In Praise of Persistent Women

There is no power on earth equal to that of a persistent woman. That’s the message for today. If you want to write down the point of this sermon, well, I’ve given it away already. No holding out for a big suspenseful ending to today’s sermon. The message is clear—there is no power on earth equal to that of a persistent woman.

Now you might think that statement’s a little dramatic. After all there are quite a few powerful things on earth and heaven we might talk about. There’s the power of the persistent mosquito. There are hurricanes and earthquakes and all manner of forces of power and destruction. There is the power of God, which we might want to say is more powerful than that of a persistent woman. But stick with me on this one for a minute. In the gospel parable of the day it is very clear that the power of a persistent woman is a thing to be reckoned with above all else.

You might also think my statement is a little exclusive. After all, can’t men be persistent as well? Can’t men be at least as powerful in their persistence? And how about children? They can be persistent. If you’ve ever taken a child through the check-out line in the grocery store past all that candy, you know they have a persuasive power all their own. But there’s no getting around the point of this parable. It’s a woman who holds the power here. And the fact that she is a woman is important.

Are you curious yet? Let’s take a little closer look at this gospel parable for today because it’s good comedy. Luke chapter 18 begins with Jesus telling his disciples a parable. A parable is a favorite way for Jesus to teach. It’s a story, and as with most stories, the point of the story is not always easy to express in only one way. Each time you hear a story, you hear it slightly differently and get a slightly different meaning from it. Jesus is usually content to let you do that with his parables.

But here the author of Luke does something that he doesn’t do very often. None of the gospel writers do this very much. Luke tells the point of the parable right up front! Kind of like I did with this sermon. No guessing what this is about. Jesus tells the disciples a story about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. Which is probably a very good thing for him to do since he just spent the last part of chapter 17 telling them how difficult their lives would be in the days and years to come.

So there it is. This is supposed to be a story about the need to pray always and not to lose heart. And the main character in this story is…well, you know whom the story is about. I told you at the very beginning. It’s about a… Well, actually it’s about a judge, but the persistent woman will show up in a minute.

Jesus says, “There was this city, you see. And in this city was a judge, but he was not a good, just, and fair judge like Judge Judy.” (Jesus didn’t actually talk about Judge Judy, I’m paraphrasing.) “Anyway, this judge neither feared God nor did he have any respect for people.” You’ve known judges like that. We’ve all heard of judges like that, who become corrupted by the power of their position and generally disregard fairness and justice in order to protect those who ought not to be protected. Believe it or not, even in Jesus’ day a corrupt judge was a believable character. Some things don’t change.

What doesn’t change is the fact that this is not the way things were supposed to be. One of the things judges were supposed to do is to give a fair hearing to everybody. In the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy the judges are told, “You must not be partial in judging: hear out the small and the great alike; you shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s.” [Deut. 1:17] Judges are supposed to fear God and they are supposed to respect people, but this judge in Jesus’ story does neither.

But I said there was a persistent woman in this story and there is. She lived in this same city. She was a widow, which in Jesus’ day meant that she was one of the most vulnerable members of the society. In Biblical times, there was no Social Security, no supplemental benefits, no aid to survivors. In a patriarchal world, men were the key to some sort of safety net. And judges in particular were given the task of ensuring that some measure of justice was done for the widows and the orphans. In the book of Sirach, part of our Apocrypha, judges are given the model of God, the righteous judge, and we are told that God “will not ignore the supplication of the orphan, or the widow when she pours out her complaint.” [Sir. 35:17] Judges are supposed to do the same.

Now we don’t know what the particular case of this particular widow was, but she had a case. She had an opponent and she had a legal dispute with this opponent and the only way that she could ensure justice in her case was to keep appealing to the judge, who just happened to be the corrupt judge from verse 2. Of course, being a corrupt judge, he refuses to help her.

But this is a persistent woman, and the point of this sermon is—there is no power on earth equal to that of a persistent woman. So the story doesn’t end here. The judge has a little soliloquy that we are allowed to overhear. He is talking to himself and he’s very honest. Very self-aware. He says to himself, “Self, I know that have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, but this widow keeps bothering me.”

Now that’s how the New Revised Standard Version puts it. The King James Version says, “She troubleth me.” But that’s not how the Greek puts it. The Greek literally says, “This widow is threatening to give me a beating.” When I said this woman is persistent, I mean she is persistent and this judge, who doesn’t even fear God, is physically afraid of the most vulnerable member of society.

It gets even better. The New Revised Standard Version continues, “Because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” Well, this makes it sound like the widow will get her way just because she’s a very good nag who will eventually wear the judge down. But that’s not what’s going on here and it’s a terrible translation of the Greek. What it literally says is that the judge is going to grant her justice because the widow might come up and give him a black eye! It’s a boxing term being used here—hupopiaze—and it means, to strike somebody just below the eye or to beat them black and blue. What the judge says is, “I’m going to give this woman what she wants, because she’s liable to haul off and hupopiaze me.” And no self-respecting person, even one who has no fear of God, wants to be hupopiaz-ied. Behold the power of persistent women!

Now that’s the end of the story. And remember this is being billed as a story about the need to pray always and not to lose heart. So Jesus makes the connection for them. “Listen to what that crooked judge says. He’s willing to grant justice even though he doesn’t give a lick about real justice, just because of this woman. How much more will God grant justice to God’s children who cry to him day and night? Will he be slow in helping them? Of course not. God will quickly grant justice to them.”

Now there’s a lot of distance between the judge in the story and God. God does care about real justice and it is in the nature of God to grant justice. It is also the case that God is presumably not in the position of feeling bullied or physically threatened by petitioners who might do God some harm. But what does this tell us about prayer?

