Proper 24 (29) – Year C
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost: October 19, 2025
Gospel Lectionary Text
Luke 18:1-8
18:1 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.
18:2 He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.
18:3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, 'Grant me justice against my opponent.'
18:4 For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone,
18:5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'"
18:6 And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says.
18:7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?
18:8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
Context
Welcome to the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost. In this week’s text, Jesus tells a story designed to embolden the disciples to “pray and not lose heart.” He tells of a widow who pleads her case before an unjust judge who, in the end, grants her request, if only because she wears him out.
Jesus wants the disciples to pray like the widow, with the same fierce honesty Job showed when he demanded God take up his case. Both the widow and Job refuse to take no for an answer. There is nothing polite or deferential about this kind of prayer. It’s what James Alison calls “the guerrilla warfare of desiring.” Jesus invites his disciples to be real, raw, and relentless with their desires, unconcerned with whether they might offend God. In other words, Jesus is emboldening his followers to get honest and tell the Old Fart to get off his celestial ass and do something. Whoa!
If that makes you uneasy, take heart — Jesus isn’t scandalized, and that’s not even the crux of the story. The real question isn’t whether we have permission to pray wholeheartedly, directly, holding nothing back. For Jesus, this is not only acceptable, it’s preferable to liturgically sanctioned but half-hearted forms of prayer.
The real question is whether God, in any way, resembles the unjust judge. If God resembles anyone in the story, it’s the widow who prays like Job. And if anyone resembles the judge, it’s us. God is what the poet calls the “Hound of Heaven,” relentlessly pursuing us with goodness, love, and mercy until we finally respond in kind.
Whatever else prayer is, it’s a response to the One who stands at our door and knocks, without ceasing, sometimes very LOUDLY.
Question
Are your prayers polite enough to keep you safe, or honest enough to set you free?
Reflections
God is Nothing like the Judges of this World
By Ron Ruthruff |
Here we are, once again, in Luke's gospel, where the writer places those that have little political power or religious clout – social outsiders – at the center of the story. This usually happens to the dismay of those that consider themselves righteous and worthy of being at the center...
This Widow
By Lina Thompson |
As I’ve read today’s passage, I’ve been wracking my brain with this question: Have I ever had to persist in my prayers to God? Has there ever been anything I have desired so much that I have continually petitioned God like the widow in today’s text?
The Joy of All Desiring
By Kris Rocke |
We don’t know the specifics of her case, though I like to imagine her as the Rosa Parks of her community. What we know for sure is that she ultimately wears out the unjust judge with her demands. He grants her request, if only to get some rest. Unfortunately, this describes the experience of prayer...
Faith from Below
By Lina Thompson |
This is a familiar parable Jesus uses to teach us about the nature of prayer. The widow shows us what it looks like to persist in prayer: to keep praying, believing and acting like God will answer our prayers because God is just and merciful. Even though it is familiar, this parable has always left…
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
This week, we invite you to reflect on two examples of "persistent widows" from novels by Alice Walker and Colum McCann.
The widow doesn't receive much characterization in the Gospel story. She just shows up, day after day, to a judge who has "no fear of God and no respect for anyone," and demands, "Grant me justice against my opponent."
As Tillie puts it in Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, this judge might be flirting with "an ass-kicking like none he ever got before."
What encouragement do we find, in the words of these women, and the bluntness with which they confront God with injustice? Does it deepen our comfort if we imagine that it is actually God who looks with Shug's eyes, or speaks with Tillie's tongue: "You're gonne drop your eyes, and look to the ground, and answer me"?
Excerpt from The Color Purple
by Alice Walker
“What I love best about Shug is what she been through. When you look in Shug’s eyes you know she been where she been, seen what she seen, did what she did. And now she know. And if you don’t git out the way, she’ll tell you about it.” – Celie –
Excerpt from Let The Great World Spin
by Colum McCann
In this passage from McCann's novel, the character Tillie reflects on God’s role in her life of abandonment and abuse, and in the death of her daughter Jazzlyn, as well as her good friend Corrigan. At 60 years old, Tillie is a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails survivor, and a career prostitute since she was 15. Tillie is in prison because she takes the blame for a robbery she committed with her daughter, Jazzlyn, who, like her, also became a prostitute. Tillie is distraught over her daughter’s death and resolves to kill herself, but not before she gets this off her chest:
“I don’t know who God is, but if I meet Him anytime soon I’m going to get Him in the corner until He tells me the truth. I am going to slap Him stupid and push Him around until He can’t run away. Until He’s looking up at me and then I’ll get Him to tell me why He done what he done to me and what he done to Corrie and why do all the good ones die and where is Jazzlyn now, and why she ended up there, and how He allowed me to do what I done to her. He’s going to come along on His pretty white cloud with all His pretty little angels flapping their pretty while wings and I’m gonna out and say it formal: Why the fuck did you let me do it, God? And He’s gonna drop His eyes and look to the ground and answer me. And if He says Jazz ain’t in heaven, if He says she didn’t make it through, He’s gonna get himself and ass-kicking. That’s what He’s gonna get. An ass-kicking like none He ever got before.”
Prayer
This week, the call to prayer comes from the Street Psalms Centering Prayer:
Come, Holy Spirit, wild and free. Do as you please. Shine your light on me that I might see things as they are, not as I am. Free me to act in your name with courage, creativity, and compassion.
