The Prayers of the People: Judges, Widows, Pharisees,Tax Collectors, and Us

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells two parables about prayer one right after the other. That’s probably not an accident. Whether Jesus actually told these parable back to back or Luke puts them in this order, we should pause and wonder how each parable interprets the other.

The first parable is about a widow who will not stop calling for justice for her cause and a judge who reluctantly grants her justice so that she will stop bothering him. The introductory verse explains this is a parable about the “need to pray always and not to lose heart”.¹

In the next parable a Pharisee and a tax collector go to the Temple to pray and the parable explores who is righteous, who is justified before God. The introductory verse explains this parable was told “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt”.²

(My posts on these parables are linked in this footnote.³)

What does praying always, working for justice, and not losing heart have to do with righteousness and contempt for others?

In this world, the work for justice is never finished. Striving for all people to have enough food, good shelter, safety, health care, access to good schools and jobs, protecting the environment and all the other justice concerns of Jesus and ourselves are never finished. The world can always be a better place. Working for justice takes time- a long time. It’s tiring. It’s frustrating. I’m writing this in October of 2025 and we seem to have less justice, less support for the poor, and more fear and uncertainty. SNAP benefits are expiring in a few days and people will be hungry. Migrants and US citizens are being unlawfully detained. Health insurance premium costs will be rising with the result that people will not be able to afford health care. I could go on and on and on. And oh yeah, the East wing of the White House has been summarily demolished. It feels like a tidal wave of terror and pain and loss.

And yet, like the widow in the parable, we must keep pressing, keep advocating for justice. It’s discouraging, and it’s infuriating that justice is so hard to come by. History reminds us that the work for true justice is too often slow work. It’s tempting to become angry over the slow pace of justice work. It’s easy to become angry over injustice. And then it’s a very short step to become angry with “those people” who obstruct or deny justice. It’s easy to become judgmental. It’s easy to rationalize and even feel some satisfaction as they suffer along with everyone else, because “Hey you voted for this, too bad for you.” Bitterness and the desire for revenge is lurking outside our doors, as surely as it lurked outside Cain’s door. The temptation to feel self righteous is strong. The temptation to despise others is strong. Much in our culture and society encourages us to see ourselves as the “good ones” and to look down on the “bad guys”. It’s easy to dismiss and diminish them as “other”. We may become reluctant or even unable to recognize true repentance when it happens. We cannot forget that no one, absolutely no one is outside of God’s love and God’s ability to redeem.

That Christians are to love our neighbors is a well known quote from Jesus. Unsurprisingly we talk less about Jesus telling us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. We may be surprised and dismayed to discover there are people who oppose our work for justice. Sometimes the opposition is fierce. Sometimes it is casual cruelty. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t expecting anyone to seriously oppose food for hungry people. Or to oppose access to healthcare. I wasn’t expecting enemies. Jesus knew better.

These parables offer encouragement. We need to work for justice, “pray always and not to lose heart”. Eventually, perhaps even reluctantly, justice comes. And the parables issue a warning, we need to take care to not become “some[one] who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt”.

Now that we have been warned about the dangers of abandoning the work of justice, and the dangers of self righteousness and contempt what do we do? How do we persist in the work of justice? How do we not lose heart? And how do we not hold others in contempt? How do we love our enemies?

The Christian tradition has some ideas about this. Worship, the Sacraments, and spiritual disciplines. Don’t let the words “spiritual disciples” scare you. Spiritual disciplines are simply ancient practices that have helped Christians for two thousand years to keep pressing for justice and loving those who oppose us in this work. There are a variety of spiritual disciplines. Some will be a better fit for you than others. Some will be better suited to particular times in your life than others. The spiritual disciplines are not a checklist or a rule book. They are guides, more like a topographic map than a road map. I won’t discuss particular spiritual practices here, although I’ll suggest a very few helpful books in the footnote.⁴

If you don’t have some practices that help you persist in the work for justice and resist the temptation to judgement and contempt, I urge you to consider finding some. If you have some, I urge you to regularly and faithfully practice them. The Christian life and it’s called to peace and justice matters and it matters that we are as grounded spiritually as we can be.

My point today is that we need to be attentive to what is going on around us. We need to notice and to act. Equally crucially, we need to be attentive to ourselves. We need to be aware and mindful about what’s going on in our own hearts, minds, and souls We need to be attentive to those with whom we engage in Christian community and justice work, paying attention to the heart, mind, and soul of our community. Keep praying. Pray for the world and all whom God loves, which includes those who would oppose God’s justice. Pray for yourself because you matter so much.

1. Luke 18:1 ↩︎
2. Luke 18:9 ↩︎
3. See the last two posts, She Persisted and So Should We. and The Perils of Gratitude ↩︎
4. Sacred Resistance: A Practical Guide to Christian Witness and Dissent, Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, Abingdon Press 2018.
   Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life, Marjorie J. Thompson, WestminterJohnKnox Books 2014.
   Almost anything written by Henri Nouwen or Richard Rohr.
   I have linked you to Amazon only because you can read excerpts from the books, which I find helpful. Buy your books wherever you want to. Or use your local public library! ↩︎