Do we really believe that the best form of prayer is constant nagging? Is it really a matter of saying the right thing the right number of times with the right attitude? If an enemy is oppressing me, whether it’s my neighbor or a bottle of alcohol, is it really my persistent begging in just the right tone that will cause God to release me? Will the petitions of 300 million Americans offered to God in regular intervals with sufficient fervor bring about an end to terrorist bombings and justice for the wronged? And what then do we say to the mountains of seemingly unanswered prayers offered in sincerity, blood, sweat and tears by persistent women and men of every generation?

If we are to pray always and not to lose heart…If we are to cry out night and day…If God, who has been our guide for centuries and who promises a kingdom that is not yet come, if this God promised to quickly grant justice to those who call upon God…If all these things be true, then prayer cannot be what I have just described. Because there are just are not enough minutes in the day when a creature like me could offer up prayers appropriate to the justice I desire. There is not enough fervor or strength in my body or soul that could earn the merit of God’s attention. There is no way I could make my case with any confidence that it was worthy of this high standard of prayer Jesus seems to set.

But then I remember the persistent woman. If her pursuit of her case is a model for prayer, then it certainly is not a passive-aggressive model that alternates nagging with waiting on something to happen on her behalf. The widow in Jesus’ story doesn’t wait around for something to happen. She is there every day, tapped into what she already knows is just and good, and proclaiming it loudly. And as the Greek text shows, she is not an example of someone who wears down the judge with words, she is physically powerful. The most powerless person in the story has power that causes the judge to cower because she is living her life already out of an understanding of that justice she desires. Before the judge does anything, the widow has received power, and it doesn’t come from him.

This is why Jesus adds one more line to this story that I haven’t yet mentioned. After the story of the woman and the judge, after the promise that God will quickly grant justice to those who call out for it, Jesus asks one more question. “And yet, when all is said and done, when the Son of Humanity comes, will he find faith on earth?” Will he find that people are not waiting around for what will come in the future, but rather, will they be actively living their faith out in the here and now?

I have a friend, Molly Gee, who wrote an article in the latest newsletter from the Wesley Foundation at UVA, our campus ministry there. In it she talks about going to a John Mayer concert and listening to him sing one of his most popular songs, “Waiting on the World to Change.” Molly says that at first she liked the song because it expresses a hope that things will change. Now she says, it drives her nuts. In the song, John Mayer “talks about he and his friends don’t like the way things are and so they wait. What are they waiting for?” At the concert she says she found herself standing beside a young woman who was screaming throughout the concert, “I love you, John Mayer!” Molly says she worried about this young woman, “singing along with this song and thinking she’s an activist because of it. Knowing the world needs to change is a good first step, but waiting doesn’t do a thing.”

Molly says that the other singer at that concert was Sheryl Crow and she found herself envying Sheryl’s muscular arms through the concert. So after the concert she started lifting weights. “I don’t have Sheryl Crow’s arms,” she says, “but I’m a little closer than I was. Change takes time.”[i]

So what are we doing when we pray? Are we just waiting? Paul’s letter to the Romans contains a great truth. He says, very realistically, I believe, that we do not know how to pray. Even with all of the best methods, even with all of the best intentions, even when we’ve been doing it for years, we do not know how to pray. And yet we are commanded to do so. Is it so that we can offer up a laundry list of needs, desires, and Christmas wishes? Or is it so that we can stand before God in all of our inarticulate insecurity, to say the simple, hopelessly inappropriate words that we can say, and to feel all of our mumbling and bumbling swept up nevertheless into the heart of God? That’s what the Holy Spirit does, you see. As Paul says, the Spirit intercedes with sighs to deep for words. What that tells me is that we don’t pray. The Spirit does.

We don’t pray. We simply tap into that awesome power at the center of the universe and the center of our lives and we hold on for dear life. We open ourselves to prayer because it is in prayer that we discover that justice is not something we wait for in the Second Coming, it’s something being worked out in our lives every day. Justice won’t come because we beg some heavenly sugar daddy for it. Justice comes because persistent women and persistent men refuse to accept the world as it is. The transformation God intends for all creation is not just a highlight for the end of the world news wrap-up; it’s happening now in the lives of praying people.

So I can resonate with a widow packing a powerful right jab for justice. I can celebrate that the kingdom is not just yet to come, but already is. And I can see that the company of persistent women is large and growing. From Catherine of Siena in the 14th century who was the counsel of popes to Dorothy Day in the 20th century who fought for fair working conditions in urban America. From a Canaanite woman who argued with Jesus to ensure the healing of her child, to the women of Afghanistan who are treated like ghosts in their own land, but who will yet tell a story of redemption and hope. I believe in the power of persistent women, and I pray that I may pray with their knowledge, which sees beyond the way things are, to the way things are in God’s eyes.

As a church, we should pray this way, too. Because God hears and knows. And God will transform the world. When God does, I hope we won’t be waiting around, but fighting for justice. Thanks be to God.

Luke 18:1-8
He also told them a parable regarding the necessity of praying always and not to lose heart. He said, “There was a certain judge in a certain city that did not fear God, nor did he have regard for people. Now there was a widow in that city and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Vindicate me against my adversary.’ For a time he did not want to do this, but eventually he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God nor respect people, still I will vindicate this widow because she is causing me vexation and so that in the end she doesn’t come beat me black and blue.’”

Then the Lord said, “Hear what the unjust judge has to say. Will God not make vindication for his chosen people who are crying out to him day and night? And will he delay long over them? I tell you he will make vindication for them speedily. Even so, when the Son of Humanity has come, will he find faith upon the earth?”

[i] Molly Gee, “Waiting on the World to Change,” Wesley Word, Fall 2007