Luke 18:1-8, there is a Greek word worth naming, the word the widow uses when she says, avenge me of my adversary. The word adversary is antidikou, it is a legal term, it means opponent in a lawsuit, your rival in court, the one suing you or being sued by you, but that same word, antidikou, appears one other striking place in the New Testament. 1 Peter 5:8, your adversary, same word, so, when Jesus puts this word on the widow’s lips, he is painting her cry against the backdrop of a much larger reality. The believer, standing in a broken world, has a real antidikou, a real accuser, a real opponent and the prayer Jesus is describing is not a petition for a better Monday. It is the cry of a people who know they are in a spiritual courtroom, they know that justice has not yet been rendered, they know the adversary is still at work and they keep bringing their case to the only judge who cares.
That changes the weight of the widow’s cry, the widow is not complaining, she is contending, she is not making a nuisance of herself, she is persisting in a case that matters and the parable does not stay in the courtroom, because if you walk backwards through the Bible, you find that God has always been the judge who actually listens to widows. Psalm 68:5, a father of the fatherless, a defender of widows. Deuteronomy 10:18, he administers justice for the fatherless and the widow. Isaiah 1:17, God’s own command to Israel’s leaders, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. Over and over, the Hebrew Scriptures build a picture of a God whose identity is bound up with hearing the cry of the powerless.
So, when Jesus tells a story about a widow whose cry is finally heard, even by a corrupt judge, he is pulling on a thread that runs through every page of the Old Testament. The pattern has always been the same, God hears, God sees, God acts, not because he can be pressured, because that is who he is and then, in the fullness of time, God does something the Old Testament only hinted at, he steps into the courtroom himself. Now, hold the parable up next to the gospel, a judge who is everything the unjust judge is not, who fears nothing, but loves everyone, whose verdicts are always right and a people who, if the story ended there, would be guilty.
That changes the weight of the widow’s cry, the widow is not complaining, she is contending, she is not making a nuisance of herself, she is persisting in a case that matters and the parable does not stay in the courtroom, because if you walk backwards through the Bible, you find that God has always been the judge who actually listens to widows. Psalm 68:5, a father of the fatherless, a defender of widows. Deuteronomy 10:18, he administers justice for the fatherless and the widow. Isaiah 1:17, God’s own command to Israel’s leaders, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. Over and over, the Hebrew Scriptures build a picture of a God whose identity is bound up with hearing the cry of the powerless.
So, when Jesus tells a story about a widow whose cry is finally heard, even by a corrupt judge, he is pulling on a thread that runs through every page of the Old Testament. The pattern has always been the same, God hears, God sees, God acts, not because he can be pressured, because that is who he is and then, in the fullness of time, God does something the Old Testament only hinted at, he steps into the courtroom himself. Now, hold the parable up next to the gospel, a judge who is everything the unjust judge is not, who fears nothing, but loves everyone, whose verdicts are always right and a people who, if the story ended there, would be guilty.