Expecting Great Things From Prayer

Expecting Great Things From Prayer

Luke 18:1-8
October 21, 2008

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?”

There is an interesting story that Tom Long, a professor of preaching, tells about
Mother Teresa visiting Edward Bennett Williams, a legendary Washington criminal
lawyer. He was considered a powerful lawyer and at one time owned the Washington
Redskins and the Baltimore Orioles—he also well known for being a lawyer for Frank
Sinatra and Richard Nixon, among others. His biographer, Evan Thomas, tells the story
about when Mother Teresa visited Williams because she was raising money for an AIDS
hospice. Williams was in charge of a charitable foundation that she hoped would help.
Before she arrived for the appointment, Williams said to his partner, Paul Dietrich, “You
know, Paul, AIDS is not my favorite disease. I don't really want to make a contribution,
but I've got this Catholic saint coming to see me, and I don't know what to do.” Well,
they agreed that they would be polite, hear her out, but then say no.
Well, Mother Teresa arrived. She was a small, diminutive figure sitting on the other side
of the big mahogany lawyer's desk. She made her appeal for the hospice, and Williams
said, “We're touched by your appeal, but no.” Mother Teresa said simply, “Let us pray.”
Williams looked at Dietrich; they bowed their heads and after the prayer, Mother
Teresa made the same pitch, word for word, for the hospice. Again Williams politely
said no. Mother Teresa said, “Let us pray.” Williams, exasperated, looked up at the
ceiling, “All right, all right, get me my checkbook!”

Now, I used to work in development or fund raising, as it was once called, in a couple of
non-profits over the years, so I have to say that only Mother Teresa could get away
with something LIKE THAT for what we call THE ASK! It’s a great story about being
persistence, about knowing that you have to keep knocking and knocking and
knocking, until someone eventually answers the door. But, of course, the reality, at
least spiritually, is that a lot of us actually avoid doing a lot of asking from God,
because we’re a little scared we might not get what we want, and, well, we’re not sure
our faith could stand up to the test of praying for something good in this world, and
then not getting it—so we don’t often pray for peace, beyond Sunday morning,
because, in reality, we know that wars just keep going on, and we don’t pray for
healing, because we know the odds are stacked against it, at least that is what the
doctors have said, and what if we don’t get the healing—what kind of God says no to
our healing, or the healing of a child, or whomever we think especially deserves a
particular healing? And so some of us don’t ask much from God anymore, or we don’t
ask for anything too specific from God—I mean, why take the chance? If we have no
great expectations, we will have no great disappointments.

And yet, over and over again, we are asked to pray by the living Christ in the Gospel
stories—over and over again, there is an invitation to expect great things of prayer and
to expect great things of God—“ask and it will be given to you” (Matthew 7:7) we are
told in the Sermon on the Mount. And this parable, this beguiling, and simple, and yet
uncomfortable parable that we heard today—a parable told only in Luke, a writer who
seems to be as obsessed with prayer as he is with money and material things—Jesus
asks us to do the same, to keep asking and asking, and asking, until our knuckles
become bloody from rapping on the door of heaven, until we get what we want, or at
least get what we need. This really is an amazing parable that Jesus shares with his
first century listeners and with us here, especially because of the stark image that
Christ seeks to contrast God with—a judge who cares for no one or no thing, not even
the justice he has been entrusted with, justice he is entrusted with executing for the
defenseless in his land. But it’s important to situate this parable in a larger narrative—
the passage before this moment gives it a context that helps us understand why this
parable is told at this particular moment in the Gospel of Luke.

In the latter part of chapter 17, the chapter before our parable this morning, Jesus tells
his disciples of the coming kingdom of God, the coming realm of God amongst them,
both in its present form, which he himself represents at that very moment in time, in the
first century, but also the coming realm of God in the future—when the end of time
comes, when God wraps up the story of this planet, maybe of this universe. The
images he uses in this moment are stark, and yet familiar to his first century audience—
the imagery he uses are familiar to a culture drenched in the apocalyptic literature of
the day. Story of endings, of terrifying endings were floating all around Jesus’
contemporaries, so they had heard this kind of language but they were probably as
mystified by its meaning as we are today. “I tell you” Jesus says, “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.” And then the disciples ask
Jesus about where this coming of the kingdom of God will take place, what location will
this manifestation take place? In reply, Jesus says something incredibly cryptic,
mysterious even: “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” Pay attention to
what’s happening around you, he seems to say to them, and look for signs of the
completion of God’s work in this world, when the realm of God will finally manifest itself
fully.

At end of this cryptic moment is the place where our parable for this morning comes
into play, he shares this story, this parable, after telling them to look for signs of the
end all things. Christ tells them the story of a judge who is unwilling to mete out justice
to the most vulnerable of citizens in this ancient day. It is no accident that the heroine
in our story is a widow—in Israelite society, perhaps only an orphan would possibly be
more vulnerable to socio-economic forces of the time than a widow woman who was not
under the care of a husband, or a husband’s family—she was no longer even the
economic obligation of her own family of origin. The reality is that her situation was the
fruit of a patriarchal culture that did not value women very much. The story itself is
stripped of details, we are told only of a “certain city,” a judge with no name, a widow
without a name or a past and a story—only the present situation is before us, and even
that is without any sort of accompanying details. Was this judge just a beast of a human
being or was he expecting a bribe from either the widow or her opponent in this legal
dispute? And we don’t even know whether the widow was all that poor, though the
assumption would be that she was, since it gives the story greater power. Again, the
story is just free of details, and what we get is a judge who is just seemingly being
badgered by this widow who demands that he give her justice in this mysterious dispute.

