How Jesus’ Parable in Luke 18 Offers Hope and Encouragement in Times of Struggle

Probably all of us have met people like a young mother of two young children, living alone, employed part-time, depressed and desperate. There are many people like her, good people pushed to the limit of their strength and not afraid to let other people know about their situation in the hope that they might find help. Perhaps we ourselves have been in situations when we found that bad things came upon us all at once. And we staggered.  

At such times a word of encouragement can enable us to go on. “Endurance” is after all a Christian virtue, mentioned often in the New Testament. Christian endurance is not, however, simply “hanging in there,” putting one foot in front of another day after day. Rather it is entrusting ourselves to the God in whose hands our future lies. And that future ultimately, we know by faith, is a blessed one. 

The Gospel of Luke this Sunday offers a parable of encouragement to persevere, though initially it might stop us in our tracks by its portrayal of God. The “unjust judge” proudly admits his contempt for God and his fellow human beings. In any case, he is about to meet his match in a widow.  

The widow keeps coming to the judge with a complaint: “Render a just decision for me against my adversary!” The judge puts her off again and again, but she does not let up. Eventually, however, the judge changes his mind, “because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming” (Luke 18:5, NRSV). But the Greek verb is hypōpiazō, meaning literally “give me a black eye.” Similarly, the Latin Vulgate, sugillare, “to beat someone black and blue.” The Lectionary (NABRE) correctly renders “strike.” This widow means business! 

People sometimes ask if the unjust judge is a portrait of God. Is Jesus comparing God to a judge afraid of a physical attack? Certainly not. Jesus’s parable takes a familiar situation and compares the action, not always the characters, to the reign of God. A woman finds a coin, a shepherd finds a lost sheep. Familiar happenings? Yes, but with a twist to make you stop and think. So the judge is not a model of God, but simply a cold-hearted and arrogant human being, deaf to the pleas of the poor except when they threaten violence. Only then does he cave. 

Jesus uses the story to encourage people to keep on asking and seeking. If repeated asking occasionally works even with horrible people like the judge, how much more will it work with the merciful God who hears those who call out to him day and night.

Richard Clifford, S.J., has taught biblical studies for 55 years, most recently at the Clough School of Theology and Ministry, Boston College, and has written many scholarly and popular books and articles.