For Sunday, October 16, 2016 – Luke 18:1-8
When I was a college student, a friend and I would discuss often what it means to live the Christian life—not just to believe in the idea of it or strive to get better at it or seek a certain emotional response to it, but to let the way of Jesus become our way, here and now. What if we made choices based not so much on what fit our preferences or even on our sense of moral rightness, but on what Jesus might do and be calling us to do? How would that impact the way we lived? Where would we go, with whom would we associate, if we were to get that serious about following Jesus?
We were waking up. Out of the pleasant slumber of being good church kids, we were now facing a pivotal question: Would we reap the reward of being seen as responsible young adults who made good choices from a proscribed list called “morally approved,” or would we begin to ask questions, knock at the door of authority, make people squirm if necessary? Would we follow the path of least resistance, mostly keeping our eyes shut, or would we dare to encounter God in the world?
Jesus tells a parable about a widow, then an icon of dis-empowerment, who is not satisfied with the responses she has been getting from her local distributor of “morally approved” answers, the justice system. She shows us what it looks like to be not only a child of God but an adult of God, not abdicating our responsibility to stand up for what is true. She who is called powerless will not accept the status quo, will not allow authority, even the authority determined to be above other authorities, become an impenetrable wall. She goes again and again to knock on that wall, to challenge that wall, to demand that it yield. Our good and moral lives take us only so far, and sometimes they simply do not align with the response God wants from us.
To wake up is to seek realignment. We must dare to grow up, to stand steady before the powers, to pester and provoke them when necessary, to be a wedge under the foundation. Even though our efforts might be as small as the widow’s, the wall does shift. Justice depends on our being adult enough to act on our small part.
