Lord Jesus, we’re doing our best, but the waiting is getting hard, so help us to not lose faith. Amen.
As the saying goes, “Life is not for the faint of heart.” There are so many things that wear us down, that deflate our hopes, that tire us out. The good news is that’s exactly the same world that Jesus was born into and the same condition that the disciples struggled with. The relief, strength, and hope that they received in being near to Jesus is the very same that we receive as we gather as his Body to receive his Body in the Eucharist. Thanks be to God.
Luke begins his telling of the Gospel by writing, “Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative about the events that have been fulfilled among us, I, too, decided to write a well-ordered account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may have a firm grasp of the words in which you have been instructed.” Now, there’s a lot of debate about who “Theophilus” was. The name means “Lover of God,” and he might have been a real person that Luke was writing to, or, it could be that Luke is writing to all of those who love God at least a little and want to grow to love God more.
And Luke, whose feast day the Church celebrated yesterday, tells us that he writes so that we will have a “firm grasp” of the faith. The word there in Greek is asphaleia – where we get the word “asphalt. So this is about us having a secure and solid grounding. And why is Luke concerned about us having a firm grasp? Well, it’s been a while. By the time of Luke’s writing, it’s been about four decades since the Resurrection. The first followers of Jesus are dying – some due to age and others to martyrdom. After a revolt in response to ongoing Roman occupation of Israel, the Roman army laid siege to Jerusalem for five months and destroyed the Temple – the very heart of their faith.
Does God remember us and still care about us? When will the Romans leave? If Jesus is the Messiah, then where is the kingdom we have been waiting for? These are the sorts of questions that were on the people’s hearts and minds. I wonder, what heart-aching questions you bring with you this morning? That longing is what we find Jesus addressing here at the start of chapter 18 of Luke.
In chapter 17, right before this morning’s passage began, Jesus was speaking about the end of all things – “I tell you, on that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and the other left.” Of course, the chapter divisions weren’t added to the Bible until about 1200 years after it was written. It’s not as if Jesus said, “Ok scribes, go ahead and start a new section now.” Jesus speaks apocalyptically about the time they are waiting for, and then moves right into this parable about our need to pray always and not lose heart as we wait.
And the reason this lesson is so important at this point in the gospel is in the very next chapter, we enter into Holy Week and the Passion. Jesus knows that his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion is coming and if the disciples are not steeped in prayer, they will, indeed, lose heart.
Beloved, there are a lot of things right now that might make us lose heart, a lot of forces that are conspiring to break us. I recently heard one person describe our society as being fragmented, frenetic, and flattened. Fragmented meaning that there is so much division and so little cohesion. We are frenetic in that we are racing from one thing to the next and we can’t catch our breaths. And we are flattened, both in that we feel deflated, like we’re on a collision course for an inevitable crash, and flattened in that we’re living in a two-dimensional world in which we are deprived of depth. We long for connection, beauty, meaning, and purpose, but so much of our lives are utilitarian, scripted, and closed.
And what Jesus commends to us is prayer, which begs the question – what exactly is prayer? One preacher said that “Prayer is internalizing Jesus,” meaning that prayer is becoming aware that Jesus is, already and always, with us and in us. In this understanding of prayer, it’s not so much about having the right words to speak; it’s about being open to how Jesus is speaking to us. Another theologian said “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” In this view of prayer, it’s about recognizing that there are possibilities that we cannot yet imagine, there are hopes that we might not be bold enough to hope, there is a peace that passes our ability to predict or understand. And one mystic has said that prayer isn’t about words at all, it’s an attitude.
Jesus describes with this parable what an attitude of prayer looks like. Imagine a widow who wants to bring a case against someone she thinks has wronged her. The translation we heard was that the widow as seeking “justice,” but “vengeance” is just as valid of a translation. As a brief aside, this is a reminder to us that what looks like justice to some will look like vengeance, or perhaps even oppression, to others. I know that a lot of us long for justice– but let us remember that justice is not the same thing as “things being the way that I think they should be.” No, instead, justice is things being as God would have them to be. And there’s a huge difference between saying, “This is what I think justice looks like” and “This is what I believe justice looks like to God.” May we have the humility and wisdom to see the difference.
So, this widow is seeking something – perhaps it’s a righteous solution to a problem, maybe it’s revenge, we don’t know – but she’s not going to stop until she gets it. Her case comes before a judge for whom the title “your honor” is a mockery. He neither fears God nor respects people. In other words, he couldn’t care less about this widow’s case. Maybe he thought the widow was in the wrong, maybe he was prejudiced against her, maybe he had taken a bribe. Whatever the reason, he refuses to give her what she’s after. But like the many women who have shaped history such as Esther, Mary, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, and Malala Yousafzai, nevertheless, she persisted.
