October 19, 2025
Pentecost 19/ Proper 24, Year C
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex CT
Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119:97-104; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8
Back in the days when I was a working girl, commuting by train into Philadelphia from the far western suburbs, I would reach my stop at Market Street East and walk the remaining 8 blocks or so to my office in Society Hill. This walk took me through Old City, past the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, the 2nd Bank of America, and all the rest. For a period of time, this route also took me past a regular fixture that moved around to various locations in and around Center City, and this was a woman who sat on the sidewalk, weeping loudly. She was known as the Wailing Beggar.
Tucked up under a storefront awning or over a heating grate, her cries could be heard for a couple of blocks, her misery on display for all to see, as she begged repeatedly and insistently for help. Some of my attempts to communicate with her failed because she had difficulty stringing words together, so I would offer a smile, a God bless you, and a couple of bills dropped in her little cup from time to time. On more than one occasion, her condition was so dire that I would call the local homeless outreach center to have someone come check on her.
At some point, she was either placed into care or simply moved to another block not on my usual walk from the train, although in the years I made this commute, she would reappear along Walnut Street from time to time, offering up her wailing plea for help.
I have not thought of this woman in a long time, at least not until this week, when the echo of her weeping came to me as I read for the umpteenth time this story of the persistent widow. This parable has come to us not named after her – the woman who refused to be silent and go back to where she belonged. No, we call it the parable of the Unjust Judge, and even if this judge is not the God-figure in the story, I can’t help wondering what he’s doing here at all, withholding justice until he is simply broken down by the woman’s pestering. Robert Farrar Capon wrote that, “Never having been to theological seminary, (Jesus) was blessedly free of the professional theologian’s fear of using bad people as illustrations of the goodness of God.”[1] So, we are not in any way to commend this judge for finally relenting any more than we are to imagine that if we just pray hard enough and long enough, surely God will hear us and answer our prayers.
In case you need reminding, God is not a manipulator or a sadist. God is love, and God hears our prayers.
So, what are we to do with this unjust judge and persistent widow?
Maybe we can try injecting some holy imagination into this parable. What if the one who refuses to give up on pleading for justice is…God? In Luke’s gospel, especially, but really throughout both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, God is a God of justice.
What does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)
God has a particular concern for widows and orphans, the most vulnerable people in a patriarchal culture. The psalmists tell us
Father of orphans and protector of widows
is God in his holy habitation. (Psalm 68:5)
The Lord watches over the strangers
and upholds the orphan and the widow… (Psalm 146:9)
How many times have we ignored the cries of those in need? The children of Gaza? Parents being snatched away as they arrive to pick up their children from school? The elderly who are forced to choose between having prescriptions filled and buying food?
God is crying out for us to do justice in our communities and in our world. God is a persistent widow, a wailing beggar, crying out for our attention, for our mercy, for our care.
But, Elaine, this is silly, you say. God can’t be a helpless widow or beggar woman. God is all powerful. God doesn’t depend on us.
Ah, but you see, God does depend on us. God came into the world in the person of Jesus who found himself in front of an unjust judge, and did the people around him intervene to help? No, they stayed silent or even ran away to hide.
Our participation in the mending of creation, our pursuit justice for the oppressed, our responsiveness to the cries of the hungry, the afraid, the houseless, and the sick – this is what God is pleading for us to do.
Sure, we can wait. We can ignore those pleas. We can run away or busy ourselves with other things. But God is persistent. We cannot possibly outwait God.
And why would we? As we continue in this season of faith, generosity, and gratitude, we recognize that using our gifts for the work God has given us to do is our privilege and joy. God’s covenant is written on our hearts – “I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” (Jeremiah 31:31).
We pray that God’s will might be done here on earth as it is in heaven, and we are the ones who do God’s will. We are the ones who hear the cries for mercy and for justice just as God hears them. We are the ones who pray incessantly for our world, and then we go out and do out part.
And just as God hears us when we call, so we hear those who call to us. If we truly want God’s reign to come, we can’t sit by and wait for God to make it happen, because God is waiting for us.
[1] Robert Farrar Capon, The Parable of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988) 172.