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Trinity Episcopal Church Hattiesburg, Mississippi Twenty-first Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 24) October 21, 2007 Go To Trinity's Home Page

Jeremiah 31:27-34
Psalm 119:97-104
2 Timothy 3:14- 4:1-5
Luke 18:1-8
The Collect of the Day
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 74 th General Convention of the ECUSA

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?” (Luke 18:1-8)

Compassion, Miracles, and God’s Will
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop, Rector

     Contrasts. The writer of the Gospel of Luke loves to point out the contrasts in his society: rich and poor; disease and health; starvation and nourishment. In pointing out those contrasts, Luke’s Jesus constantly calls us to action; to do something about injustice.

     But in today’s reading, Luke uses his love of contrasts in a new way. He uses comedy. Up to now, we have had in our minds the familiar images of the very European looking, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, aquiline-nosed Jesus standing on the Temple grounds, engaged in one kind of verbal joust or another with the shorter, darker, more sinister-looking Pharisees. Time and time again, Jesus has told those money loving hypocrites that they are not fulfilling God’s purposes. And we’ve grown weary of hearing those stories. Suddenly, today, Luke changes venue, and provides us with an unexpected parable: the widow and the unjust judge.

     The incongruity is that we expect the strong-armed tyrannical judge to win. But in this little vignette – unique to the Gospel of Luke – a little widowed woman clobbers city hall and obtains justice from a buffoon of a judge.

     We can imagine this judge to be a short, rotund man, who persistently wears yesterday’s meal in his beard.  He was appointed by Herod or the Romans not because of his skill or knowledge, but because he was particularly inept and therefore easily controled.  Such judges were notorious, and in the popular vernacular were called robber judges (Dayyaneh Gezeloth) because their judgments favored the plaintiff who could pay the largest bribe.[1]

     Into this judge’s chambers came a poor widow – a person so low as to not even reach the bottom rung on the social ladder.  The widow seems defenseless, her only recourse is to repeatedly come before the judge and plead her case.  She badgers him; she seeks justice by irritation.

     In the end, her persistence won the day. Note that this parable does not liken God to an unjust judge: it contrasts God to such a person. Jesus tells us that if in the end a corpulent, rather stupid, self-centered tyrannical judge will provide a person of low estate some justice, then just imagine how much more a loving God will give to his people in need.

     This text engenders two things in us: first, a belief in God’s justice, and second, the value of persistence in securing it. And that brings us to the reason for Jesus’ parable in the first place: “the need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

     Persistence is important when we petition God. Indeed it is crucial. But that raises important questions about prayer: Does God always hear our prayers? Does God answer our prayers? What do we do when God doesn’t seem to hear our prayers? What is the value of prayer, anyway?

     Prayer, whether it takes the form of highly stylized verbal petitions such as we find in the pages of the prayer book, or whether it consists of spontaneous thoughts about a person or a situation, is first and foremost a conscious reminder that we are not at the center of the universe. Something or someone else matters to us – a lot. We care. And when we pray or think hopeful thoughts about something or someone, we acknowledge our dependence on that which is outside ourselves, beyond our control. We express our helplessness. But more important than that, we express a profound sense of hopefulness.

     The parable that Luke provides us tells us that if we are going to make a mistake about prayer, it will be in not praying enough. But the purpose of being persistent in prayer is not to win some sort of contest. The purpose of prayer is not to put a headlock on God, forcing God to cry Uncle and give us what we want. Prayer is an activity that allows us to give up one’s self for a greater good. And that has the profound capacity to change our lives. It opens us up to the possibility of something different.

     I believe that God hears each and every prayer uttered, whether it is a complex Anglican prayer sprinkled with colons and semi colons, or the sincere thoughts of a loving person thinking good thoughts about a loved one. God hears them all. And in ways that I do not understand, the power of the divine, blended with our willingness to engage in this simple act of selflessness, can produce a positive outcome in the pray-er as well as in the thing or person prayed for.[2]

     But is prayer a form of magic? Can it magically produce results? I do not believe so. Prayers need to be taken in the context of the natural order and the fact that miracles are necessarily rare. But prayers can produce results, and I think that that is why Jesus reminds us that persistence is the key. Not persistence to persuade, but persistence to transform us into beings who are willing to stay in relationship and keep up an conversation with God in prayer. Prayer is like any other skill – it takes practice, and open minds and hearts to comprehend that sometimes our prayers are answered in unexpected ways. Prayer also takes diligence to keep on praying when we get no answer at all, or when we feel totally abandoned or unloved by God. It is very hard indeed to keep on praying knowing all the while that the answer might be “No.”

