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(Read this series from its beginning here.)
The widow made the life of the magistrate uncomfortable until he did something. We are called to do the same in relation to our legislators today. When was the last time you contacted your representative to share how you feel about society? When was the last time you were a holy gadfly? After all, power concedes nothing without demand:
“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” (Frederick Douglass; If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress, 1857)
As Jesus followers, we are called to be like the widow: crying out day and night to both our God and those in power in our government. We are called to be people of the life-giving, death overturning resurrection; called to be part of undoing and reversing the personal and systemic injustice of our communities, today.
Some will say that the story of the widow is only about prayer, that it has an otherworldly point and application only. This is a convenient interpretation for the judges in our day who hold the power to shape our societies into safe communities for the marginalized and disenfranchised but instead interpret laws in ways that do harm. I think of all those who are presently worried whether by this time next year whether they will still have healthcare. I think of women and their doctors wondering whether they will have a choice in how to treat their own bodies or manage their patients’ care. I think of my LGBTQ married friends and whether their government will still recognize their marriages with equal validity to mine.
That’s why I don’t interpret this story to be solely about prayer. That would leave injustice untouched in our present world, and leave those who face oppression daily dangerously close to passivity. This widow not only cried out to her God day and night, but she also made life for the judge whose power she lived under, pretty annoying, too.
Change doesn’t happen without action and action is how positive changes are maintained, as well. May the actions we choose today not require others to reverse them in the future. But if the positive changes of the last four decades are undone, if progress is reversed, we’ll be there for that, too. We have no control over what struggles we will be called to face in our lifetime. We only have the choice of how we will respond and what we will choose to do in the limited time that each of us is given here.
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