Unlikely Heroes

It is probably no accident that children’s literature is full of unlikely heroes.

Harry Potter is known as “the boy who lived,”

because what should have been a curse that killed him as a baby was,

somehow, ineffective.

He goes on to bumble his way through heroism, at first.

He’s not the smartest one in the class—that’s definitely Hermione.

He doesn’t ace every class or every test.

He doesn’t know every spell.

He often acts from his emotions than from patience

or wisdom.

But his courage and perseverance,

as well as what seems to be a kind of divine calling,

lift him out of his circumstances

and allow him to accomplish the hero’s quest in the

novels.

Another children’s author who writes unlikely heroes very well is Roald Dahl.

Think of Charlie, if you know the story of Charlie and the Chocolate

Factory.

Charlie is poor and humble,

unlike all of the other children who are chosen to visit

the chocolate factory of Willie Wonka.

He’s not formally educated and doesn’t understand the actions and

motivations of the cruel and selfish children around him—

and yet his honesty and selflessness were why he was chosen

in the first place

and why he passes the moral test given to him

by Willie Wonka,

inheriting the factory and ensuring

that it remains a place of wonder

for generations to come.

Children’s literature is full of unlikely heroes because children are,

most of the time, powerless.

They don’t have the physical strength, the freedom,

or the power to accomplish their goals.

And because of their weakness,

they are often exploited by the unscrupulous.

Children’s literature becomes an imaginative escape,

a vision of a world in which kids are given respect, power,

and authority to make meaningful change,

often in the direction of a world

that is more just, more kind, and more loving.

Jesus’s parables are very much like children’s literature.

Though his audience was not primarily children,

he did often speak to those who, like children,

did not hold power or authority in society.

He did often speak to those who, like children,

were exploited by the unscrupulous.

In the imaginative worlds created by Jesus’s parables,

everything is turned upside down.

The weak become strong;

the powerless become powerful;

and they are able to implement a new order of things,

a way of being that Jesus will call the Kingdom, or the Reign, of God.

Like Jesus’s other parables,

the parable of the unjust judge tells this kind of story, too;

but it does so in ways that are a bit more confusing than usual.

We are introduced to two characters in this story.

The first is the judge.

He functions like a civil magistrate,

in something like a small claims court;

but the word “judge” in Greek also suggests

that the idea that a judge is someone who has the right to judge

because of their good character.

In other words, a “judge” is someone whose character stands up to scrutiny,

someone who is well-respected enough that their actions

are meant to be imitated.

But this judge doesn’t have good character.

This judge does not fear God or respect people.

He is often therefore called the “unjust” judge,

which is really a paradox.

You literally can’t *be* a judge and be unjust at the same time.

So this is a man who has lost his way,

someone who no longer fits within his proper category.

He may still have the power of his title,

but he has no moral authority.

This judge reminds me of those “judges” in the south

under Jim Crow who continually denied African-Americans

the right to vote.

They may have had the power but they, too,

“neither feared God nor had respect for people.”

These types of figures are what we might call practical atheists.

They may confess God with their lips,

but do not honor God with their actions.

They behave as if the law of God’s love

just simply doesn’t apply to them.

The other character is the widow, who is the unlikely hero of the story.

The widow is sometimes used as a stock character in Jesus’s parables

for anyone who is powerless

or who is particularly vulnerable to abuse;

in the prophets, the widow is often paired with “the orphan”

to signal those who are often overlooked in society.

When we hear the plea of the widow to the judge—“grant me justice

against my opponent”—we are meant to catch the irony of this plea.

Here we have an atheist judge,

someone who denies the justice of God,

someone whose only interest is in upholding the systems

that grant him peace and security.

Do we really expect him to listen to this widow,

this woman who has no real legal standing or social status?

The widow is a stand-in for all those to whom justice is denied,

all those who advocate for justice in a system that seems

deliberately constructed to keep them down.

I think of the African-American reporter and activist Ida B. Wells,

who documented the terrible history of lynching in the south.

She once said something that sounds very much like the widow’s situation in

our parable:

“I have firmly believed all along that the law was on our side and

would, when we appealed to it, give us justice.

I feel shorn of that belief and utterly discouraged, and just now,

if it were possible,

would gather my race in my arms and fly away with them.”

She pleaded for justice in the midst of an unjust system, just like the widow.

Doing so can often feel like trying to swim against a raging current.

The judge in the story eventually gives in,

but not because he is convinced of the rightness of the widow’s plea;

not because he has some road-to-Damascus conversion and

sees the error of his ways.

No, he does not all of a sudden become a just judge. He is still unjust.

He only grants the widow’s plea because of her persistence,

though it’s not really even because of that, either.

