Jesus, the Stand Up Comedian.
Gramps49
Shipmate
Luke 18: 1-8
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'
"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I do not fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she will not eventually wear me out with her coming!'"
And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
— Luke 18:1–8, New International Version
I can imagine the disciples howling with laughter over this story. Most of them probably knew of women who would go so far as to harangue a judge like this story. Maybe many of them could see that in their mothers, even wives do this with their husband/themselves.
A personal experience. I had long owned a boat that had not seen water for over twenty years. It had been occupying our carport during this time. Over the years my wife had been after me to get rid of it. But I was not willing to let go of it since it was purchased by my dad when I was in the fifth grade, so it had been a part of me for 60 some years. Recently, the "suggestions" had been increasing almost to the point of being persistent. So, when I read this story, I can see how Mrs Gramps could be that woman. I can imagine the judge dreading the thought of her once again begging or demanding justice.
Have you had similar experiences with your significant others?
Are there other stories that Jesus told that would have tickled the funny bones of his first listeners?
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'
"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I do not fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she will not eventually wear me out with her coming!'"
And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
— Luke 18:1–8, New International Version
I can imagine the disciples howling with laughter over this story. Most of them probably knew of women who would go so far as to harangue a judge like this story. Maybe many of them could see that in their mothers, even wives do this with their husband/themselves.
A personal experience. I had long owned a boat that had not seen water for over twenty years. It had been occupying our carport during this time. Over the years my wife had been after me to get rid of it. But I was not willing to let go of it since it was purchased by my dad when I was in the fifth grade, so it had been a part of me for 60 some years. Recently, the "suggestions" had been increasing almost to the point of being persistent. So, when I read this story, I can see how Mrs Gramps could be that woman. I can imagine the judge dreading the thought of her once again begging or demanding justice.
Have you had similar experiences with your significant others?
Are there other stories that Jesus told that would have tickled the funny bones of his first listeners?
Comments
Not sure if the parallel totally adds up, though, because Joisey boys aren't foreign to Judaism and Catholicism in the same way that Samaritans presumably were to the the culture of the priest and the Levite. The Episcopal bishop might work, but I don't think that faith and its adherents have really been part of NYC's cast of characters for awhile now. So maybe some WASPY men-about-town(template: George Plimpton and William F. Buckley) for the clerics.
Though maybe not midwest, because I think the unfortunate traveler was supposed to be someone viewed as culturally similar to Jesus' in-group audience? The bible says he was going from Jerusalem to Jericho, so if he's a resident of the former, I'm guessing he's some city-slicker, though I don't know what's implied by Jericho as his destination.
AFF
The NIV has him saying: "
Other translations
The NRSV includes two translations of 5b:
• so that she may not wear me out by continually coming (text)
• so that she may not finally come and slap me in the face (footnote)
The ESV has: “so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.”
The CEB has: “Otherwise, there will be no end to her coming here and embarrassing me.”
The Message: “otherwise I’m going to end up beaten black-and-blue by her pounding.”
But it is even more explicit
Robert Tannehill (Luke) comments about this phrase:
So, for my 1980s update, the NYC subway.
Road the subway from downtown to Queens College once. Had an interview. I think they thought of me as too much of a country pumpkin. Frankly, I felt like a fish out of water.
AFF
You would have thought the first one would have seen it.
Caissa
A: Two. One to light it, and the other to stone him to death after remembering it's the Sabbath.
Good ones. My father never wanted my mother to wear a two piece. I would get killed if I told Mrs Gramps to put on a shirt.
It occurs to me that Standup Jesus lends itself well to "I had a crazy childhood" jokes, the challenge being that those routines usually involve taking normal childhood issues and spinning them in a funny light. But what we know of Jesus' childhood is not exactly normal.
DARK SHADES EDGELORD JESUS:
You guys talk about the Terrible Twos? You guys don't know sweet **** all about the Terrible Twos.
---
Kids are actually pretty selfish. My dad's a carpenter, rammed a nail through his hand one day. I said "Glad that's not me."
---
You might say I was a pretty experienced kid. I taught the RABBIS about the Song Of Solomon.
Sorry. This was meant to be followed by "Thanks for the compliment" or some such.
Interesting that the.Message takes the more literal translation (assuming Tannehill has captured the nuances fairly).
