how often we are pulled in various directions. Requests are made that deserve a no, but making the person stop seems to override it. It seems like a valid option—conscent. Yes, I will give you justice we say.

But this gospel isn’t about being practical and it isn’t about getting so annoyed that we capitulate. Because if we look at what is written, Jesus attributes this judge’s position to God: “And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?”

Can God truly be this unjust judge?

Well…yes and no.

Just take a second to look at the clues that Jesus is leaving for us:

1. The judge is “unjust”
2. “A widow who kept coming”
3. “Grant me justice”
4. “cry to him day and night”

Jesus is giving us an inverse of the real story because we get the judge’s perspective—a persepective in which we cannot count. This widow that comes isn’t annoying. She isn’t a child repeating the same question incessantly or a boss like Michael Scott on The Office, whose just ignorant. She has come to the judge, the one person that can change things and is crying out for justice and he is ignoring her.

He is that mother who answers her daughter’s question with “in a minute” but doesn’t move in twenty. Worse, his job is justice. His whole world is justice, and this widow could be anyone. Beaten by an abusive husband, mugged coming home from the store and now too frightened to leave the house, or she may have been stripped of all of those things in her life in which she holds most dear. And the judge, in his leather chair, expensive suit, and his election victories ignores her.

More often than not, we’re that judge.

Protest away. I know. We love God. We do great things. And we love one another. But how often do we ignore that voice that cries for justice? Charles Hoffacker suggests that we play the judge and God plays the widow. God calls us over and over to do justice and we ignore her. We say “I’m too busy right now.” Or “I’m already collecting clothes for Siren.” Or “I’m on vestry and ECW and on and on”. We listen to a God that preaches love and patience and kindness; a God that grants us mercy and strength. And yet we ignore the God that cries to us “day and night”. The God that elsewhere in Jeremiah suggests that we “Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed”. We seem to have a pretty selective hearing.

On the way home from Saginaw yesterday, I was listening to a song I have listened to many times before, but this time was different. In “Choked and Seperated” by Hot Water Music, singers Chuck Ragan and Chris Wollard seemed to be speaking directly to me:

I'm sick of standing with my hands in my pockets, I'm coming in.
Been broke down, choked out, not speaking, not breathing in.
Are we gonna fix it?
When are we gonna start?
If it's really too late, I guess I'm looking back.
If it's really just time, you can have all of it.
If that's where we think straight, I'll do anything to keep us from feeling choked and separated.
'Cause it's all the same things again and again.
fall down, repeat, fall down, keep falling down.

And then repeats two questions:

Is this what we're doing?
What are we doing?

Our gospel shows us a grace that we take for granted. God will grant justice and wants us to do the same. Our pain and confusion and anxiety and fear and mistrust and all of those things that keep us choked and separated are God’s. And we are God’s. And we are invited in.

We’re invited into this circle of justice that allows each of us to watch and listen and feel and speak. We are granted a regular audience with God through our prayers and wherever two or three are gathered. Jesus assures us that God doesn’t ignore our cries and we are given the opportunity to answer God’s and other people’s. “I'm sick of standing with my hands in my pockets, I'm coming in.”