Sung Eucharist and Matins, Christchurch Priory, 20 October 2019
Genesis 32.22-31
2 Timothy 3.14- 4.5
Luke 18.1-8
‘Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.’
In a few minutes, as part of our worship this morning we’re going to say the Lord’s Prayer together. ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’
It’s a prayer that many of us will say every day. But sometimes it can feel as if I’m just going through the motions—like brushing your teeth type of thing. Other days, I just clean forget. Something happens when I get up. For example, I make the mistake of looking at my email on my phone first thing. There’s something I’ve got to respond to, it’ll only take a minute. And before you know it, the day has whizzed by, and it’s only when I’m going to sleep that I realise that I haven’t prayed at all. And so I start, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name… Zzzz.’ And there goes another day.
I often lose heart, too. Do you? I can get easily discouraged, especially my prayers take forever to be answered and sometimes just don’t seem to be answered at all. If any of this sounds familiar, then together, this is a parable that we really need to pay attention to.
And in one sense, it’s a relatively straight forward parable. We’re to be like the stubborn widow who will just not give up in her fight for justice. We’re to keep at it day after day, come what may. Bear in mind that Jesus is using the example of someone who in her society at that time would have been almost powerless. Primarily because she’s a woman. Plus she’s a widow. Normally, it would only be men who would be allowed into court—a woman’s testimony wasn’t even be deemed to be trustworthy. And women certainly weren’t allowed to represent themselves to the judge. But not this woman. Even though she’s on her own, she ignores the social prejudices of her day and hammers away regardless, never giving up.
In the persistence and patience of our prayers, Jesus is saying, we’re to be like the widow.
But what about God? What does this parable tell us about God? After all, there are only two characters in this story: the widow and the judge. If we’re to be like the widow, never-giving up in our prayer, does that mean that we’re to understand that God is like a judge who only grants us our prayers so as to stop being pestered by us?
No, thankfully, that’s not what Jesus is saying. In fact, the point he’s making is that God is totally NOT like the judge. In the parable, the judge eventually does the right thing but for the wrong reason. Actually, it’s quite humorous but it’s lost in translation. Jesus actually uses something like a boxing metaphor for how the women is persistent in her pursuit of justice. The judge eventually gives in because he doesn’t want to be boffed on the nose by her!
Whereas, as Jesus explains, unlike the unjust judge, God does the right thing for the right reason. Jesus asks, ‘Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?’ The answer to this rhetorical question being, yes, he will. Why? Because as Jesus goes on to explain, God’s not like the heartless judge in the parable. He’s the opposite! ‘Will he delay long in helping them?’ Rhetorical question, number two. No, he won’t delay long. Why? Because God’s not a self-centred judge! He’s the most just judge of all. ‘I tell you,’ Jesus continues, ‘God will quickly grant justice’.
This ‘quickly’ is important because it has the sense of something that when it happens, it happens suddenly. And remember that the context for Jesus telling the parable is his teaching about the coming of the Kingdom of God. So Jesus is saying that when the Kingdom of God, which is already in our midst, but which is not yet fulfilled, when it is fulfilled, it’ll all happen suddenly.
So this is very good news for those of us find it hard to pray always and lose heart. The God to whom we pray is not someone who treats our prayers as bothersome nagging from some little pint-sized Barry McGuigan hammering away at God’s shins. When we pray, God will not delay long in helping us.
But it doesn’t always feel like that, does it? When we pray, ‘Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’, we do so because we’re praying for earth to be more like heaven. Heaven’s peachy. It’s down here that things are so seriously messed up.
For example, like me, I’m sure you will have had the experience of praying for someone, a loved one for example who is seriously ill. Or, at another level, for a political situation (what could I possibly be thinking of?!) or even a war or a conflict somewhere in the world, praying day by day, week in, week out, year after year, but nothing seems to get better. What does this parable have to say to that experience?
Well, it tells us what the reason isn’t. The reason for the delay isn’t that God doesn’t care like some rotten judge. We know from this story and Jesus’ explanation that God’s character is quite the opposite. So from that we can reassure ourselves that any delay we experience in the healing of our loved one or the peaceful resolution of some conflict, hard though that delay may be, is not because God doesn’t care and can’t be bothered to help. It doesn’t answer the question of why there is a delay, but it tells us that any delay that does occur isn’t because God doesn’t care.
But, even knowing that, it’s still hard. As Jesus says, ‘when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth’? And it’s a zinger of a question. For this act of faith of trusting God, in between the time of Jesus’ ascension to the righthand of the Father and his return, is not easy. Even when knowing that this is God the Father’s character, as unlike the unjust judge as we could possibly imagine, nonetheless praying always and not losing heart can be a real struggle.
In this we can draw comfort from the story of Jacob wrestling with this mysterious man by the Jabbok ford that we heard about in our Old Testament reading from Genesis. After the event, Jacob realises that he has been actually wrestling with God ‘For I have seen God face to face’, he says. And from within that nightlong struggle, when Jacob will simply not let go—and again, the imagery is of fighting and wrestling—from within that struggle has come the blessing.
The wrestling with God also brings a wound. Jacob thereafter will always limp. When we wrestle with God in our prayers, yes, we will be blessed. But there can be a spiritual cost, too.
All the more reason why it is important to remember, when our prayers are reduced to tears and groans for those we love or for wars we hate, that it is in such prayers that God the Holy Spirit is praying within us. We do not pray solely out of our own resources. When we pray, however falteringly, however intermittently, we are drawn into the prayer of God.
Which brings me to the final thing I want to draw your attention to when it comes to praying always and not losing heart. That when we do stop praying, or just forget to pray, and when we do lose heart, the praying does not stop and all is not lost.
This is because the one who tells us this parable, Our Lord Jesus, is alive. He is seated at God’s right hand and, and as the letters of the New Testament tell us, He prays for us without ceasing. When our prayers stop, His continue. When we lose heart, the heart of the Risen and Ascended Lord Jesus continues to beat with a passion, not only for us and those we love but for all of creation, too.
All of which is to say, this is good news, not a question of try harder. It makes the world of difference to know that whoever it is and whatever it may be that we’re praying for, it doesn’t ultimately depend on the doggedness of our prayers. For when we pray, it’s not as if we’re starting things off, as if prior to that moment no prayers have been said.
Quite the contrary, when we pray we’re joining in with the prayers that Jesus is already praying. The Holy Spirit is fusing our prayers with His until our prayers become His and His prayers are said in us. For we are His Body.
Together as the church it is both our privilege and our calling, sustained by the Holy Spirit, to pray with Jesus until his return,
‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.’
Amen.