A Comic Story

Luke 18.1-8

1Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, "Grant me justice against my opponent." 4For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, "Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming."’ 6And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’

John Pridmore in Church Times

JESUS tells the comic story of the feisty widow and the grumpy judge so that we should keep praying and never despair, “though mercy long delay”. We should never despair. “Lose heart” (NEB and RSV) is too weak. We need the weightier word so that we can bring the light of the gospel to bear on a darker place than any region to which loss of heart can lead us.Despair is not the loneliness and desolation of “the dark night of the soul”. The darkness of the soul is the darkness before the dawn. Nor is it accidie, the torpor that overtakes us when the sun is high, the listlessness that has been identified with the “noonday demon” of the 91st (Psalm 91.6). Nor is it “spiritual distress”, the condition that, in all its many unhappy manifestations, has been the subject of much valuable research in recent years, notably in the nursing community.

As traditionally understood, despair is far worse than any anxiety of spirit, however acute. It is it is the deliberate and wilful abandonment of all hope of salvation. It is deadlier than any deadly sin. Some have claimed that it is the “unforgivable sin”. And yet, paradoxically, it is those closest to God who are most tempted to commit it.Benedictine monks and nuns are wholehearted in their search for God. To equip them for that quest, St Benedict presents them in his Rule with no less than 73 “instruments of good works”, 73 rungs on “the ladder of perfection”. The 72nd “good work” is “to make peace with an adversary before the setting of the sun”. Benedict, knowing what, by now, his brothers and sisters must be feeling, adds a final 73rd admonition: “Never despair of God’s mercy.”Despair can be an easy and attractive option. That is why it is so dangerous. Giving up the struggle comes as a great relief. The mountaineer lost in the snows is tempted simply to lie down and to surrender to whatever will be.

Gerard Manley Hopkins understood the seductive appeal of despair.
Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of manIn me ór, most weary, cry “I can no more.” I can;Can something, hope, wish, day come, not choose not to be.

Luke emphasises what it is that drives Jesus’s disciples to despair. It is that he takes such a long time coming. Luke understands history, particularly that there is an awful lot of it left. Luke, and only Luke, records Jesus’s warning: “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man and you will not see it” (Luke 17.22).

Two millennia later, that is where we are. The Kingdom of God seems as distant as ever. Apart, perhaps, from dentistry and Sellotape, the world seems no better a place than when the first friends of Jesus set out with such a spring in their step. Surely there is reason to despair.

Back to our story: the judge ignores the widow. We must remember that, in the Old Testament, judges, whatever else they were there for, were appointed to defend the rights of “widows and orphans” (Deuteronomy 10.18 and countless texts besides.) So this judge is shockingly — comically — negligent. Luke has fun reading his mind. Luke hears him saying to himself: “This tiresome woman will end up giving me a black eye!” The image is from the language of prize-fighting. Paul, something of a bruiser himself, uses the same figure of speech (1 Corinthians 9.27). (This really was once a funny story. It’s just that jokes tend to be less funny when they are told every three years on the 20th Sunday after Trinity.)Here, then, is a “how much more” story. If this grossly neglectful judge in the end yields to the persistent widow, how much more willing will God be to vindicate his people. And, Jesus adds, he will do so quickly.We are inclined to ask: “How quickly is ‘quickly’?” Jesus does not reply. Instead, he puts a question of his own. “Will the Son of Man find faith on earth when he comes?” That plaintive enquiry confirms the context in which this story is to be understood. It is the memory and prospect of history unfolding, age on age, which causes faith to falter. To abandon hope — hope having so often been dashed — would be to find peace of mind.Jesus fears that many of us will take that easy way out. But in our way stands this doughty widow who refuses to despair, and who teaches us how to pray. So, Lord, grant us:

Patience to watch, and wait, and weep,Though mercy long delay;Courage, our fainting souls to keep,And trust thee though thou slay.