Persistent Petitions
“Hear what the unrighteous judge says.”
The Texas-based artist James Janknegt produces some of the most evocative and effective neo-classical iconic interpretations of the Parables of Jesus of our day. His depiction of here of the widow’s plea to the unrighteous judge captures the persistence of the widow’s petition with a cycle of twenty small images around the border that depict — through the evident passage of time — the widow in various stages of supplication, and the judge in various stages of exasperation. At last in the main frame, the widow kneels — as much in gratitude as in another plea — as the judge brings down the gavel in her favor. And we see — also — the sky is falling: the end of the story is also The End in an apocalyptic sense, and the throne of the unjust judge is fused paradoxically with that most righteous judge and Father of us all, our Lord and Maker.
Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.
— Luke 18:4-5
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
Set us free, loving Father, from the bondage of our sins, and in your goodness and mercy give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Lord, Teach us How to Pray Aright
The free-thinking and mission-minded hymnographer John Montgomery wrote these words in 1818 for non-conformist Sunday schools in Sheffield. Here it is sung to Thomas Tallis’s First Mode, composed in the 16th C as chant tunes for Matthew Parker’s Psalter.
