Saturday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
To my mind, the parable from Luke today is all about power. It’s a very familiar sort of power. And it’s the sort of power that’s easily missed until we’re right up against it. It’s the sort of power that the woman in the parable experiences over and over and over again.
She approaches a man in a position to give her what she desperately needs—justice. And he simply looks the other way. So far as we know, he doesn’t even acknowledge her presence, never mind her plea.
Have you experienced power like that?
I certainly have. But, most of the time, it doesn’t matter much. I need something. I wait in line a long time. I finally get to the front of the line only to find out that it’s time for all of the workers behind the counter to take their lunch break, or I don’t have the form I need and no one seems to be able to get it to me. I’ll have to come back later. It’s all very frustrating, and it can feel (in moments like that) so unfair that someone else is getting in my way and doesn’t even acknowledge it.
While irritating, that, of course, is a minor example of power just doing its thing without even noticing.
I think of a much more significant example. A middle-aged working woman approaches the local office that handles voter registration for the umpteenth time. It’s 1958, and the guy sitting behind the desk, who has the power to grant or deny this woman’s voting rights, looks the other way. She leaves the voter registration office emptyhanded again. She leaves as a citizen who can’t vote because power says her blackness disqualifies her.
What does Jesus say? Notably, Jesus tells us to pay attention to the “dishonest judge” and what he had to say. The dishonest judge is completely indifferent to the woman’s plight. He has no compassion. No empathy. No fear. Perhaps that is the worst kind of judge—the one that simply doesn’t care about the people whose lives are in his hands.
Jesus goes on to inform his audience that God is not that sort of judge. Not by a long shot! Our God, Jesus wants us to know, listens. Cares. Responds. And that is very good news for all of us—sinners that we are and prone to blindness when it comes to all the problematic ways that we exercise power.
Finally, Jesus puts a question to us. It’s a tough one. It’s one all Christians must answer. Are we faithful? No idle question in this context.
Do we pray relentlessly for justice, like the woman in the parable?
Do we see how power is being used all around us all of the time in ways that curtail human flourishing?
Do we do anything about that?
Do we acknowledge the power that we exercise?
Do we exercise it in ways consistent with the Kingdom of God?
Jesus rarely makes discipleship easy or simple. Today’s challenge is no exception. May we have the courage to see the workings of power and steer them toward the common good.
—Susan Trollinger