The judge, in response to her continual visits, just finally caves in, but he does so not
because he thinks she is necessarily right, but because he just doesn’t want to be
harassed by this widow anymore. In fact, the Greek here hints at something a little bit
more violent than the word “bothered” that our translation uses—it actually implies that
he fears that she will violently assault him, that she will pound on him with her fists, if he
doesn’t give her justice! She acts so boldly, so out of character for a person in her
station in life in that day and age, that the judge fears for his physical safety and gives
her the justice she deserves! The badgering, the nuisance of having to say no, no, no
over again finally got to this unjust judge, and so he relents—she gets what she
deserves.

And then, in the parable, Jesus contrasts this judge to another, greater Judge, and
compares the two, saying that if this woman can get justice from this unjust judge, then
certainly you can expect justice from a just judge—surely God will listen to you, and you
will receive what you pray for, and there will be no delays in justice for you. He makes
the point by contrasting the judges—the character of God is greater than the character
of this pretty awful judge, so you can expect more from God. But then Jesus ends the
parable with words that hint of chapter 17, the one that immediately preceded this
passage—“when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” At the end of all
things, will the Christ find people who have continually prayed night and day, who, like
the widow, have been relentless in their pursuit of God in their calls for justice, to do
what seems impossible to do, in a world that seems to be following apart?

In Norton Juster's children's classic The Phantom Tollbooth, Milo embarks on a quest to
rescue the exiled princesses whose names are actually Rhyme and Reason. At the
conclusion, returning successful after battling a delightful array of monsters such as the
Senses Taker and the Terrible Trivium, he is greeted by a cheering crowd and a joyous
parade in his honor. But Milo is reluctant to take credit.

"But I could never have done it," he objected, "without everyone else's help."
"That may be true," said [Princess] Reason gravely, "but you had the courage to try;
and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do."
"That's why," said Azaz, "there was one very important thing about your quest that we
couldn't discuss until you returned."
"I remember," said Milo eagerly. "Tell me now."
"It was impossible," said the king, looking at the Mathematician.
"Completely impossible," said the Mathematician, looking at the king.
"Yes, indeed," they repeated together; "but if we'd told you then, you might not have
gone - and, as you've discovered, so many things are possible just as long as you don't
know they're impossible."
-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 247.

Believing that God can do the impossible, the illogical, the not-possible, even that can
have an effect upon us—it can remind us that we can be vehicles of the impossible,
that we too can become answered prayer. And I think that is why Jesus feels the need
to tell this odd, even disturbing parable right after he promises his disciples the sort of
divine entrance that would impress most of us. Christ feels the need to ask them to do
something more than to watch for vultures circling a corpse, to watch for signs of the
end of all things—he wants them to watch AND PRAY—so that they wouldn’t lose heart
before the end comes, so that they could see that even through the end comes, it
would not be the end of them, and not the end of hope itself. And, of course, in the
ancient world, the end of things, the return of God was also about the coming of justice,
the making of all things right, and the coming of the divine Judge who would bring
justice to a world drenched with injustice. When the end comes, there will be no need
for widows to threaten and badger judges until they receive the justice they rightfully
deserve—there will not even be a need for prayer, and for our pleas to God to make
things right in this world. But until then, we are asked to pray always, not so that we
can badger God into giving us and the world justice it deserves, but because, in the
end, prayer doesn’t change God’s mind as much as it changes our mind, as much as it
changes us.

It is the waiting and the naming of our needs and the needs of the world, it is the asking
for the impossible, it is the naming of all these things before God that really changes
us, that transforms us, that gives us heart when we were about to lose heart, when we
were about to lose hope, which is they very thing Christ fears for his earliest disciples:
that they will lose heart, amidst the chaos to come, that they will lose their faith. And his
solution to this fear is to pray, pray for the world, for ourselves, for justice, for those we
love and those we do not. Pray—he seems to say, pray when it becomes absurd to
pray, pray because prayer opens the door to hope, and pray because I have asked
you to pray, Jesus seems to say. It is naming what we need, naming what we want,
naming what the world needs, and asking for the impossible that is the transformative
thing about prayer, especially during the difficult times, because it is in the asking that
that we find, hope, that we plant the flag of hope in a world that seems to be falling
apart, when the end is seemingly on its ways.   And, still, even then, the asking, the
praying may not get us what we want, the impossible may still be impossible, but even
then, as Frederick Buechner tells us, “even if God does not bring you the answer you
want, God will bring himself. And maybe at the secret heart of all our prayers, that is
what we are really praying for.” Amen.