Imagine the scene: you may not have to try too hard. Two children are squabbling over…, well you can fill in that detail for yourselves. At some stage there will be an appeal to the great referee of all things - either mum or dad. Or it may be that a parent ends up rushing to intervene when there is a shout or scream because one has hit the other. “Why did you hit your brother?” “Well he started it…” and the script continues with familiar predictability.

Some how parents have to acquire the skills of a wise judge or may be you just get fed up and send them both to their rooms? Either way we can develop a certain sympathy with the judge in that rather peculiar sounding Gospel reading (Luke 18:1-8), who gets thoroughly fed up with the woman’s pleading and grants her request to get rid of her and stop her pestering.

As a strategy, giving in to those who pester most rather than deciding on the merits of a case, is bad justice and sets a rod for your own back. The next time someone wants something they learn that cases are decided on who can be the biggest nuisance and that is a recipe for chaos and civil unrest - though if it got that far I suspect that heavy measures would soon be deployed!

The story is used by Jesus as a way of providing reassurance for his followers to help them when they find life hard and a struggle. Things will not always go well for them and this story is meant to encourage them to keep at it. It is meant ironically. God is not like a shoddy judge who provides because of nagging and to be rid of a pest. The moral is if this judge is prepared to grant justice how much more will God come to their aid. They are to trust that God will hear them and they will be vindicated, they will be found to be on the side of right and the angels, when it counts.

This is the setting for the religious use of words like justification and vindication. They pop up from time to time, but we don’t tend to explore what they really mean very often. They draw on the image of a courtroom. When we find ourselves in the ultimate courtroom drama, the judgement of God will find in our favour. It carries notions of the righting of wrongs and being found to be in the right place. It’s as if someone is suing someone else for damages and for the harm they have done. The judge will find in our favour. It comes from a time when Christians were being persecuted and having to struggle against overwhelming odds.

St Paul uses this notion of justification quite a bit in his letters. For him, we are justified, the decision is found in our favour, by our faith. Our faith puts us in the right place; belief and trust in God lead to salvation.

Some of this may resonate with how you experience Christian living. Some of it may feel a world away. What are the times that make us feel that we need to appeal to the ultimate judge of all things? What are the times that make us feel that we cry out and no one answers? What are the times that we feel under pressure, even at breaking point, because of the stance we have taken, the values we are living by, the gospel we proclaim? These are the moments when this passage is meant to offer solace and comfort.

Jesus tells us to bring these moments to him in prayer. When we do, we will be heard and not ignored.

The question at the end of the passage shows just how much Jesus understands us. After these reassuring words, he asks ‘But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’ In other words, this is the promise, you will be found to be in the right place, you are held by God, but do you believe it?

We live in a fix-it culture. If it’s broke, we assume it can be sorted out and everything can be made to be alright. So when we read passages like this, we expect armies of angels to be deployed to fix-it and sort things out now. We tend to have blinded ourselves to just how provisional everything is. We have even removed the natural rhythms from farming. Winter used to be the time of fallow fields and when we experienced death in the natural order of crop cycles. Spring was new life. Summer the full blossoming of that life and its most fruitful season. Autumn was the time when things began to fade and die back. Now with winter crops that order has been disrupted. Produce out of season here is shipped in from abroad and finds its way onto the shelves. So we have removed the reinforcement of this natural order from what we see around us, the reinforcement of things being provisional, though city dwellers are in some ways handicapped even more by not seeing much of it at all; though I suppose in our gardens we might.

The time scale of this passage is somewhat longer than our own. We are encouraged to live with integrity and to pursue certain ways and values because they are right. We are encouraged to stick with the side of the angels because the alternative is of no value, long term or even short term really. And here our first reading comes in to play. When there are temptations to throw in the towel, to pack up, even to look for easy answers, our first reading warned us against this (2 Timothy 3:14-4:5). It talked about people having ‘itching ears’, looking for ‘teachers to suit their own desires’, turning ‘away from the truth’.

Being told that everything is provisional may sound like no comfort at all, but actually it is true. Avoiding it and running after false myths and delusions, things that tickle our itching ears (to borrow a phrase from the Epistle), causes so much neurosis and disruption. Behind Jesus’ reassurance is actually truth and this is a truth that sets us free. Once we embrace it we find a strange peace that passes our understanding, which is liberating and life enhancing. Through this faith we find ourselves justified, in the right place before God’s throne of grace.

© Ian Black 2004

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