More excerpts from chapter 7 of the revised and expanded edition of What are They Saying about the Parables?
This post begins a series about studies that were added in the second edition of WATSA Parables? (for earlier contributions and more details about these new sections, see the book).
This post examines three contributions in a collection of essays of feminist interpretations of parables about women, women’s work, and female imagery edited by Mary Ann Beavis, The Lost Coin.
The Lost Coin makes a significant contribution to understanding the roles women play in Jesus’ parables. For example, the chapter on the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:2–5) features three interpretations, one each by Mary W. Matthews, Carter Shelley, and Barbara Scheele (46–70).
Matthews argues that the unrighteous, corrupt, shameless, and unjust judge does not symbolize God; instead he represents “structural injustice,” and the widow represents “Everychristian,” the fact that every Christian is called to be persistent, to keep “badgering” unjust authority—“to fight injustice to the best of your ability, no matter how overmatched you are”—until it relents (53).
Shelley uses a feminist hermeneutic that deconstructs patriarchal, androcentric, and absolutist readings of the parable and replaces them with a reading of resistance like one she envisions Jesus performing. A resistant reader (1) names the text’s sexist subtext (the poor judge is nagged by a “harridan”) and instead envisions the widow as a person in need; (2) exposes the contradictions in the patriarchal reading (e.g. the idea that that poor judge has to capitulate to this nagging, powerful woman is replaced by the idea that the widow is powerless and deserves sympathy and support); (3) undermines the text’s pretensions to authority (e.g., the patriarchal society of men ruling over women is replaced by a world where God created men and women as equals and are in caring relationships with God and others); and (4) recognizes the text’s fake claim to universality (e.g., instead of men being created by God as superior to women, God is the champion of the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the alien; 56–57). In this reading, the parable teaches Jesus’ followers to pray for wisdom, guidance, and persistence, and to act by speaking and persisting for the cause of justice for all human beings, especially the powerless and the voiceless (61).
Scheele reads the parable in the context of her attempts to obtain proper medical and educational care for her disabled brother, only to be defeated time and time again by those in “authority,” lawyers and caseworkers. The woman in this parable and the women in a scripture retreat group inspired her to bypass the caseworkers and go directly to specialists. She eventually (with the help of many others) was able to secure a treatment plan that the caseworkers begrudgingly and complainingly—like the judge in the parable—put into place (66–67). Thus, for Scheele, the God figure in this parable is not the judge; it is the widow, the one who seeks justice: “God, imaged as the female figure of Holy Wisdom, both prays and actively searches for people who will be faithful to the scriptural codes of justice” (68).
Next up: Elsa Tamez.
