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| Let us pray... |
C Lectionary 29 – October 20, 2013
Text: Luke 18:1-8 (Persistent widow)
Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas
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INJ +
Grace and peace be with you, from
God our Father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today we hear another parable from
Jesus – this one, about a persistent widow. Widows had few legal protections in
Jesus’ time, but this woman has an issue with someone else and so she keeps
going to the judge to demand justice for herself. Eventually, we’re told, she wears
him down – not because her cause is just, but rather because the judge becomes
tired of hearing her nagging. He even says that to himself – basically that “I
have no fear of God and I don’t respect anyone, but this lady is wearing me
out, so fine. FINE. Give her what she wants already!”
Unlike some of the other parables
of Jesus, we’re told right off the bat what this parable is about. Verse 1:
“Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose
heart.” There it is. So, right off the bat, we can begin assigning characters,
right? The widow is…us. The judge is…God. And her pleas to the judge are…our
prayers to God.
And that’s where things get a little
bit uncomfortable for me because the judge in this story is kind of a jerk. We’re
told so by Jesus (he tells us that the judge had no fear of God nor respect for
the people) – and we see it for ourselves in this story. The judge gives in not
because he has a yearning for justice to be done for this woman who sits firmly
at the bottom of the social structure. He gives in not because he feels some
sense of moral obligation to obey God’s commandments about caring for widows
and orphans. He gives in because he’s tired of listening to her jibber jabber.
And so then the question becomes:
is that really God? If we’re like the persistent widow in this story, knocking
on heaven’s gates with our persistent prayers to God, is God up there, throwing
out answers to us not because he loves us but because he’s tired of our
whining? I’m pretty uncomfortable picturing God this way.
Maybe the point of this story,
then, is not that God is like the unjust judge. Maybe the point of the story is
not for us to learn about God by looking at how the judge behaves in this
parable. Rather, maybe the focus should be on the widow and her persistence
with the judge. What can we learn from watching her?
She has a need and she takes it to the
judge, over and over and over again. It becomes her priority – it is, for our
purposes, the thing at the top of her calendar every single day. She isn’t
deterred by the judge’s behavior – she isn’t discouraged in the slightest, as
far as we can tell. What can we learn from this widow?
Well, since we know that this is a
parable about prayer, then what we learn is that persistence in prayer is a
good thing. That – like the widow – when we pray, we should keep at it – make
it our priority – put it at the top of our calendars – and, above all, not be
discouraged when our prayers seem to be availing us nothing.
What on earth do we do then? What
on earth do we do when we keep on praying, only to feel as though we might as
well be banging our head against a brick wall. I wonder if the widow ever felt
that way when she was dealing with this ridiculous judge…?
If the lesson for us in this story
is to look to the widow as our example, then the answer to my question is very
simple indeed. What on earth do we do when we are stuck in our prayers to God?
We keep on praying.
Maybe it feels like a waste of our
time. We’re such cause-and-effect people, aren’t we? We want to ask for this
and get that. It can be very easy to think of approaching God in prayer sort of
like we might approach a clerk at a customer service desk: “I have this item; I
need to return it; yes, I have my receipt; please give me credit on my credit
card; yes, I’ll sign here; thank you for helping me.” And out the door we go,
tra-la, with our business transacted and everything signed off.
But when we pray, we are not merely
transacting business with God, approaching him with our need and waiting for
him to “credit our accounts.” Prayer is about the relationship between God and
us. In his Small Catechism, when talking about the Lord’s Prayer, Martin Luther
says that we ask God “boldly and with complete confidence, just as loving
children ask their loving father.”
The widow in our story certainly is
bold and confident in pleading her case before the judge. And so we can be bold
and confident in our prayers because however persistent we are in prayer, God
is even more persistent in his love for us. “As a father has compassion for his
children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him,” says Psalm 103.[1]
May we be bold and persistent in
prayer in all things and at all times because prayer does much more than just
build our relationship with God. Prayer also helps us in our relationships with
other people – as we pray for others, we are connected to them, somehow. I
truly believe that one way that God’s love reaches others is through our
prayers for them. Because I know there are times when I have felt unable to
pray – the burden has been too heavy, and it was the prayers of others that
lifted the burden.
An acquaintance of mine who serves
as an Anglican priest in Canada got some heavy news yesterday about someone in
his church. He shared online that he was having a hard time sleeping last
night. This morning, I found that he had posted this during his night of
insomnia: “Perhaps there are nights I can't sleep because God is keeping vigil
with the world, and my soul is the candle God has chosen to light.”
Sometimes, our prayers will be
joyous and full of energy. Sometimes, our prayers will be halting because we
don’t know quite what to say. Sometimes, we will rely upon the prayers of
others to get us through. But at all times, God is listening. God is listening.
Amen.
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