Luke 18:1-8

From Paul Nuechterlein's Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary:

"When Jesus urges us to pray without ceasing, what do we pray for? What would it take for the Son of Man to come and to find faith on earth? Let us pray without ceasing, and let our prayer be the prayer of God's kingdom, of God's justice. Let it be a prayer for the blessing of forgiveness."

From "Shameless Behavior," Historical Cultural Context by John J. Pilch:

"Jesus' conclusion is: If a helpless widow can get through to a shameless judge, all the more can a petitioner be heard by an honor-sensitive God.

The moral makes convincing sense in the Mediterranean world but may be less convincing in the modem world. Many believers remember offering prayers that seem to have gone unanswered. Some spiritual wags have remarked: "Of course God answered. The answer was no." This observation may be too simplistic. Remember that the Mediterranean world is strongly group oriented. The widow's petition was publicly made; for all his bluster and denial, the judge respected public opinion. It was group pressure that made the judge cave in.

Americans are individualistically oriented and generally discount the value of the group. Americans generally address individualistic prayers to God in private. No group hears, no group can help. The widow's strategy is worth pondering."

Also at Saint Louis University's Center for Liturgy, John Kavanaugh, SJ, "Perserverance":

"Perhaps Jesus meant the story of the widow to represent the state of humanity itself, suffering in the wound of time. The very condition of our fallen creaturehood needs some final healing. All temporary cures, all wars won, all peace treaties are just signals. There is no earthly final therapy, no definitive victory over death, no endless peace...

Thus, for God incarnate a fundamental concern looms large. Christ asks but one thing of us: not that we comprise an invulnerable army, never wounded or pained, at the end of time, but that we form a vast cavalcade of men and women who, despite the sufferings of history, believe in his promise."

At Michael Hardin and Jeff Krantz' Preaching Peace:

"The subtle direction of the parable is from the lesser to the greater. Remember it is a parable about persevering in prayer in times of great distress. If the corrupt judge finally hears the widow if just to shut her up already, how much more will the heavenly Abba hear the prayers of his children? If we being evil know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will the heavenly Abba give good gifts to his children? This parable reflects Jesus’ belief that God is good, God is kind, Abba treats humans as his very own children.

An admittedly more curious but not unrelated connection can be made if, as many commentators note, the parables of chapter 18 have a relation to the teaching on prayer in chapter 11. One could perhaps, as Kenneth Bailey has done, look for and find a general chiastic structure to the Lukan Travel Narrative, in which case the apocalyptic teaching that frames the parables of chapter 18 is echoed in 11:14-32. The social/cultural breakdown described in 17:20-37 is mirrored by the exorcisms Jesus performs. Apocalypse is nothing other than the casting down of the Satan, the generative originator of violence, the lies of violence and the cult of violence. It is the complete and final malfunction of the scapegoating mechanism that has held the ‘world’ in place from its foundation in Cain and Abel. It is the conquering of the Crucified (‘they will look upon me whom they have pierced’). And it is certainly a time to pray...

In these times we who believe in Jesus do not see the conquering of Satan, rather we are simply witnesses to the conquered Satan. Jesus is the Victor! We can and we may, therefore, be people of faith, faith in Jesus, the ‘True Human’ (‘huios tou anthropou’), the One who lives in us and with us and whose true humanness is shared through us with others.

Maybe we will witness the collapse of culture (the casting down of Satan). What skills are we teaching our congregations for dealing with it if we are? Will they be able to pray if times turn? Will the Son of Man find faith?

From William Loader's First Thoughts :

"So it is missing the mark if we treat the passage as a general teaching about intercessory prayer. It is primarily about the yearning for change. It was very appropriate that the story told of a poor widow. She represents a behaviour, but she also represents the poverty and vulnerability which is the point of the parable’s message. The story has been shaped in the cruelty of exploitation and the arbitrary abuse of power. It belongs in the world which Jesus is addressing. Jesus is reading the signs in the wounds of the people. The contours of their devastation shape the structures of his thought, because this is where he belongs and these are the people whose cries he hears."

What is "faith" in this passage, and, indeed, in the book of Luke? What is it in our own lives and the lives of our communities, all religious rhetoric aside? In what do we persevere and what is the point of the perseverance? And what is the point/place of prayer in our perseverance and in our "faith"?