The text literally says that he grants her justice

because he is afraid of her giving him a black eye.

Though she is not necessarily going to physically hit him,

perhaps in the end he simply worried about losing face,

about becoming embarrassed or shamed by this woman

who simply will not take no for an answer.

How long did it take for the widow to be granted justice?

We don’t know. But I imagine this woman coming every single day

for perhaps years, pleading her case, gathering witnesses,

presenting evidence,

convincing people to come to her side.

She is the genesis of a movement, an organization,

dedicated to the singular purpose of advocating for the cause of

justice.

Maybe this means that the widow has gotten under the judge’s skin.

It seems at least that she has become an unlikely hero.

There is hope here, hope that her prayers and cries for justice,

seemingly endless, seemingly unanswered, are one day,

surprisingly, answered.

She gets up that morning,

makes breakfast for herself,

greets her friends who are helping to support her,

gathers herself, and goes to the courthouse for yet another

day of advocacy, another day of arguing, another day

that requires of her great perseverance,

bravery, and courage.

And then the judge simply ends her pain and suffering.

He grants her justice.

The impossible has now become possible.

Her fortunes are reversed.

The world has, for a shining and shocking moment, turned upside down.

The child wins the day over the mean and uncaring grownup.

The widow receives her due.

Those who have nothing are granted everything.

This is indeed a story about hope,

the kind of hope against hope that knows, deep in its bones,

that sometimes everything does actually change for the better.

It is a story, too, of preparation for the dark times in our lives.

Jesus tells his disciples this parable, not the crowds.

He tells it to them because he knows that, soon,

they will be widowed from his presence, in his trial and death.

It will seem as though everything has grown dark.

Indeed, soon they will be the widows,

bereaved and powerless to stop

the grinding gears of injustice as they watch

their beloved teacher, friend, and savior

be sentenced to an unjust death.

So listen, Jesus says, even to this atheist judge.

Even someone as deeply unjust as he

was willing to overturn the world

for a moment to grant justice.

He did it out of the wrong motives,

but that doesn’t change the fact that the widow

finally got what she truly desired.

What does God want to give you, beloved children, Jesus asks?

Doesn’t God, who is the truest and most righteous and most just judge,

want to give you justice as well?

We know in our heads that the answer to the question is yes;

but in our hearts, where the conversation often truly happens,

we aren’t always convinced.

And this is where faith comes into play.

Jesus says, when I come into my Kingdom,

will I find faith on the earth?

In this story, I think faith means playing the long game.

I like the word “fidelity” here even more than the word “faith.”

Sometimes we think of “faith” as believing all the right things,

or checking off all the right boxes.

But “fidelity” reminds us that our faith is not in a set of beliefs,

but in a person.

Our fidelity, our steadfastness, our loyalty, our pledge,

is to a person, Jesus Christ.

Fidelity reminds us that our only task, really, as Christians,

is to show up and be willing to let the Holy Spirit do her work in us.

So we show up.

We pray, and we plead, and we remain faithful,

hoping against hope that, one day, the world turns upside down,

and that God’s reign of justice is fully implemented on earth

as it is in heaven.

We pray, and we plead, and we remain faithful,

hoping against hope that God meets us

in our most difficult times of need.

We get up, as the widow did, make our breakfast,

and unhesitatingly present to God our most

intimate and heartfelt needs.

We do so knowing that our God is not like the unjust judge;

our God does not worry that our cries and prayers will give him

a black eye.

We do so knowing that our God acts,

and acts out of a divine and perfect Love

far beyond our understanding.

We pray, and we plead, and we remain faithful.

At times, we are brutally honest with God,

because we know that God can take it, and has taken it,

and will continue to take it.

We pray, and we plead, and we remain faithful,

giving of our time, talents, and treasure,

knowing that God will bless whatever we offer

for the furtherance of God’s kingdom.

And finally,

we remember that the ones who listened to this parable originally,

Jesus’s dear friends and disciples,

were not faithful, steadfast, and persevering at first.

We remember that they failed Jesus in his time of need.

They fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane.

They abandoned him at the foot of the cross.

And yet they were transformed by the forgiveness

and grace of the Risen Christ into those

who turned the world upside down.

They, like the widow, became unlikely heroes as well.

We are all unlikely heroes.

We look at the circumstances of our own lives,

and at the world around us,

and it feels sometimes as though everything is arranged

against us.

But Jesus has promised to turn the world upside down.

It could happen at any moment, just as it did for the widow.

All we have to do is pray, and plead, and remain faithful.

And even if we don’t, God will still use us,

through our weakness and failure,

to turn the world upside down.