Reflection for Sunday – October 19, 2025

Sonja LivingstonSunday Readings Homilies

Readings: Exodus 17: 8-13; 2 Timothy 3: 14-4:2; Luke 18: 1-8 
Preacher: Sonja Livingston

Is anything as formidable as a persistent woman? She is like water lapping at rock, her constancy slowly wearing it away.

Despite such power, cultural depictions of persistent women are largely unflattering. While our Gospel writer is kind enough to omit such terminology, we understand that the widow is what many would call a nag. Though the judge refuses to help her, she returns to him again and again. We’re not told which injustice the widow seeks to put right. All we know is that she continues to ask for help.

When the judge eventually acts on her behalf, it has nothing to do with goodness on his part and he seems as morally bankrupt at the end of the story as at its beginning. Instead, he helps because the widow’s tenacity wears him down and even frightens him a bit. This is not a parable of transformation, then, but one of action emboldened by faith.

This week’s reading from Exodus provides a similar example. Moses must keep the staff in his hands raised to assure his people’s victory in battle. When he grows tired, his hands sag and his enemies begin to prevail. In the end, with the support of others, Moses persists and his people triumph.

As compelling as that story is, it’s interesting that Jesus does not use the example of a powerful leader but that of someone whose persistence flies in the face of cultural ideals. Women were undoubtedly expected to be at least as modest and accommodating in Jesus’s time as they are today. Notice the parable does not advise against modesty or flexibility. Both are important traits. Instead, it acknowledges that there are times when both men and women must make waves. Unlike Moses, the widow doesn’t have any special power or support except her unfailing belief that justice can and will eventually prevail. How small a widow is compared to a judge—especially one corrupted by apathy and lack of faith! Yet the widow believes in fairness and behaves accordingly. Good trouble, John Lewis calls it. Holy nagging, our widow might say.

The widow’s story reminds me of the Austrian nuns who escaped from a nursing home last month and returned to their shuttered Alpine convent. They are, sadly, the last of their community. But the octogenarians, who’d been obedient their whole lives, refuse to give up the home promised to them for the remainder of their days. Sisters Bernadette, Regina, and Rita returned to Salzburg with a groundswell of support. Their local community is now helping with laundry and shopping. They’ve even started an Instagram page which reports that Sister Rita turned 82 on Thursday, that Sister Bernadette (88) loves plum dumplings and that the three women pray together to start and end every day. Diocesan officials may not be happy with the Nonnen Goldstein, but the rest of us have fallen in love.

Unfortunately, the widow from Luke’s Gospel has no Instagram account, so we don’t know her name. To remedy this, I propose we call her Inbal, Hebrew for ‘tongue of a bell’ or the bit of metal that makes sound. I’ve added her to my pantheon of holy noisemakers. Susan B. Anthony. Hildagard of Bingen. The Austrian Sisters. Inbal, the widow.

Once, when writing about an experience of communion in the woods, author, Annie Dillard, describes light-filled trees and a feeling of utter bliss. I had been my whole life a bell, Dillard writes. And never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

Like Dillard and the widow, we are bells, too. Capable of sacred silence and of reverberating sound. We are beautifully-wrought vessels, intended to be lifted and struck.

We love stories about underdogs and tenacity. All too often though, we focus on the happy ending and forget the years of struggle that precede it. How many times did our widow dust off her sandals and walk to the judge’s chambers before he finally acquiesced? How many nights did she toss and turn wondering whether her faith and action would pay off? What did it cost to keep chiming in the face of a hardened world?

Hers is a good story but a challenging one, too. It’s not about the widow or the judge so much as Jesus reminding the rest of us of the importance of being steadfast in our faith. We must pray and show up. We must expect goodness and behave accordingly—even and especially when it seems no one cares.

Sonja Livingston
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