ALL scripture is inspired by God and is useful for “training in righteousness”, 2 Timothy says. And so it is. But the training, we know, does not always come in the form of simple instructions. In this Gospel, it takes the form of an example drawn from daily life. When Paul (or his disciple) said this of scripture, he was certainly thinking of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament; for the New Testament was still being written.
The message in Luke 18 echoes what Jesus was revealing in Luke 11.5-13: we need to be persistent in prayer. His parable uses a weaker case to prove a stronger one. If even an unrighteous person, asked repeatedly for something by someone who is “unimportant”, does the right thing at last, how much more will our God of righteousness hasten to help us when we pray to him?
In this context, I could not help thinking of Augustine and his mother, Monica. She was desperate for him to become a Christian. She wept and prayed about it unceasingly; she even got hold of a bishop and badgered him to intervene. The bishop put up with her pestering for as long as he could, before eventually losing patience: “Let me be! It is impossible that the son of your tears should perish!”
History records that the bishop was right. Monica’s son did become a Christian. And he was a loving son who, like many children, forgave his parent even things that perhaps ought not to be forgiven. So history does not record how exceptionally annoying he, too, must have found her refusal to let the matter drop. Sometimes thinking of Monica reminds me to button my lip.
That bishop was not like the selfish friend or the unjust judge in Jesus’s parables. He did not give her what she wanted. He was a wise pastor, and knew that the heart must be open to receive the truth, and that being “puffed up” (in self-reliance) and “hardened” (by hostility) would not be remedied by any words, even episcopal ones. Augustine’s hard heart needed to become receptive to that mysterious mingling that Christians experience in the confluence of our yearning for God and God’s for us.
This parable is helpful to anyone who is struggling in prayer. Luke himself explains to us that its purpose is to remind us to pray always and not lose heart. He is addressing worries about the Parousia: that coming of the Son of Man which Christians in his day had been looking forward to for some decades. But I detect another kind of worry — the same one as underlay Monica’s bishop-badgering: worry because answers to prayer are not forthcoming — and the fears that stalk beside it: is my faith too weak? Is God rejecting me? Is he even there?
If we take 2 Timothy 3.16 as our guide, we are to look to the holy writings for training in righteousness, which is what the Gospel provides. But, if we are to achieve this, we first need reassurance about God himself. The parable does not mean that God is unjust. It means that, if even an unrighteous person sometimes does the right thing, God will hear and grant justice to those who pray. That needs asserting because the evidence — and our experience — are not always clear.
I suspect that one reason that the story makes the judge unjust is that Jesus needs us to stop focusing solely on the reactions (or lack of them) of the being whom we are praying to. In other words, prayer could achieve something valuable, even if it evoked no change of heart in the unjust person. This is because, as Augustine has said, “we do not pray in order to inform God, but to fortify ourselves.” In his case, Monica’s tears did not “persuade” God to make her son a Christian, thus giving her what she prayed for. They were a part of her relationship with God, not her son’s.
Just one closing thought drawn from the Genesis reading: seeing God face to face left Jacob bruised and in pain. Unlike the widow, he got a response without praying for one. If the stories of Jacob and of the widow lead us to conclude that how prayer works is an unpredictable mystery, it is a conclusion that will not surprise anyone who has ever prayed.
