Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Luke 18:1-8

When I first discovered the section headings in the Bible were added by modern editors, I felt duped. I had always assumed they were translated, just like what came after them. Instead, they are summaries filtered through the opinion of the group of people contracted to publish that translation. A gracious take would be they are intended to guide us as readers. But their shadow side would be that they cause us to make assumptions before we even read the ancient text.

Case in point: to a first-century Jew, the idea that a Samaritan could be “good” would have been ludicrous, and calling the son who leaves home in Luke 15 “prodigal” gives us far too much permission to ignore the unbecoming attributes of his brother and father.

The beginning of Luke 18 features a parable detailing the relationship of a widow and a judge. Editors of The Message, New International Version, and a number of others add that the widow is “persistent.” New American Standard Bible adds that the parable is exclusively about prayer, while the Common English Bible makes the claim it is about justice for the faithful. In the first verse, even the writer of Luke tries to tell us what, for certain, Jesus meant in his parable.

Yet, these summations are exactly the opposite of what Jesus seeks to share. He wants to leave his hearers flummoxed and bewildered. He wants them to struggle with the inconsistent dichotomy he presents. 

In the story of the widow and the judge, neither character would have been likable to those who first heard it. The judge, an agent of the divine law that ruled their land, had no respect for the divine. The widow, a person of no power and little consequence in that age, had no respect for the judge’s bench. It is from the interaction of these two that Jesus wants to teach us something about who we are and who God is.

In a way, this gives us permission to wrestle with scripture. Jesus challenges us to find where the Word prods — even stabs — at our assumptions. And, instead of leading us to say, “This is what these verses mean, end of story,” he gives us the gift of saying, “This is what I hear in these words right now.”

So, ignore the heading. What do you hear? What of this short story gives you hope, or makes you want to slam the book closed and read no more? What is happening between the lines, between the words, between the letters? Truth is in there, somewhere, and it is deeper than what biblical editors would have you believe.