Yesterday's Gospel reading, known as the "parable of the unjust judge" or "parable of the importuante widow," was one of the parables which come up in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. Our rector, who was preaching, was the person who directed me to Butler's book a few years ago - and led a group of parishioners in a discussion of the book as part of the recent "Summer Reads."
The story was fresh in my mind because our first class on the book in "Religion and the Anthropocene" focused on parables, including this one. They're often more complex and more charged than they at first seem. A story which, as one student said, "casts shade on God" (why an unjust rather than just a busy judge?), Luke 18:1-8 is the text Parable of the Sower protagonist Lauren Olamina chooses to preach on when her father has gone missing and is presumed dead. Its story of wresting justice from an unjust judge prefigures Earthseed, the new religion Olamina will channel into being, a religion where "God is change" and where we are called to "shape God."
But the rector didn't mention it. She focused instead on the importance of persistence and the virtue of boldness. (The day's Old Testament reading was Jacob wrestling with the angel and not letting the mysterious being go until he blessed him, so it made sense, though it jibes with Earthseed too.) I asked her about it afterwards. The connection had completely slipped her mind, she said. But, we realized, Earthseed hadn't. Her sermon ended with ringing words about the importance of making bold claims - and how making them changes us. Olamina would approve:
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you
