Our Faith is Personal but Never Private

Image Credit: St Lucy Before the Judge (Lorenzo Lotto, 1532)

Proper 24 (29), Year C
19 October 2025

Jeremiah 31:27-34
Psalm 119:97-104
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Luke 18:1-8

I am deeply grateful for the congregation in which I was raised. Its deep liturgical practices drew me into God’s mystery, even when its reading of the Bible at times came close to literalism. It was here that as a teenager I first went on a silent retreat, were we spent three days in silence, interrupted only by lauds, sext, and vespers, or morning, noon, and evening prayer. It was here that I was encouraged to read the scriptures. It was here that I was introduced to the martyrs of the 20^th century and where I learned that our faith is never a private affair but concerns our whole life. That the community of the church was also my anchor that grounded me in our tumultuous family life I have share with you before.
But no community is perfect, even we aren’t, and there were times when our interpretation of the Bible was too literal and just this literal interpretation hid a text’s deeper truths. In case you are wondering. An example would be to insist that all events told in the scriptures are factual. Did God part the sea for the Israelites and drown the Egyptian army? There are no records of this event outside of the Bible. Does that mean it did not happen? The question whether it happened or not is secondary to the fact that the telling of the story is an act of confession: Israel confesses that God is a God who has heard their cry and has acted to liberate them. That is the important part of the story. And then there is, of course, the problem with the drowning of the Egyptians, which is recognized by Jewish midrash that tells of God forbidding the angels to rejoice at the Egyptians’ death, for God even mourns the death of God’s enemies.¹

That was a long way to come to my home congregation’s well intentioned but misguided literalism. It may, however, help us understand Timothy’s insistence in our second reading that all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness … (2 Timothy 3:16)
My pastor, when I was growing up, was not in favour of the ordination of women and this coloured the congregation’s understanding of the role of women in the church. (To his credit I must add that there were a number of women from the congregation who felt the call into the ministry, and despite his conviction he always issued the required pastoral letter of recommendation).

Nonetheless, the exhortation from 2 Corinthians 14 that women should be silent in the churches, (…) are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. And that ³⁵If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church, was well familiar to us, mostly because it seemed not only out of touch with the world we lived in but also with the role the wife of our pastor had in the congregation. She was certainly not silent. She was subordinate only to God and the community in the sense that that is good for all of us. In other words, no one runs their own show. Besides in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul had spoken of women prophesying, to which he had zero objection as long as they covered their heads. And thus women are permitted to wear hats in church while men are not.

What I am getting at is that the image of a docile, servile woman, as Christianity has fostered over many centuries is not the vision of the Bible. When the child Jesus is presented at the temple, the widow and prophet Anna speaks of the liberation of Jerusalem, for Jerusalem was an occupied city. (Luke 2:36-38) When in Luke four Jesus references the widow at Zarephath in Sidon, he is not referencing a wall flower but a strong woman, the caregiver of her son and his fierce advocate. And Mary, the archetype of all women is the one who not only said yes to the angel, stood under the cross when his friends had fled, but who also announced the coming reign of God.
Understanding that women are strong and are part of God’s economy will help us understand the story Jesus tells today, for the protagonist is not meek.
We must also understand that the judge in the parable is not God, for the judge represents not justice but injustice. He serves the interests of the powerful, for he fears neither God nor public opinion. It is likely that the judge rules in favour of those who bribe him.

The parable is about a widow, one of the most powerless groups in ancient societies, yet one always lifted up in the scriptures. The Psalmist tells us that God is a protector of widows. (Psalm 68) As a person without status or power, a widow would not expect to get a fair hearing by anyone, including judges beholden to their benefactors. But this widow is tough. She does not give up, and relentlessly petitions the judge. The judge finally grants her justice, but only to get rid of her.
Jesus ends the story with a question: When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

I think that what has often happened when we read this story is that we read it with the story of the friend who comes to us at midnight (Luke 11) in mind, and who asks for three loaves of bread because a friend has just arrived. Our usual takeaway from that story is the promise of Jesus, So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
And we have personalized the story as to be a promise to me personally, to you personally, and that if we just pray hard enough, God will give us what we ask, though we sometimes wonder why some prayers seem to go unanswered.
What we forget is that the story about the friend who comes at midnight is, like the story of the widow, a story about justice because the Torah obligates both hospitality (Lev 19:3-4; Deut 10:17-19) and sustenance (Lev 19:10; Deut 14:28-29). And those obligations are the obligations of the whole community.

And so the question at the end of the story about this remarkably strong and persistent widow, whether the Son of Man will find faith on earth, is a question about the things we are praying for, the things we insist on, the things we expect. We remember that the judge in the story is not a stand-in for God. And if we are looking for a God character in this story, it is the persistent widow, for God is persistent in loving us and persistent and seeking justice.

We live in times when the order we have long been used to appears to come apart. We live in a time when we have at last fully bought into the idea that we are consumers before we are anything else, and because of that our common values seem to have dissipated, a time when centrifugal powers are stronger than centripetal powers, the time about which 2 Timothy writes, ³For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, ⁴and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. (chapter 4).

In times like these it is easy to fall into cynicism and to disregard and dismiss all things and all people. It is equally easy to withdraw into my private happiness and pursue only the things that fulfill me personally, whatever they may be. One does not have to be religious to withdraw from the world.

In contrast to such withdrawal Jesus tells the story of the relentless widow. Even though the odds are stacked against her, she does not give up. She not only privately believes that justice will come but she publicly pesters the judge.
So when Jesus asks whether the Son of Man, at his coming, will find faith on earth he speaks against withdrawal from the world and for the Church’s public advocacy for justice, not partisan justice but justice just the same, for we pray that God’s will be done and for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

While this disposition of expectancy is undoubtedly difficult, we see the example of the widow and learn that her insistence and expectation of justice preserves our humanity in a way that withdrawal cannot. It is how the martyrs lived. A life that may or may not lead to martyrdom, but a life that is not my private possession but a life that wholly belongs to God.

That God wants to save us from withdrawal and cynicism, that with all of our life we may anticipate God’s reign of justice is good news to live by, for we trust in God’s promises and anticipate God’s reign when justice shall roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5)

Thanks be to God.