+ + +
Now I’ll get to that, but let
me just take a short detour and just say a word about this “people of the Way.”
I think the Church in our day is beginning to rediscover the power of this
metaphor, of our roots, of what it means to be a people who not only sit in beautiful
church buildings like this one to worship Jesus, but who take up our cross to
follow him into the world beyond these walls and into our homes, our schools,
our workplaces, and the streets of Fitchburg. We, too, are called to be a
people on the move—a people on the Way. Quite frankly that looks different in
Holden or Westborough or the Brookfields than it does in Fitchburg or Gardner or
Worcester. Context matters and one size will not fit all. But part of what I am
learning in this new job is that even so, there is way more that binds us
together than keeps us in our silos. We face similar challenges in a secularized
consumer driven postmodern world, which means we need to be a people who are on
the Way together. Whatever else our challenges and our
differences may be, we are called to share this work in the name of the risen,
living Christ.
So back to this conversation
that Jesus is having with his disciples about prayer. Last week, as you may
recall, we heard the story about the healing of ten lepers in the region
between Samaria and Galilee. Only one of those ten returned to say, “thank
you.” And he was a Samaritan, Luke
tells us with some incredulity! This encounter reminds us that gratitude takes
us to the very heart of what Christian prayer is all about. Not too long ago, a
friend of mine posted these words as his Facebook status: “Envy is the art of
counting someone else’s blessings.” We might turn that around and remember that
gratitude is the art of counting our own.
Or as Meister Eckhardt put it: “if
the only prayer you ever say is thank you, it will be enough.”
So today, Jesus is speaking
about persistence in prayer. He sets before us this parable of a
persistent widow who wears out a corrupt judge in her pursuit of justice. It’s
important to note that this is a parable, not an allegory. Sometimes people get
confused. A parable is meant to help us think in new ways, to break through our
defenses and to challenge our theological certitudes. Very often parables are
meant to leave us scratching our heads and wondering what just happened. In an
allegory, the characters are meant to stand in for something else: so if this
was an allegory then the unjust judge would be like God. But that gets
confusing and unhelpful and I don’t think that’s the point here. If God is like
the unjust judge, then He just answers our prayers to get rid of us, because we
have been so annoying. But the God who hears our prayers created us in love and
has claimed us in love. God wants to
spend time with us in prayer.
As for this widow, I suspect
that most of us, when we hear about widows, tend to think of little old ladies.
I have known my fair share of them, but none more influential on my own journey
than my maternal grandmother – a woman who outlived her husband by decades. In
fact I never knew my grandfather, who died when my mother was still a child. So
my grandmother cut it very close financially, literally living from social
security check to social security check. Yet never did I hear her complain
about money. She was a strong and wise woman who counted her blessings every
day. So maybe we picture someone like her.
But I wonder if it helps us
to hear that parable in new ways by picturing “the widow” as someone more like,
say, Julia Roberts in the film Erin
Brockovich—who takes on a corrupt legal system because she’s is out of
options. Or perhaps Sally Field in Places
of the Heart, a young widow desperate to save her farm and get the crop in
against all odds. Or even my own grandmother before I knew her, when my mother
was still a little girl and she was raising her on her own. All of them embody
determination and tenacity, perseverance and courage, and hope.
The widow in our parable keeps
coming to the judge to plead her case, day after day after day, because she has
no other recourse. Until finally she does just plain wear that old judge out,
who decides the case in her favor simply because she was such a pain in the
neck. That woman will do whatever it takes, like a young widow raising her
children alone or trying to hold onto the family farm or fighting against a
corporation that is polluting this good earth. And so, Jesus asks: what would
happen if people prayed with that same kind of determination and persistence?
What if we really did pray
like that widow—as though our lives depended on it? It seems to me that much of
what passes for prayer in the church is just plain anemic. Sometimes we pray as
functional atheists, praying because we know that is what Christians are supposed to do. But deep down we aren’t
really sure we expect much to happen, either in the heart of God or in our own
hearts. But Jesus invites us to take note of this persistent widow and then
says: pray like her.
That doesn’t mean we will
always get exactly what we asked for. I sometimes joke when I am asked to pray
for good weather or a Red Sox victory that I’m in sales, not management. But
underneath the joke lies a more serious point. We are all in sales; not management. Ultimately God gets to be God. We can and should offer prayers of
intercession and petition with persistence, but there is always a shadow side
to such prayers, because if we aren’t careful it can start to be like we are
telling God how to do God’s job! So we
can and should keep praying for that friend who has inoperable cancer. But the
answer to that prayer may not be a miraculous cure. It might be that our friend
finds the courage and trust to die well and with fewer regrets and after
reconciling with an estranged family member. We may be praying that God would
send an angel to guard over our friend in her time of need, but the answer to
that prayer may be that God means for us
to go knock on her door and hold her hand so that she will know the love of God
through us. Such answers to prayer are not always the ones we want, but they may
well be the ones we get. They are not evidence that God wasn’t listening, but
rather, raise the question: are we?
The catechism of the Book of Common Prayer says that prayer
is “responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.” (BCP
856) That’s a pretty expansive definition of prayer. Many of us carry around an
unexamined view of prayer that is pretty passive: something like being seated
on the lap of a Santa-Claus God with our wish lists. So I think Jesus invites
us to rethink this by putting this persistent widow before us today. Pray like her,he says. Pray like you
mean it!
Next weekend Jesus will still
be “on the way” and he’ll still be talking about prayer. I’ll leave that text
for your rector, but here’s a preview of that coming attraction: there will be
these two men praying in the temple, one a Pharisee and one a tax collector.
The Pharisee prays in a way that isolates him from his neighbor—he even has the
audacity to say out loud, “thanks that I’m not like that guy!” In contrast, the tax collector offers a humble
prayer that neatly summarizes the first three steps of a twelve-step program: Lord,
have mercy on me, a sinner.
As this week unfolds, I
invite you to reflect on your own prayer life. There is not one right way to
pray. But we can all improve our prayer lives if we link these three gospel
readings together like beads on a prayer chain. Taken together, last week, this
week, and next week we are invited to do three things toward that end: first, cultivate gratitude. On the worst of
days, waking up in the morning is better than not. There is so much to be
thankful for, so make a list, and count your blessings. Second, be persistent in prayer. Even when it
feels like nothing is happening, keep at it. Be like that widow. And third, be humble. Remember that you cannot
confess someone else’s sin; only your own. All of us fall short of the glory of
God. Yet God’s grace is bigger than our failings.
Pray without ceasing, by thought and by deed, with or
without words. But keep praying—as if your very life depends on it.
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