I've not noticed the footnote before.
Drunk or otherwise violent women do exist.
Or if justice was clearly on her side, it might be that society would accept 'he deserved it'
Or hyperbole, it is a parable not a direct telling of an event.
Definitely a parable.
The parable of the importunate widow can be seen as the writer as the widow repeatedly asking his Christian community to pray and hoping that they will get weary of being asked.
You are correct. I need to avoid using my mobile to post.
The other typo correction is "... the writer being the widow ..."
That's pretty po-mo. Like how in that book by Nabokov, there's a character named "Vivian Darkbloom".
Interesting that the writer of Luke was po-mo.
I realize Luke was written long before postmodernity and its accompanying aesthetic tendency, postmodernism. I meant "That's the sort of technique now associated with postmodern writers."
I was actually gonna say "proto-po-mo", but figured that would be too cutesy and/or cumbersome.
This section of Luke begins with around 17:20 with the Pharisees asking when the Kingdom of God will appear. In so many words, Jesus tells them it has already appeared, but they are too blind to see it. As I understand it, the Kingdom of God is dawning when justice is done. Look to what the widow is praying for. She wants justice. Not sure what type of justice she wanted, but we get a clue from Matthew 25 that God's justice includes feeding the hungry; clothing the naked; taking care of the sick, welcoming the stranger.
The section concludes with Jesus wondering when the son of man comes will he find faith on the earth. I think faith is more than just believing but it also includes doing. It involves the church constantly knocking on the doors of power not asking for privilege but advocating for the poor.
I don't disagree with that, but I was focusing on the theme to the disciples in Luke of continuing to pray - don't give up - faith can move mountains - etc etc - as though Luke's audience were finding it hard to pray and possibly considering giving up prayer, and with the disciples having to ask how to pray. Unlike the other gospels, it's in the situation of going up the mountain to pray that the transfiguration occurs.
This is in stark contrast to Matthew who tells disciples (who don't need to ask how to pray) to keep their prayers short and sweet, pray in private, and gives them a model prayer to base theirs on.
Think there's only the persistence, and too many other things break (e.g. humans being the judge over god, ok you have Pilate and Caiaphas.) and doesn't really match Jesus or Likes explainations.
God is like the widow constantly pleading for justice--the church is God's voice.
Faith more than belief it is also action.
Excellent point
Proto-po-mo does have a ring though
Right. In the case of "Vivian Darkbloom", I think Nabokov was, consciously or otherwise, bucking the assumption of modernist critics that a given novel should be a self-contained work, understandable within its own internal parameters, minus recourse to external lenses such as biography(including authorial nomenclature) etc.
I'm not sure if it was a thing for pre-modern writers to openly insert themselves into the plot,[<--This paragraph is unfinished. Stay tuned.]
(Humbled caveat: On two attempts, I've never managed to get through the entirety of that novel, and never tried anything else by him, albeit that's mostly to do with my own disinclination toward novels generally. I've seen both versions of the film, but as I might have written elsewhere lately, they only helped develop my view that postmodern literature
doesn't generally work on film. My heavily postmodern poetry prof at uni told us that Nabokov was the postmodern novelist par excellente, and that's basically how he's casually slotted in my mind.)
I'm not sure if it was that much of a thing for pre-modern writers to openly insert themselves into the plot in the manner of Matthew(at least as interpreted by @LatchKeyKid), but having readMoby Dick a few years back, I'd speculate that it maybe was more tolerated, even in absolutely ham-fisted forms(*), back in the olden days.
(*) F'rinstsnce it's just fascinating to have Ishmael himself tell us about his uncle with the surname "Melville" who once saw some sort of exhibit at a whaling museum in Liverpool.
Sorry. That was a synaptic snafu on the author. And I know you weren't stating the theory as fact, but you're correct, it's an interesting idea.
Or as postmodern academics in the 90s woulda put it: "syn[a/o]ptic snafu".
(Setiously, though, well played.)
What's that, Father? I'm gonna be grabbed by the Sanhedrin? Why would they do that, Father? Blasphemy? Ha, ha, me? Don't they know I'm your Son? Oh. I see. And then I'm going before Pilate? Why does he want to talk to me? What's that? No, no. Crowns are made of metal, Father.