Always Praying, Not Losing Heart- 10/16/22
Prayer works because we work—with God.
Sermon 2022.10.16, “Praying Always, Not Losing Heart” (Luke 18:1-8), M. Newheart, FBCEG
Someone posted on Facebook this week, "I used to have a friend who would pray in his apartment for God to feed hungry people. Then he would leave, drive around until he saw someone who seemed to need food, and buy them a meal. Then he would return to his apartment and thank God for answering his prayer."
In a similar vein, Pope Francis once said, “You pray for the hungry, then you feed them. That is how prayer works.” Prayer works because we work—with God. Prayer works because we work—with God.
In our scripture lesson for today, Jesus talks about prayer. Luke 18:1 says, "Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” Luke's Jesus is a praying person. At every major event of his life, Luke says that Jesus was at prayer: at the baptism, before selecting the 12, at the giving of the Lord's Prayer, at the Transfiguration, at his arrest, and at his crucifixion. Jesus was a praying person.
And he expects his followers to be praying people too. Thus, Jesus tells this parable about the judge and the widow. Typically he is called the unjust judge and she the poor widow, but the parable itself doesn't say that. Jesus adds that description in his commentary on the parable in verse 6. The parable itself does say that the judge doesn't fear God or respect people, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he was unjust. He was just grumpy. And one would expect the widow to be poor, but again, the scripture doesn't say so explicitly. We often get in trouble with adjectives. I remember in one church some time ago asked me, "Are you a conservative or liberal American Baptist?" I said, "I think that I'm going to leave the adjectives out and just say that I'm an American Baptist." So we've got this parable of the judge and the widow.
Both the judge and the widow are in a “certain city,” maybe Jerusalem, maybe Providence, maybe Narragansett, who knows? Luke says that Judge is non-God-fearing and non-people-respecting. I guess that he was appointed and not elected. You wouldn’t put those kinds of things on your campaign literature. An opponent would, of course. We’re getting near enough to election time that we’re hearing how bad the political opponents are. And this judge—"Order in the court ‘cause here comes the judge!”—is not a very good guy—and he knows it. This is not a campaign smear. Judge admits that he’s not-God-fearing and non-people-respecting. I’m glad that having bad judges is a modern phenomenon. (That was sarcasm.)
Also in the city was Widow. And she’s a “comer,” a “continual comer.” She keeps coming to Judge—Order in the court, here comes the widow—and says, “Gimme justice.” Judge keeps refusing her, but after a while, Widow wears him down. He’s in such a bad way, he’s talking to himself. I guess that he didn’t have anybody else to talk to. Judge says, “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” (18:4-5). So Judge grants her request, not because it’s right, that is, just, for her but because it’s right, that is, expedient, for him. He doesn’t want to be bothered by her anymore. She going to wear him out because she is a continual comer.
I’m going to stop right here in the scripture. Jesus goes on talking, and he applies the parable. He says that Judge is something of a God-figure. Just as Widow continually came to Judge and got what she wanted, then God’s chosen people can hound God both day and night, and God will grant justice to them. In other words, keep on keeping on! Don't lose heart; don't lose Newheart! Keep at it! Persist in prayer, as Paul says (Colossians 4:2). You'll get what you need.
But let me give a little different spin, and with this I am grateful to biblical scholar Brandon Scott, who has written a good deal on the parables.[1] Scott suggests that when Jesus originally told the parable, before Luke set it down in his Gospel, the God-figure in the parable is not the judge but the widow. Indeed, we are the judge. And so God as the widow keeps bothering us to grant justice, to give peace, to empower the poor, to proclaim the acceptable day of the Lord, not just in the world, but in our own souls.
That makes a lot of sense to me. A lot of sense. I am fond of a video series called "Caught in Providence." This documentary series stars 85-year-old Judge Frank Caprio of the Providence, Rhode Island, Municipal Court. Each segment is 5-6 minutes long, and I strongly encourage you to look it up on YouTube. Judge Caprio is not an unjust judge by a long, long shot. He is called “the nicest judge in the world,” but he's no pushover. He fears God and respects people. In one episode that involved a "speeding nun" from the Sisters of Mercy, Judge Caprio said that he has learned from the Sisters of Mercy to “see the world from the eyes of the poor.” And the sister said that her order lives by that perspective: seeing the world through the eyes of the poor.[2]
In this parable, does God become the widow? Does God become the disenfranchised, the powerless, the hopeless, or as we used to say at Howard Divinity, the least, the lost, and the left out? Where is God at work in our lives today? Through the great sermons of preachers expounding God's Word? To some extent, I think, but not as much as we preachers like to think. No, God is at work in our lives, bothering us, distracting us, through those things and people that we might consider "little," "unimportant." God as Widow wants us to grant justice to our church and to our community.
But first, God wants us to grant justice to our own souls. We are sometimes unjust to ourselves, to our gifts, to our sense of who we are. We are sometimes unfair to ourselves. We sometimes render judgments to ourselves: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! We are so often our own unjust judge.
But God keeps coming, keeps coming, keeps coming, and says, "Grant justice. Love. Make peace. Grant hope." And the good news is that eventually we are going to give up to this continually coming God. We are going to grant ourselves justice, love, and peace. Indeed, it’s already happening. We are saying, “OK, God, you win, you win.” We are the non-God-fearing, non-people respecting judge. God is the continually coming widow, who is like the Energizer bunny and keeps going and going and going, beating the drum for justice, for kindness, for peace. We then give up to justice, we give up to peace, we give up to love. We give up to God because God won't quit. God won't quit. And therefore neither do we.
So, on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus tells a parable about a judge and a widow, about prayer and persistence, about justice and love. I would like to conclude with the last part of one of my favorite poems, "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou. It ends this way:
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.[3]
--
God as poor widow rises within us, allowing us to rise. God rises. We rise. All God's children rise. Against all the unjust judges in the world, against all our own apathy and self-hatred. we rise, we rise, we rise.
And all God's people said, Amen.
Index:
[1] Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the Parable (Minneapolis; Fortress, 1989), 175-88.
[2] “The Speeding Nun!” Caught in Providence, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_E1IiejSp4
[3] Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise,” Poetry Foundation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_E1IiejSp4