Embarrass Them Into the Kingdom – Luke 18:1-8

What this episode covers

In today’s world where the poor stay poor, the oppressed stay oppressed, and the unjust are enabled to continue wreaking havoc, it is refreshing to hear Luke 18:1-8 where it shows us that God is just. May this passage inspire you to continue fighting the fight and always do what is good and just. Episode Transcript Brian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast! Fr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week’s lectionary readings. We’re the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I’m Father Shay Kearns B: And I’m Brian G. Murphy. FS: Welcome back to the Queer Theology podcast. It is Sunday, October 20th. We are gonna take a look at Luke 18:1-8 this is episode 299, we are so close in our countdown to episode 300. We’ve got some really special announcements and stuff planned for next week. So make sure that you stay tuned for that until then, we are super stoked to be at episode 299. I can not believe how long we’ve been recording this podcast. B: What a journey! FS: We were looking at the text for today, and I was like, “I am pretty sure we have done all of these at least three times”. And it was close to that! But today we are actually gonna do one that we haven’t done before, Luke 18:1-8, I’m gonna go ahead and read it for us now. This is from the Common English Bible. Jesus was telling them a parable about their need to pray continuously and not to be discouraged. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him, asking, ‘Give me justice in this case against my adversary.’ For a while he refused but finally said to himself, I don’t fear God or respect people, but I will give this widow justice because she keeps bothering me. Otherwise, there will be no end to her coming here and embarrassing me.” The Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. Won’t God provide justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he be slow to help them? I tell you, he will give them justice quickly. But when the Human One comes, will he find faithfulness on earth?” So what do we do with this? B: Yeah! Well before we even jump into what this passage means, or might mean. I think it’s important to preface all of that with, this is a parable, right? So by design, it is not straightforward. Some types of Christians will say, “The Bible is extremely clear. It says this or it says that.” And even when approaching parables, some folks have this expectation that there’s this one secret, hidden meaning that you have to get at and figure out what the one true correct meaning of this passage is. I even heard folks say like, “Well Jesus sometimes couldn’t come out and say exactly what he meant because He will get in trouble for it.” So yeah, he had to speak in these parables to sort of hide His message, but well if we can figure it out, so could the people who’d be getting Him in trouble. So Jesus could’ve given us a rule book of: do this, don’t do that, do this, don’t do that, but instead oftentimes Jesus tells stories. And I think stories are a really important part of what it means to be human, how we make meaning, form community, get inspired, get excited, get sad. Stories are really powerful. Obviously, you know that Shay, you have a whole theatre company dedicated to stories for social change. Just to start with that, this is a parable that by design, is not always clear. And it gets really cool because in a lot of scripture, you can come at it from different ways, and it’s especially true for parables. There’s lots of different things that you can tug at, and tease at, and pull apart. Whatever we talk about today, is just one of many interpretations. You might have a different perspective, and so if you do, we would love to hear what you think on Twitter, or Facebook, or even leave us a review on iTunes and let us know your thoughts on this passage. But for me, one of the things that co

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