Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  [Luke’s Gospel 18.1-8]

How comfortable it is to slip into that old pair of shoes we know so well, the ones which have adapted to the shape of our feet, which surrendered any pretence to fashion years ago, and which have so often accompanied us to relaxation. Good memories.

When we pick up bible stories, parables, especially the ones we have heard often, we slip contentedly into the way in which we have always imagined them. They have adapted themselves to our context; we know their measure and their timbre. If we are careful, we can avoid any real disruption.

Then we take the risk of asking someone how they hear the story Jesus tells, this parable of a steadfast woman and an unjust magistrate.

Who is most like God in the parable? Who bears the characteristics of one who is both worthy of worship and worthy of our trust? Who is persistent, faithful and seeking justice? Who reflects the one who seeks us out in love and hope, and will not give up?

Why, so easily, do we content ourselves with a pair of ill-fitting shoes; where a corrupt man of power, with no regard for God – or anyone – grants justice only out of self-interest? In what way is this man similar to God?

Does God require badgering? Does God respond simply from self-interest, in order to silence us?

This woman, this widow, emulates the persistent shepherd whose goodness and mercy pursue us all of our lives. Are there echoes of the Spirit who advocates for us when we can barely find the words, so that our prayers, our entreaties, sound like groans?

When we pray – for healing, or justice, or hope – we imagine a God who loves us beyond measure, and whose compassion is inherent because of the suffering God endures at the brokenness of our world.

This woman refuses to surrender. She insists on justice.

This one will stand with us as we advocate for those who have no voice for themselves. Would she delay in offering us her hand, her voice, her home, her food?

God insists on seeking us out, offering us life, acting to restore all life through the death and resurrection of Jesus. When do we imagine that God ceases to seek life for us, and to offer us mercy? God cajoles us faithfully to act mercifully, to forgive and forgive, to love those who seek us harm. God will not give up on us.  

Perhaps we are the ones who need convincing? Perhaps we are the ones who need to change, so that we understand where injustice crouches, and brokenness remains unrelieved. Perhaps this parable offers something entirely new.

Jesus asserts that God is nothing like this corrupted magistrate. Jesus proclaims a God who will not delay justice, who insists on standing with those in need.

When we think we know what God is like, and the manner in which God acts in the world, Jesus draws breath and tells another parable, about a Pharisee and a tax-collector.

How comfortable are those shoes now?

Listen, then, if you have ears.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. … But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. {The Prophet Jeremiah 29.4-7]

There is a thread at which we are often hesitant to pull, as we think about the place of faith and the faithful, in the scheme of things. It is the thread of punishment and blessing.

The conversation about blessing is often articulated by two statements, one of which appears to follow the other, and which grow progressively threadbare. If we do God’s will, then we will be blessed; the second argument which (for a moment) sounds logical is that if we have wealth and good health, then we must be doing God’s will.

Blessing and obedience are far more nuanced than this utilitarian argument. As if we needed reminding that the most complete act of obedience is found in Christ suffering and crucified; discerning the profound nature of blessing begins and ends there.

Here are God’s people, Jeremiah’s people, bound in exile. Prophets on the right and left are speaking of the escape they must make, or the punishment they must endure. The people look over their shoulders towards the lives they used to live, and remember with some embellishment what life was like, then.

Blessing, or punishment. If we are exiled here, refugees, then Yahweh, our God, has forsaken us. We have no song to sing in this strange land. There is no blessing to be found.

Then God, with the voice of Jeremiah, reminds them of the God who creates, who restores, who wrests life out of death and light from darkness. The whole façade of curse and blessing is allowed to unravel, and God weaves something new – a theology of welfare and of life.

Rather than electing isolation, or social protectionism, the God of Sarah and Abraham calls their descendants to live their reoriented lives entirely in the community into which they have been placed.

“Build and live, plant and eat, marry and grow – live your lives fully in the place where I have located you.” Those who mutter omens of punishment or escape are offering nightmares masquerading as dreams.

It is here, when we think the wells are dry, that we discover who we are called to be. It is when we test our faith, and our faith’s narratives, when we examine the promises of our God and of our journey to this place, that we discern what is myth, what is celebrated and then laid aside, and what gives us foundation for the next steps we need to take.

“Exile is the place where God’s faithful promises work a profound newness”, says Brueggemann. When we offer the gospel as food for the hungry and a voice of justice, but also as celebration and renewal, then lives are changed, not least our own.  

We live our faith in such a way, that people are blessed in knowing us. We seek the welfare of our community, because that is best for them. There is no snare in our generosity, to entrap others into faith, or gospel; we serve, and care, and celebrate in order to offer life.

God offers the possibility of return from Babylon to Jersualem and home, but only after three generations of lives have been lived in exile – and in hope.

We are in this place, this life, because God has placed us here. It is in offering life to others, that we discern more fully the lives to which we are called, in Jesus Christ.

I have no psalm for this.

Only
the sound of God
dragging her hand
|through ash,
searching
for the shape
of a child
She once dreamed.

There are no angels here.
They refused to descend.
They feared the light
that does not forgive them.

What lies in Gaza now
is older than war
older than wrong.

It is the kind of silence
that speaks only
to those
willing to die
for listening.

Do you feel that, priest?
This isn’t grief.

That is God
amputated from his own body.

That is Gaza
screaming in a dialect older
than creation.

You speak?
you dare speak|
of sides, of justice, of peace?

Peace is a liar
that kissed the bullet
before it entered the child’s jaw.

Peace is the perfume
of empire,

a sedative piped in veins
so sleepers dream of justice
while chewing
the bones
of the holy.

And still
the tree grows.

Not out of hope,
From disobedience.

It dares
to place green
into a sky
that spits fire.

That is what love is.

Stubborn.
A blossom
in the throat of a grave.

You want love?

Then stand
where fathers have become
their own dust.

Then carry your grief,
like it was born in you.

Let it unbutton your chest

and place
in your hands
a name you do not recognise
but know belongs
to you.

Because we are not separate.
Not in this.

Gaza is not an elsewhere.
Sudan is not a shadow.
Congo is not a myth.
Ukraine is not another’s burden.

They are the edges
where your skin
forgets
it ends.

Laws?

What are laws
to the mother
who has outlived her entire house?

What is language
to the dust
that speaks only in bones?

What is justice
when the world
refuses to be born?

And yet
something grows
in the skull
of the fallen house.

A petal
A song.

A defiance
rooted to deep
even the gods
must stop and listen.

It says:
I remain.
I remember.
I refuse
to forget.

This, too,
is God.

Not the one who watches.
But the one
who cannot
look away.

So let the poets howl.
Let the sky split.
Let every drone rot in mid-air.

Let the empire implode
beneath the weight
of one
broken cradle.

For justice is not a verdict.

It is the burning tongue
of God
re-inserting herself
into the story.

And this time,
She will not come
with parables

but with the eyes
of a child
in Rafah

and the fury
of a mother
in Deir al-Balah,
whose womb
became a courtroom
and whose tears
wrote
the final law.

The land remembers.
The sea does not forgive.
The olive tree
weeps oil.

And in the centre
of the world,
where prophets bled truth

a child picks up a stone,

Not to throw,
but to remember
what hands were made for
before they were taught
to beg,
before they learned
the physics of bombs.

Call it rage.
Call it prayer.

Call it the final breath
of a planet
that refused
to forget.

Gaza,
the part of us
that never learned
to kneel
before
what is broken.

She is
what still burns
when every temple
has turned to dust.

She is the prayer
that prays
back.