Abuelita Faith
Luke 18:1-8; Psalm 121
“Who are your abuelas of wisdom?”
“Who are your abuelitas of faith?”
Who are the grandmothers and grannies that taught you about God, who demonstrated what they believed about God in their lives, who prayed for you, who told you about Miriam and Hannah, Tamar and Ruth, whose words of wisdom still echo in your ears?
These were the introductory questions we were asked last week when 30+ women gathered for reflection and conversation, connection and worship across communities and cultures in Maunabo, Puerto Rico. These women hailed from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. We are all pastoras, some serving in congregations, some in hospitals, some in the broader network of Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). Many of them wear multiple vocational hats as women and ministers often do.
“Who are your abuelas of wisdom?”
“Who are your abuelitas of faith?”
In preparing myself to go, I had already been thinking about the women that nurtured faith in me – my mother, friends of my mother’s, my grandmothers, my aunts – their friends. The soil of my faith is rich with madres (mothers), tias (aunties) and abuelas (grandmothers). So, it was easy for me to write their names in my garden of faith – when we were asked to contribute to a visual flower garden. I wrote their names on green construction paper stems and leaves and blue and purple flower petals.
But everyone has their own story and some of us have come to faith in less direct, more circuitous ways. Betsy was seated next to me and was taking her time thinking, not writing. After a while, she said to the table: “I didn’t have a mother who nurtured faith, or much of anything else in me.” She hit a road block right out of the gate. She confessed that she and her mother had not spoken in two years and her mom had not made any attempt to contact her. But this young minister had already talked about a thriving ministry she had, a supportive spouse, and three children of her own. Betsy is finishing a seminary degree as she goes – working and mothering. Those around our table listened to her, hurt for her and this broken primal relationship; and so, we began talking about women we had adopted into our lives as spiritual madres and abuelas. Did she have those? Could she name those? Those she had adopted into her life? Those who had adopted her into theirs?
Faith and calling gets nurtured in us by a God who will use any means necessary to bring about his promises… Evidenced by several names in the genealogy of Jesus, likeTamar, Rahab, and Ruth. All of them marginalized women in some way and yet their names were given. That is not the case for many women in the stories of the Bible. Many abuelitas of our faith in the pages of scripture and perhaps in the pages of our own stories go unnamed. Today’s parable is one of those stories.
Reading parables invites us to get curious, flip the script, turn them inside and out in order to find meaning. There are a few different ways that we could look at this parable of the Unjust Judge and the Persistent Widow today.
We can accept it at face-value: that Jesus told the parable to encourage his disciples to continue to pray - that like the judge, God can be worn down and convinced to answer us (vs 6);
We can focus not on the faithless judge, but on the faithful widow, whose persistence is a model for disciples to demonstrate in their prayerlife;
Or perhaps things aren’t as they seem and the best representative of God in the story is the one we least expect.
According to Luke, Jesus told this parable to encourage his disciples to continue to pray and not lose heart. For if a judge who has zero faith can be swayed by the persistent petitions of a widow woman, can’t God, who actually cares for you be even more responsive when asked? Jesus asks, “Will God delay in answering them?” hmmm. In our experience…? Yes! God delays. Painfully so, at times. Some have worn out their knees in prayer… poured out a tissue box worth of tears waiting for their prayers to be answered. When the diagnosis is grim or the circumstances overwhelming, as one writer said, “the call to keep at it –keep praying– may feel more like a burden than a blessing.”
Certainly, we don’t operate on the same measure of time as God. What seems slow to us is not slow to God. “Nor are your ways my ways” said the prophet Isaiah. “A thousand years in your sight are like yesterday” writes the Psalmist (90:4). But it’s not our responsibility to give excuses for God. Nor explanations for prayers that go unanswered, or unresolved, because who of us could explain what God does, or doesn’t do. [1]
Eric Barreto, Baptist NT scholar who teaches at Princeton Theological, says the mistake readers (in the dominant culture) most often make reading parables is that we pick out, we identify the richest, most powerful figure in the story, and we say “That must be God!” (That’s our white, Christian, privileged lens we are reading through, you see.) You can see how this is extremely problematic with this parable, yes/si’? This Judge is not just. He wields his power like an anvil not with scales of justice, and mocks those who stand before him, seeking fairness. It’s the “kind of everyday corruption that [further] marginalizes those who can least afford it!” It is a mistake for sure, “to link the judge’s corruption [to] God’s character.”[2] This judge, though he sits in a seat of power, is NOT like God at all. God doesn’t answer our prayers as a concession. God is not a reluctant supplier of grace. God receives our petitions with the tenderness of a grandmother, an abuela, and answers them with care.
