If you are watching this Mass via the livestream, you may be surprised to know that what you are seeing on your screen is about thirty seconds behind live time. Let me stop so you can catch up to those words. There is a discernible lag in time between what I am presently saying and what you are hearing.
I saw this in action a couple of years ago when I brought Communion to a parishioner who, because of health issues, was viewing the livestream next door in our retreat house while the rest of us worshipped in the church. An acolyte accompanied me with a candle as I brought the Blessed Sacrament across the Lady Chapel garden to the retreat house. Our beloved parishioner was praying in the parlor with the livestream on the television, and as I arrived to administer Communion to him, I saw myself on the television just leaving the altar!
It was an odd sensation, as if I had been whisked back in time. Our parishioner was praying as if it were thirty seconds prior to live time. But, despite that time lag, were his prayers any less valid or relevant to the worshippers in the church? Of course not. His prayers had joined with those in the church as I, the priest, offered on their behalf the sacrifice of the Mass.
We are so often caught up in our linear thinking that we struggle to imagine God’s time, what we often call kairos time. According to the chronos, linear time of our Mass livestream, the prayers of those in the church are slightly ahead of those viewing the livestream. But to God, is there really any lag? To suggest a lag could imply two disturbing things. It could intimate that God is always two steps—or thirty seconds—behind whatever our prayers are. And as a result, God is someone we must plead with to change his mind. And if we don’t plead or beg in the right way, then maybe God never catches up to our live time. This sends the message that our prayer is never quite enough.
On the other hand, to suggest a lag between our time and God’s time could foster a sense that our prayers are unnecessary. If we pray for things and we never see them, then God is not just thirty seconds behind us. He might not be listening at all. Or, if God already knows what is going to happen anyway, why even bother to pray? And all of this is to miss the point of prayer.
There seems to be a significant time lag between the widow and the unjust judge in today’s parable. The widow represents the most vulnerable of ancient society, one who has no husband, possibly no family, and therefore, no support network. She is a woman after all in a male-dominated world. If she is poor, she will only become poorer. And if we were to comb through the Old Testament, we would see numerous exhortations to care for the widow and poor. That’s not an option; it’s God’s command.
We must assume that the widow in Jesus’s parable is experiencing some kind of injustice brought on by an unspecified accuser. She has every right, according to Jewish tradition, to beg for justice from the judge. The judge, unfortunately, is a scoundrel—immoral or amoral, apathetic, and one who clearly ignores the Old Testament injunction to care for the vulnerable. He has delayed long in granting justice to the widow. The time lag between experiencing injustice and realizing justice is long, far more than thirty seconds—probably more like many years.
But the widow is persistent. And, as Jesus says, even a corrupt, careless judge will eventually acquiesce to the widow’s demands, not because he is just but because she has been relentlessly persistent. So, how much more, Jesus says, will God grant justice to his children?
And yet, what are we to do as we continue to live in a time lag in this present day? We may very well believe that God will grant justice, but what comfort is that to those who are out of work with no job prospects or to the hungry with no food in sight? What good news is there for the immigrant on the verge of deportation or the ailing person with no financial recourse to decent health care?
Indeed, we could broaden the sense of impatience to expand beyond justice and injustice. What do Jesus’s words mean to us when we send up prayer after prayer in the face of anxiety? What are we to when we ask but don’t receive, seek but don’t find, and knock on a perpetually closed door? What do we do with the time lag between our petitions and God’s response?
The obvious temptation is what we have earlier named. We can imagine that we are simply not praying enough or praying well enough for God to heed our request. We need to be more like the widow, tenacious and relentless in banging on the door to heaven. Or we can give up altogether, wondering what good prayer is at all.
But the point of Jesus’s parable seems to be neither of those things. The point appears to be that we shouldn’t worry so much about the time lag. And if God’s time is different from ours, that would make a great deal of sense. This parable doesn’t offer neat answers. There’s no attempt to explain the time lag between our dissatisfaction with the present state of reality and the advent of God’s justice. Nor does the parable explain the perceived gap between our fervent prayers and God’s clear answer. And the parable certainly doesn’t condone tolerating injustice. The parable only offers a rhetorical question with a kernel of good news for us. Will God delay long in helping his chosen ones? I tell you, Jesus says, God will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?
The point, Jesus suggests, is to live in the gap. In our chronos time, injustice lingers, prayers appear to go unanswered, and we frequently seem to lack what we need to fulfill God’s vision for us. All we can do and all we are meant to do is pray. Showing up to pray in such times as these, in the gap and in the time lag, is the visible demonstration of our faith.
But there’s more. We live in an age where we are often told that we should dispense with thoughts and prayers and move to action. But is not this a straw man? Isn’t prayer faith in action? And aren’t all our works in the name of Christ rooted in prayer?
Somehow in the mystery of God, our present prayers are never far removed from the realization of God’s justice. There is no time lag between our prayers and God’s justice. This may be small comfort to those one step away from losing their homes or who are watching the interminable suffering of a loved one, but it’s no reason not to pray. It is, in fact, even more of a reason to pray, because if there’s no time lag in God’s kairos time, then our prayers have everything to do with the justice and healing that God will ultimately bring and indeed is already bringing into fruition. For God will quickly grant justice. The real question is, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?
There may be no timelier parable for us in this parish right now than the one Jesus gives us today. We are living in a time lag right now, with transitions ahead of us. In this pledge season, we’re addressing a lag between the vision God has called us to and the financial reality needed to sustain that vision. The Christian life is never static, never complete, never completely realized. It’s always in via, in motion. We’re always on the way as followers of Christ, and that means that, in some sense, we always live in that lag between injustice and justice, between hope and glory, between doubt and trust, between vision and reality.
If we were living solely as citizens of the world outside the Church, we might very well throw up our hands in defeat. The lag is too great. The gap is too wide. But this can never be the case in the Christian life. And at the end of the day, this brings us back to prayer.
We have over two millennia of Christian witnesses behind us who have lived in the time lag between injustice and justice and nevertheless persevered in prayer. Christians in the face of war, famine, persecution, and hideous disaster have hunkered down in prayer. They have made prayer as natural to themselves as their very breath.
Right now, in the time lag, we are like the widow in Jesus’s parable, but our accuser is perhaps more specific than the stock character of a parable. In the time lag of the Christian life, our accuser is the one whom Scripture itself calls the accuser. He’s the one who will try to convince us that the time lag between injustice and justice is insurmountable. He will try to tell us that the gap between scarcity and abundance is too wide. He will make a case against God’s vision for us, citing evidence that we don’t have the stamina, people, gifts, or money to realize that vision.
We shouldn’t believe it, and we shouldn’t fight it either. There’s only one thing we can do, and it’s what our Lord commands us to do. Pray always. Do not lose heart. Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Of course, he will quickly grant justice. The real question is, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?