10192022 – Luke 18.1-10
Have you ever felt like “an underdog?”
I know that I have…maybe even, many times in my life.
An underdog is a person or a group in a competition, usually in sports and creative works, who is expected “to lose.”
The party, team, or individual expected to win is called the favorite or the “top dog.”
In the case where an “underdog wins,” the outcome is definitely called “an upset.”
One of the reasons we “root for the underdog” is that it simply makes everything more exciting.
There is “no fun” in a one-sided, predictable match. Nothing to see there! It is predictable. Expected.
What we really want is a “cutthroat battle” between players “fighting neck and neck” and giving us a contest “full of gasps and sighs” before ending with an “unexpected twist.”
We count on “the underdog” to be “resilient” and to make “an exciting comeback” in the end.
The underdog often time captures “our heart.” The underdog has “our sympathies.” Some of us, can simply “relate!”
The widow, in our gospel account has always struck me, as being “the clear underdog.”
She is facing some pretty tough insurmountable odds, with little or no support from any source.
But she is also relentless. She got guts.
She is not only “an underdog,” she’s also “a bulldog,” as well… she grabs hold of what she wants and refuses to let go.
As she says to the ruthless judge who has declined to listen to her, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”
She never says, “please,” she never “kowtows” before the magistrate.
She stands face-to-face and nose-to-nose, eyeball-to-eyeball, and she does not back down.
She refuses to be “intimidated.”
She is going for the “jugular.” She wants justice and she wants justice now, in this lifetime.
We are never told for what she needs justice. It is left “open-ended.” Unspoken.
We do know that widows in the first-century world have had “no rights,” and this woman would have been no exception.
Any inheritance that would have come from her late husband would go immediately to their eldest son.
If she had no sons, it would default to her husband’s eldest brother. Always staying on his side of the family to be given to any living MALE MEMBER regardless of their age.
And as Jesus pointed out, it was common for the Temple Treasury to step in and to eat up any assets.
It was a culture that was unkind to women in general and widows in particular…
Which is one reason the prophets and Jesus (himself) always seemed to be so “out of synch” – “out of step” with their culture.
Jesus was usually on the side of “the underdog,” in a world that represented a definite survival-of-the-fittest way of thinking.
Whoever was holding the purse strings was “holding out” on the poor widow, forcing her to beg on the streets. Her only recourse was to “seek justice” through the courts.
But women were not allowed to testify. But that did not prevent her, from daily going after the judge.
And we are told, the judge in this case, “…neither feared God nor had any respect for people.”
But in this case, he is up against someone who is stronger than he is.
She may be “the underdog” and she may be “a woman,” but she is as “tough as nails.”
And she refuses to back down.
Jesus says she “kept coming to him.” Kept coming, kept coming, kept coming, she is relentless. Unstoppable.
The judge is able to hold out for a while.
“But eventually,” he realizes that she is not going to leave him alone until he settles her case, he begrudgingly, only begrudgingly grants her justice.
“…so that she may not wear me out by continually coming,” he says.
The judge apparently is more concerned with “his image” than he is about actually “doing what is right.”
Jesus suggests this should always be our approach to pray. Pray, and keep on praying. Pray hard. Pray ferociously. Give it all you have.
Just remember you cannot just pray for anything…this was all about praying for “justice,” equity, fair treatment… Praying for what is RIGHT.
Be relentless…and keep on praying…put your heart into it.
Amen.