     But I think what Jesus is getting at when he tells us to pray and not lose heart is to ask for God’s compassion and justice. And compassion is the key. Compassion is the ultimate sharing of the joy and the pain of others, and the willingness to embrace that all inclusive Kingdom of God of which Luke’s Jesus has spoken. Compassion for others is what leads us into that Kingdom and complete conversion to God. Henri Nouwen once wrote that “Conversion to God means a simultaneous conversion to the other persons who live with you on this earth. The farmer, the worker, the student, the prisoner, the sick, the black man, the weak, the strong, the oppressed, and the oppressor, the patient, and the one who heals, the tortured and the torturer, the boss and the flunky. Compassion removes all pretension and false modesty.”[3]

     Jesus’ story also makes the claim that the persistent will receive justice quickly and without delay.[4] Hmmm… I wonder. “Where is justice when school shootings, car bombings, war, world hunger, and threats of lynching and racially motivated beatings crowd the headlines? Why is it that Jesus tells us that justice is to come swiftly, but that we are also to persist in seeking it?”[4] When we challenge God about what God should be doing about big issues of injustice like these, or with issues in our own lives or those we care about, maybe we should be prepared for God to ask us the very same question: “What are YOU doing about it?”

     Prayer primarily allows us to step out of our own worlds and into the worlds of the others who share this planet with us. And it allows us to tap into the mind and heart of God to bring about something better and nobler than what existed before.

     In his book about prayer, Peter Greig tells the story of his friend Floyd whose daughter Misha was expecting the routine birth of her second child.[5] During labor Misha suddenly struggled for breath and lost consciousness due to an amniotic embolism – a rare, and usually disastrous problem. The doctors rushed Misha to surgery to restore her breathing, but a very long eight minutes had elapsed before they got her breathing again. Meanwhile another team of surgeons delivered the baby by C-section. After surgery Misha was in a coma.

     The next day, Floyd went for a long walk by himself. His daughter had gone through something that had an 86% mortality rate. She was unlikely to regain consciousness, and she showed no signs of awareness. Baby Luke had probably been starved of oxygen as well for about 14 minutes.

     When he came back he told Peter that he had been wrestling with God. Up to now he had prayed for his daughter’s life. He reminded God of the unfulfilled promises about her future. But he also knew that what had happened was part of the natural order of things – sometimes things in medicine just go wrong, and that God would not violate that order. In his persistence, he found another way. He decided to pray that if it would bring more glory to God to take Misha, then he could accept it. If it would give more Glory to God for Misha to stay, then that would be fine too. This was the hardest and most painful thing that Floyd had ever prayed.

     Five days later, Floyd, who was a preacher, spoke to a crowd of 5000 about how God’s heart was broken the day Jesus died. Pain was evident on his face, etched there by his own feelings. When he finished, he was emotionally exhausted. Wanting to know how his daughter and grandson were doing, he turned on his cell phone. It was then Floyd received a shock.

     Not only had Misha come out of the coma, she had no neurological signs of serious consequence. The only problem she had (and still has) was short term memory loss – she can’t remember the bad stuff that happened that day. And, although 81% of babies in Luke’s situation die, Luke was fine too. The medical staff calculated that the odds of both Misha and Luke surviving an amniotic embolism without any brain damage to be about 1 in 1.2 million.

     Miracle or beating the odds? Is there a difference? But the glory Floyd prayed for is self evident. It is in the telling and retelling of this story. From Floyd’s mouth to Peter’s ear, and from Peter’s pen to my mouth and now to you. To God be the glory!

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Jeremiah 31:27-34

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the LORD. In those days they shall no longer say: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge. The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Psalm 119:97-104

 97 Oh, how I love your law! *
all the day long it is in my mind.

98 Your commandment has made me wiser than my enemies, *
and it is always with me.

99 I have more understanding than all my teachers, *
for your decrees are my study.

100 I am wiser than the elders, *
because I observe your commandments.

101 I restrain my feet from every evil way, *
that I may keep your word.

102 I do not shrink from your judgments, *
because you yourself have taught me.

103 How sweet are your words to my taste! *
they are sweeter than honey to my mouth.

104 Through your commandments I gain understanding; *
therefore I hate every lying way.

2 Timothy 3:14- 4:1-5

 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.

Luke 18:1-8

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?”

The Collect of the Day

Almighty and everlasting God, in Christ you have revealed your glory among the nations: Preserve the works of your mercy, that your Church throughout the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

[1] William Barklay.  The Gospel of Luke, Revised Edition.  (Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1975).  222.
[2] Harris WS, Gowda M, Kolb JW, et al. A randomized, controlled trial of the effects of remote intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients admitted to the coronary care unit. Arch Intern Med159:2273-2278 (1999)
[3] Henri Nouwen With Open Hands. (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1972), 92-114.
[4] Timothy F. Merrill (Exec. Ed.). “Basking in Reflected Glory.” Homiletics19(5):54, 2007.
[5] Peter Greig. God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer. Ventura, CA: Gospel Light-Regal Books, 2007. pp. 87-93.

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Copyright © 2007, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
18 October 2007

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