Luke 18:1-8

In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. ³ And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justiceagainst my adversary.’

⁴ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, ⁵ yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

“Nevertheless, she persisted.” This phrase caught fire on social media and soon spread to t-shirts, bumper stickers, and coffee mugs. A year later, it was the theme for Women’s History Month. You might think a famous woman like Maya Angelou or Hillary Clinton spoke these words, but the person was Mitch McConnell, then President of the Senate. Ironically, it is the most famous thing Mitch McConnell said in his many years in office. Before we judge the phrase or its politics, let’s see how Jesus once spoke of persistence — not in a Senate chamber, but in a courtroom long ago.

Unlike most parables, where you must wrestle with the moral of the story, Jesus tells us the point in verse one: “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” The storm clouds are gathering around Jesus as he faces strong resistance from religious leaders. He has preached a great hope that God has come near, and the kin-dom of God, a more beloved community, is happening among them. This vision seemed like a fantasy in the face of Roman domination, with support from the Temple religious establishment. The message isn’t just keep praying, and everything will be OK. Or wait on the hillside till I make everything right. Or stay pure in your theology inside the church walls. He exhorts us to persist in doing what is right.

The parable shows great contrast by pitting a widow against a judge. Judges have power and prestige. The ability to determine what is lawful or legal, who is guilty or innocent, determines the future of a society. Justice isn’t always simple and black and white. It requires wisdom and nuance to apply the law with fairness. And nothing is a bigger obstacle to justice than a corrupt judge. In the parable, this judge freely admits he has no regard for God or public opinion. You can’t get more audaciously corrupt than that!

In contrast, widows are among the most vulnerable. The Old Testament frequently said justice in a society is measured by how it treats widows and orphans. They had no rights in the economic and legal structures. In fact, this woman did not have the right to speak in court to the judge. It would be centuries before that would change. The first woman to be a lawyer in America was in 1869, when the Iowa bar admitted Arabella Mansfield.

So, how did this woman prevail with the unjust judge? She must have been waiting at the door to the court, calling out to him every day as he came and went. The judge could have ignored her forever. But he says, “I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” A literal translation of the Greek is more vivid. The judge says, “She is going to give me a black eye.” I don’t think he feared for his safety. This black eye is a metaphorical wound. It just looks bad to have this woman persistently bothering him, so he grants her justice.

Jesus then makes his point again. If an unjust judge can do good, imagine how much more good God will do. God hears us, even if we don’t have evidence in the moment. Jesus hopes that when God comes to act, there will be faithful people still believing and acting for justice and kindness. Can we find a way to stay true to Christ-like ideals even when it seems impossible?

Sometimes we cannot see immediate results from doing what we think is right. Goodness often loses, but that doesn’t mean doing the right thing is fruitless. Let’s revisit what happened that led to the phrase “She persisted.”

During a 2017 debate on the Senate floor over the nomination of Jeff Sessions to become Attorney General, Elizabeth Warren was reading a 1986 letter from Corretta Scott King, urging that a segregationist who is against voting rights should not be appointed as a judge in Alabama. Another senator interrupted and said this was against protocol. Senators should not speak against each other’s character, and Sessions was now a Senator. Warren said the King’s statement had been entered into the Senate record and was therefore admissible to read, and she began again. This led to a big commotion where Warren was ultimately censored on a party-line vote. McConnell quipped, “She was warned, she was given an explanation, and yet she persisted.” His words struck a nerve. McConnell’s words were meant to shame Warren, but it had the opposite effect. Soon, the phrase became a rallying cry for women who felt unheard. Jeff Sessions went on to be Attorney General, so Warren didn’t win the struggle. But “she persisted” lived on.

The following year, in the 2018 elections, record numbers of women filed to run for public office. For example, women running for the US House surged 74 percent. The number of women in Congress rose from 84 to 103, and the Senate went from 6 women to 14. It was an epic historic change. The pessimist might note that nearly 100 years after getting the right to vote, women in the House were still only a tad over 25 percent, and women in the Senate only 14 percent.

For comparison’s sake, here are a few countries where women have reached parity with men in elected office: Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the United Arab Emirates. One nation in the world has more than 60 percent women office holders: Rwanda. Rwanda is a fascinating case because women couldn’t run for office until 1984. Ten years later, the nation was devastated by genocide, and women were over two-thirds of the survivors. In the nation’s first election after this, 49% of the office holders were women. But numbers never tell the whole story. Sometimes persistence is written not in data, but in human lives — in places where justice seemed impossible to rebuild. My curiosity led me to further research and I found two stories of persistent women who found the faith and strength to keep moving to a better world in the face of chaos.

Josephine Dusabimana and her husband were subsistence farmers. They lived peacefully with their Tutsi neighbors, and when the killing began, Josephine traded her goats for a canoe, which she used to ferry 12 Tutsi women across the border to save them. Her husband was killed, and she lost all the farm animals. In the aftermath, she said, “I do not know when all this chaos will be over, but in the meantime, I must keep planting.” Soon after, a few women whom Josephine saved came back, and in gratitude, they gave her some cows to rebuild her herd and save her farm.

Another woman who would not give up was Veneranda Nzambazamariya. In the years after the genocide, she gathered women from every ethnic group into a coalition called Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe—“All of us together.” She helped widows start small businesses, trained leaders for reconciliation, and pressed Rwanda’s new government to include women in rebuilding the nation. Veneranda often said,

“Our wounds are different, but our healing must be one.”

Through her persistence, compassion became policy, and hope took root in public life.

When I hear their stories, I have to stop and breathe. What gives rise to such faith? One possibility is necessity. Determination arises when we see that there is no one else to rescue us, no stroke of luck will turn the tide. God hears our cry and the arc of history bends toward justice, but maybe not tomorrow. Persistence is the only way to survival. But I don’t think that is the whole picture. The survivors of genocide live with incredible trauma. It’s hard to imagine the deep grief of having so many friends and family members killed so quickly. Tens of thousands of women were raped in the chaos, and many now had the burden of an extra baby. Trauma meets each heart differently. Some found the strength to act; others could only endure.

What strikes me about the persisters is their extraordinary compassion. They didn’t just want to survive or take care of their children. They worked to rebuild their broken world. Women created communities, starting with a few stragglers to work together. These communities transcended the ethnic hatred that had destroyed everything. Persistent came from embodying a higher purpose to rise above ancient hatreds and heal, plant, and build a better world.

Take a moment and think about where you feel like giving up. What would it look like to persist? If the road seems long and weary, focus on the first step. What is one small step you could take this week?

Persistence, Jesus says, is prayer that refuses to give up on love.

It is faith that keeps showing up when no one is watching, hope that knocks again even when the door stays shut. The widow before the judge, the women who rebuilt Rwanda, the ones who keep sowing mercy in barren ground — they all teach us that God’s justice grows in persistent, patient hearts.

So let us keep praying, keep serving, keep believing — not because we always see results, but because we trust the One who hears and holds us still.


And may that same Spirit of persistence live in us — steady, gentle, and unafraid — until love has the final word.