Luke, Widows, Judges, and Stereotypes

Abstract

Dickerson, assistant professor of NT at American Baptist College, inaugurates “Womanist Readings of Scripture” with this treatment of Luke 18:1–8. She is properly upset about the historic and recent atrocities against African Americans in the U.S. and sees the potential of Jesus’s parable for addressing our racism. She believes that Luke’s sole understanding of the passage is encapsulated in v. 1—to pray always and not lose heart—and this is clearly inadequate.Tracing a selective history of pre-20th-century interpretation, Dickerson finds that little other than prayer and perseverance are touted. Drawing more widely from contemporary interpretation, including online sermons, many of them African American, she remains dissatisfied, especially with the stereotyping of the woman as innocent victim and the judge as corrupt. She notes that the biblical background that Jesus’s audience knew well regularly demonstrated that widows would get justice, even if by creative means (comparing especially Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba, and [from the apocrypha] Judith).In the longest, most unique and fascinating section, Dickerson next illustrates three iconic presentations of African American women in 20th-century film, television, and literature and considers their potential for viewing the widow in the parable along similar lines: (1) “Mammy,” the overweight, nonsexual, devoted childminder for the children of well-to-do whites; (2)—“Jezebel,” the seductive, promiscuous woman who brings down powerful men; and (3) “Sapphire,” who easily morphs into the angry black woman, yet nevertheless gets things accomplished with her tenacity. Dickerson then rewrites and expands the parable from the perspective of each of these three depictions of the persistent widow.A shorter chapter rounds out the volume with a comparison between the judge and three African-American male stereotypes. He can be “cool”—that is, dispassionate, letting nothing faze him; he can be the “Master-Pastor”—the autocratic leader who also often gives in to temptation; or he can be “foolish”—with the classic example being the buffoon in the routine “Here Come Duh Judge”. Again, possibilities for different interpretations for the parable based on each figure are teased out.In keeping with womanist interpretation as a non-totalizing, postmodern option, Dickerson never suggests that any one of her revamped interpretations is the right one, just that they are possibilities. She does, however, seem fairly convinced that what she dubs Luke’s interpretation is wrong. She criticizes my interpretation (The Parables of Jesus, 2nd ed. [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2012]) as perpetuating the stereotypes of widow and judge as innocent and corrupt, respectively. But she never asks how characters in either Jesus’s parables in general or Jewish parables elsewhere function. In fact, they do function as stock characters, but with key surprises that shatter the stereotype at some point. She rightly rejects much of the allegorizing of church history but, in opting for Jülicher’s corrective, has to find all of Luke’s meaning in v. 1, without mining vv. 6–8 for their rich, added complexities. She realizes the parable functions “from the light to the heavy” but fails to observe that Jesus’s “how much more” illustrations consistently function as “how different” as well.In short, I agree with Dickerson’s frustrations at how the parable has often been used, but I am less convinced that her approach(es) can actually get her to her very necessary call for activism and justice. Ironically, David Wells, in Christianity Today (November, 2 1979), already contextualized the parable for a black Chicago neighborhood, depicting prayer as “rebelling against the status quo.” And he used historical-grammatical exegesis.