Luke 18:1-8 "Live Boldly"

“You see,” Jesus said as the peasant entourage of listeners settled down at his feet for a good story, “there was this widow, and she had been wronged.” And the audience clucked and whispered and nodded their heads. They knew what “being wronged” meant. It happened to them all the time – being cheated, getting the short end of the stick. They knew from their own experience that it was not a good place to be.


Why, the dear old soul really had nothing going for her. She was powerless because when she had buried her husband, she had buried her identity as well. She was a nobody because that was just the way it was with women who were not associated with a better half, a better half who could be depended upon to speak up in times of need.

She was poor – because all the widows of whom Jesus ever spoke were poor – and because she was poor she had no money with which to grease the wheels of justice. She could not have put up a bribe even if she had wanted to. When you lined up all the things that worked against her, the chance of her wrong being righted was virtually nil.

“And then,” continued Jesus, “there was this judge - and the judge was corrupt.” And his listeners knowingly nodded their heads once again. Judges like that were a denarius a dozen. They knew that taking bribes was probably so commonplace in that judge’s book that he had most likely rationalized that it was best for society if he filched a shekel or two from the poor whenever he could.

The audience could picture that judge. He was calloused and had long ago mastered the ability to simply look the other way when it suited his purposes. He was condescending – adept at staring through those wire rimmed glasses he wore down the length of his pointy nose to whoever groveled at his feet.

They just knew that he was the kind of judge who ordered his assistants to bribe the riffraff outside of the Tent of Justice, so only those with the ability to pay were prompted to plea their cases. And the shekels came rolling in – even if true justice slipped out the back door.

“So,” said Jesus, “There was this widow and there was this judge.” But that is where the stereotypes ended. Because the widow was not like the usual run-of-the-mill widows the judge was used to. This one was persistent. This one just did not give up.

Every time the judge turned around, there she was – giving him that look and shaking her finger at him. She rattled the tent flaps, and he could hear her arguing with his bouncers as he shuffled papers around on his desk.

She found him at the café on Main Street in the morning just as the waitress brought him a platter of steaming eggs and sausage – and well before his second cup of coffee.

She was right there when he snuck out of his flimsy Tent of Justice for a cigarette. And when all he wanted was a few minutes of quiet in the mid-afternoon for a cup of tea and a biscuit – there she would be. She badgered him all the way home – night after night.

He even dreamt about her. It was the same dream every night, one of those recurring things. The widow would be following him down a long darkened tunnel that seemed to go on forever, her high pitched voice bouncing off the floors and ceiling, echoing up and down the ancient passageway and rattling interminably inside his head -

- Until he could stand it no longer. “Leave me alone!” the judge shouted one day at the widow in broad daylight. “I give up. You can have what you want. Just get out of my life. Just leave me be.” And she did. And he did. And the parable ended.

An assistant manager of a large department store saw a boy standing at the bottom of the escalator one day. The assistant became suspicious. He watched the boy for a while. The boy had his eyes glued on the moving handrail. Finally the assistant approached the lad and questioned him.

"Something wrong, young man?" he asked.

"No sir," replied the boy, not taking his eyes off the handrail, "I'm just waiting for my bubble gum to come back."

Persistence - that is what this parable is about. As a prelude to the actual story, Jesus tells his listeners that this tale is about prayer and its link to the kind of perseverance that the old widow demonstrated. And most sermons I have heard on this passage focus on just that – on how we need to be persistent in our prayers, how we need not be alarmed if our prayers are not answered in our own good time, how we need to be conscious of what many see to be the causal relationship between prayer and faith.

And those are certainly worthy topics to spring from this parable in the Gospel of Luke. However, I keep thinking that prayer is not (or at least should not) be something we do in a vacuum, closed off from the world. I am reminded of Frederick Douglass when he said, “I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

To be truly efficacious, prayer necessarily involves action on our part. And so, it would seem to me that if Jesus is telling us to be persistent in our prayer life, then he is also implying that we must be persistent in all of life as it unfolds before us. And when we think about the parable from this wider perspective, suddenly it becomes both a daring call to action and a profound word of hope.

Just as the old powerless widow was as feisty as could be, just as she was persistent to the point even of obnoxiousness, just as she never gave up when the world around her was probably snickering behind her back or laughing out loud in her face, so I believe that we are called to do the same. We are not pawns in this world, being moved around by some Higher Being. No – we are powerful – masters of our own destiny.

Live boldly this parable is telling us. Figure out what your passion is, where your heart lies – and act upon it. As Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, noted about the widow: "She is willing to say what wanted – out loud, day and night, over and over – whether she got it or not, because saying it was how she remembered who she was. It was how she remembered the shape of her heart…" Live boldly.

God did not put us on this earth to be wishy washy, to take whatever comes our way. Though that is sometimes mistakenly called meekness, it is in reality lack of conviction. God put us here to be agents of change and transformation, to live with passion and conviction.

Along about Saturday afternoon last weekend, at mile 15 of 23 miles, I wondered why I do these 3 day, 60 mile breast cancer walks. Oh, it is fun to wear pink, but the mobile showers are not the Ritz. Trying to get your 40 winks in one of literally a thousand cheap pink pup tents inches apart from each other gets old after the first year or so. Getting dressed in your sleeping bag so you can stay warm at 5:30 A.M. is not something I would want to do every day either. And a weekend of porta-potties? Need I say more!

And yet, there is something about 2700 people – walkers and volunteer crew – coming together not only with a common commitment to rid the world of cancer but also with a marvelous love for life itself, all of us participating in this event because of a strong belief that everyone deserves a full and rich lifetime and no one should have to endure months and years of surgeries and chemotherapy treatments -just to be able to be there when a toddler grows old enough to start kindergarten.

There is something about 2700 people coming together with a shared passion - albeit edged with blisters and ice packs – and a commitment to live that passion, walk that conviction, even if you are hobbling a bit at the end of the day but still trusting that tomorrow you will not be so stiff and so you will go on – and on – and on.

In a world that is too often jaded and cynical, apathetic, inert, and focused on what we can not do, there is something about 2700 people coming together to be what Leonard Pitts, a fellow walker and syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald wrote last Wednesday, to be like ants. “Ants don't know about inertia,” Pitts writes. “They have a goal: to build and expand their underground cities. And they do achieve this by working cooperatively, moving earth one grain at a time.”

This parable is about persistence. It is about having the widow’s hutzpah to keep nagging the judge even when it seems pointless to continue to do so. It is about putting one foot in front of the other when what you really want to do is take your shoes off and put your feet up. It is about looking deep inside of you and discovering what means the most to you – whether that be a cancer-free world, simply another day lived, or something in between.

This parable is about persistence, but it is also about realizing that if you live persistently, as the old widow did, you will also live boldly as she likewise did.

If you consciously and persistently pursue your passion, whatever it may be, you will live boldly. It can be no other way. And when you live boldly – oh, the things you will do, the ways the world will change.

When you live boldly – oh, what you will realize about life itself. That it is not about challenges that are too big, problems that are too complex, difficulties that can not be handled, or dilemmas that can not be untangled.

No – when you live boldly, you will realize that life is indeed a journey and it is what we – each one of us – will choose to make of it. It is an adventure – one to be enjoyed, to be savored. And in the end, it is for living. Live boldly!

Rev. Nancy Foran is the pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church in Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org