Kat Armas, a second generation Cuban-American woman who grew up in Miami, wrote the book, Abuelita Faith, the text that informed and inspired our conversations this past week. She would say that this parable presents us with a chance to read scripture in a way that uncovers the voices of the underrepresented. And I know many of you are already reading it with compassion and generosity of spirit toward the woman. You know these women. They live among us – surviving without a lot of support.
Many of us are sure to associate the unnamed widow with the poor, those on the outer rim of society, anyone “othered” by the dominant culture.
This widow has no money to speak of. She has no political clout to entice the court. The parable does not reveal the kind of case she is pleading. Maybe her children have been taken from her and she is trying to get them back… Maybe she took money from her wealthy mistress for whom she cooks and cleans to put food in her own children’s mouths. Maybe she lost her job and has no way to pay her debts. Maybe she’s been charged with vagrancy because her husband died, there are no sons for her to live with.
She troubles this judge to be heard. She pleads. She troubles the court. She insists to be heard. She returns again and again. She pleads. She persists. No influence. No political clout. Her power is her persistence.
This week I met Candace, a retired hospice chaplain in Florida. Guess what her husband does? He’s a judge. Candace is not without influence or power. She’s part of the dominant culture… white, Christian, a person of means. But as a Baptist clergy woman she knows discrimination. She has been overlooked and discounted in traditional congregational roles. She is small in stature and has a gentle voice. In addition to chaplaincy, Candace is pastoring a small, nimble congregation that met in her home until recently. Her “house-church” is thriving, but that’s not why I’m telling you about Candace today. Candace is a persistent abuelita of faith. She shared with us that her youngest daughter sent her a certified letter 2 years ago asking that she not contact her anymore. That she couldn’t be in a relationship with her right now. This means that Candace is not only cut off from her daughter but she is also kept from seeing two of her grandchildren. Candace is completely bewildered as to why this has happened. She has made every attempt to ask, to figure out what happened. She has offered to only listen, to go to counseling, to give her space— if they could just not be completely cut off. Meanwhile, Candace is praying for reconciliation to come before it is too late. She is persistent in her petitions. I know some of you are in similar situations. You are cut off from children or grandchildren. You are estranged from loved ones. You struggle to be authentic in your most primal relationships. And you are wondering if it will ever be repaired even as you take your petitions to God.
Last year Candace walked a portion of the Camino way – a spiritual pilgrimage in Spain. Pilgrims are supposed to go with a prayerful, spiritual intent. Hers was to pray for reconciliation with her daughter, Susanne. Along the trail, pilgrims build stone cairns (small stone towers or altars). They pick up rocks and carry them. They add them to cairns as they go or they stop and build their own. As she walked along praying about her daughter, she noticed one of the stones on a cairn that had “Susanne” printed on it - spelled exactly as she spells it (SUSANNE). She held the rock and prayed for her Susanne, giving thanks to God for the assurance this one small rock gave her that her prayer was heard. She placed the rock back on the cairn, just as she placed Susanne in God’s hands. Candace wept. She has no control over the situation. All she can do is give this relationship to God and pray that reconciliation will come.
Candace is an abuelita of faith who persists in prayer. She doesn’t know when or how, but she knows that she is heard. She knows that God holds her petition in love and care.
Obviously, I want to encourage you to pray persistently and never give up believing that God is holding our prayers until they are answered.
But what if there is one thing more to take from the parable. What if this abuelita who begs and pleads and makes an annoyance of herself is not us, but God? And what if the unjust one, the one who sits in the power-seat, who has no fear of God and no respect for anyone, is not God but us?
Justice has been declared, are we the ones withholding it? Love has been declared. Are we the ones withholding it? Mercy has been declared, are we the ones withholding it? Forgiveness has been declared! Are we the ones withholding it? La Familia has been declared through the life and blood of Jesus Christ. Are we the ones withholding it?[3]
God is calling us to be familia to one another. God is pleading with us to be bringers of justice for our neighbors. God is the persistent One. Jesus concludes the parable saying, When I come again, who will be found faithful?
[1]https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/choosing-faith/nineteenth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-c-lectionary-planning-notes/nineteenth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-c-preaching-notes
[2] Barreto, Eric Working Preacher commentary Luke 18:1-8, 2025