Now, this put the judge in a bind. He was getting tired of seeing this widow and hearing the same complaints. And though this widow might not have had much social, political, or economic power, she used what power she did have. I’ve mentioned before that I was involved in bringing over a dozen racial equity workshops to our community in Salisbury, North Carolina and one of the many things I learned and re-learned was that defeat only happens when we falsely assume that we are powerless. If you know Spanish, you know that the word for power is poder, which simply means “to be able.”
Friends, no matter how many times we are told to mind our own business, to stay in our lane, to focus on spirituality and ignore what is happening in society, regardless of how insurmountable the issues are, how intractable the division is, how weary we might be, we always have power because we are always able to do something. No matter how powerless or penniless we may be, we can always show mercy, compassion, and grace. And to do those things is, indeed, to have an attitude of prayer which is an uprising against the disorder of this world.
The widow uses her power to persist and ability to annoy, and thus ends up getting what she was after. Jesus adds the commentary, “Will God not grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?” And here, we must remember that this a parable, not an analogy. God is not an unjust judge, and we are not revenge seeking widows. This is what’s known as “lesser to great” or “how much more” logic. If a rotten judge can be coaxed into doing what that the widow requested, how much more will our generous, gracious, and loving God do for us? Infinitely more. That’s how much. And this lesser to greater doesn’t apply only to the judge, but also the widow.
This is what Jesus is getting at when he asks, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes,” which he’s just talked about in chapter 17, “will he find faith on earth?” If this feisty and persistent widow can rouse herself to argue her case over and over again in what would seem to be a hopeless situation with an unjust judge, how much more ought we come to our loving Father who is always more ready to hear than we are to pray.
How feisty can you be? How insistently can we expect that all shall be well? How audacious can our hopes be? How open can we be to being surprised by God? There’s a small translation issue in Jesus’ question that might help in being so bold to pray always and not losing heart. Jesus does not ask “will he find faith on earth,” he asks “will he find ‘the’ faith on earth.” That article “the” is a word of grace that takes this passage from command to gift, from obligation to invitation.
When Jesus asks if he will find faith in us, he’s not asking “Will I find you busy doing good works, will I find you having your quiet time with Scripture each morning, will I find you in church on a Sunday morning?” No, he’s asking will he find “the” faith among. And what is “the” faith? Faith in Luke’s Gospel is about trust in who Jesus is. Though we might be weary, though we might doubt our abilities, though we might be stuck, the faith is knowing that Jesus is always able. The faith is knowing the story that though we did our worst to Jesus, he gives us his best. It is trusting that we are never the worst thing that we have done and our worthiness is not tied to the best thing we ever accomplish. It is holding onto the assurance that we are already forgiven and always loved. It is seeing abundance instead of scarcity, meaning that we can be generous instead of cautious and that we can see our neighbors as neighbors, not competitors. Faith is about being open despite the fact that the world tries to close us off to the wonder, beauty, and love that surround us. In other words, “the” faith is a commitment to the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, meaning that Washington, Wall Street, and Hollywood are not, nor are our self-doubts, uncertainties, or fears.
Because God is infinitely greater than an unjust judge, our hope can be infinitely greater than the persistent widow’s pleas. Prayer is how we unite ourselves to this faith, how we plant it within our hearts, how we tune ourselves to the song of grace that sounds from the heart of God into all eternity. Prayer is how we practice trusting in Jesus.
So pray as you can, not as you can’t. You might have a strong, robust, and confident prayer life and that’s fantastic if you do. Perhaps you feel self-conscious about praying, maybe it feels too much like make-believe, maybe you’re not sure where to start. That’s a fine place to be, but don’t use it as an excuse. Start with a prayer we know from Scripture: “Lord, help my unbelief” or “I don’t know how to pray, so help me to hear you praying in me.” Maybe it’s using the Lord’s Prayer each morning or the short Daily Devotions on pages 137-140 of the Prayer Book. Pray, not to get what you want, but pray as a way of saying “yes” to love of God that we are given in Jesus.
One pastor has said that “prayer matures into memory.” As we pray, we grow towards hope, towards mercy, towards love. Without question, prayer is effective and prayer changes things. Sometimes prayer opens new possibilities in the world around us. But always, when we are so bold as to pray, we will find that we are changed into a people who are more hopeful than the facts call for, people who are quicker to forgive than our minds can understand, people who know the peace that passes all understanding. That is the faith that Jesus comes to gift us.
I know there’s a lot going on this world that wearies us. When will the shutdown end so that I can go back to work, when will the doctor call and give me the test results, when will our house in North Carolina sell, when will I get the acceptance letter for college, when will civility return to our politics? I don’t know when; and if I did, I would tell you. What I can tell you is that when we are so bold as to pray, we will find ourselves surrounded by the Love that is doing for us greater things than we can ask for or imagine.
