Finding Faith and Justice
This weekend Sr. Rosemarie Greco, DW, will give the Homily at the Milton Congregational Church in Litchfield, CT. Based on Genesis 32:22-31, Luke 18: 1-8, and Psalm 121, Sister explores how persistence intersects the struggles of the widow for justice and the intent of prayer.
The text below is her Homily revised for print.
The Scripture readings of these past weeks make me wonder if God is giving a message to me. In the past month, messages of persistence, prayer, and wrestling have come up more than once. The themes of prayer, faith, and struggle keep emerging. At first, I was caught off guard, but then I had to admit that the wisdom of the Christian Community in selecting these passages must know that we need these messages at this time.
I ask: What is going on? Everyone is in a struggle. Everyone is wrestling in some way. Jacob is wrestling physically with God during the night. The widow is wrestling verbally with the unjust judge. And at the end of all of this, Jesus asks: “When the Son of Man comes will he find faith on earth?” With all the consternation in these readings, we have to wonder – what is faith? What is the purpose of wrestling? For Jacob and the widow, faith is definitely not a peaceful experience or the herald of a spirituality of calmness. Will there be people who persevere in prayer? That is the question Jesus is asking.
Taking the lead from Jesus, we ask ourselves, “What is prayer”? Christian churches teach that prayer is raising our hearts and minds to God. Prayer is also the requesting of good things from God. This is probably the most consistent form of prayer for most people – we ask for help of some kind from a God we know to be in heaven or at least somewhere beyond us. We ask and when we have received it, we then offer a prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude. Prayer takes place when we have a relationship with God. It is a dialog with God and a consciousness of a Divine Presence within ourselves and beyond. Jesus reminds us that he is in us, and we are in him: we are in God, and God is in us. To know there is no separation between God and us is true spirituality.
The widow in the Gospel asks for a good that she needs, but she pleads with someone who has no consideration for people or God. The unjust judge is a personality to be feared, who cares about no one, whether a person or God. Such a person easily towers over everyone. The widow in town wants only a just decision against an adversary. Dare she wrestle with this judge? How is she equipped to wrestle? She obviously has little standing in society.
She wrestles with many personal things. The widow has to confront her feelings of inadequacy, poverty, limited education, feelings of self-doubt, and the assumption that nothing can change. At the same time, while facing these, she is persistent in her plea for justice.
It is easy to find ourselves in a similar situation, saying the exact debilitating words that drain energy from us. We may criticize ourselves, saying we should be humble and accept what comes our way. By doing so, we diminish our energy to seek what we need.
Jesus tells us, in this parable, to stay with it – to believe in what we are asking, have faith, and hope that our plea will be heard and answered in due time. This persistent widow can wear down even the unjust judge. She asks only for justice but receives only unwillingness and delay. Then, one day, the judge decides he is tired of her constant petition. He even begins to fear violence. His fear makes him deliver justice.
The Gospel writer presents this parable as a lesson about being persistent in prayer and not losing heart. But the widow in the parable is teaching us about justice. These two, prayer and justice, are not usually matched as partners. Both prayer and pleading for justice require persistence and confidence. They both involve struggling and wrestling with reality and our hopes for a better future. We persist because we trust God, who is with us and in us; who heals, lifts up the poor, and helps people find their voice.
We have seen this take place in our own time: Our great Civil Rights activists were people of deep prayer as they called for justice; so too, the Ukrainian people, and the women in Iran, to name a few. Prayer for justice also takes place in our own families and communities.
The widow reminds us of God’s persistence in wanting the best for all of us. It is God who is pounding on the door of our hearts.
We can find ourselves in this scripture when we pray for justice and help for ourselves and the world.
Do we have an answer to the question Jesus poses - “Will he find faith on earth?”
With our confident prayer, our confident living, and our confidence in ourselves and our God who never abandons us, we can say, “Yes, there is, and there will be faith on earth.”
Sr. Rosemarie Greco, DW