Scripture ~ Luke 18: 1-8
Sermon ~ The Persistence of Prayer
Preacher ~ George Thompson
Prayer has become a problem for many. Some among us confess that we pray much less and with far less conviction or expectation. We have tried intercessory prayer and its seems like a waste of valuable time. I want to talk today with those who pray less and feel guilty about it, those who wonder if it does any good to pray, those who wonder if anything comes of our verbal balloons elevated to God. Do our words bounce off the ceiling and come back like an echo in a hollow chamber? Is our posture in prayer something like a technician on a platform leaning into a microphone, lifting his eyes towards heaven and repeating the phrase:
Atesting--one, two, three@? Some even share the cynicism of Mark Twain expressed by his young peripatetic philosopher Huckleberry Finn who observed,
Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn't any good to me without hooks. . . . I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the widow get back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fat up? No, says I to myself, there ain't nothing in it."1
Perhaps our intercessory prayers seem futile because the house of prayer has many rooms, and intercession is only one of them. We reach the inner chamber of intercession only as we pass through other dwelling places for prayer.
Richard Foster, in a challenging volume simply entitled Prayer, delineates twenty-one different expressions of prayer. This Quaker pietist not only startles the reader with the many rich facets of a life immersed in devotion, but he also implies that intercessory prayer is ineffective in the lives of those who are unacquainted with other experiences of conversation with God. When we have made our petitions like a shopping list of personal needs and have neglected to engage in an on-going pilgrimage with God, our words of intercession sound hollow indeed. We cannot have meaningful conversation with a stranger. If we have treated God like a short-order cook, how can we expect God to be patient with us? We live in a micro-wave culture that demands quick-fix solutions. But meaningful prayer is not like turning on a light switch or swallowing a pill for an instantaneous cure. Foster observes that, in the levitical legal code, the fire on the altar in the temple was perpetually kept burning. It was never to be extinguished.
"As God builds stamina and grit into our spirituality," observes Foster, "we today must learn to burn the eternal flame of prayer on the altar of devotion."2
The disciples of Jesus also had great difficulty with intercessory prayer. After all, they had left their nets and livelihood in order to follow the Galilean prophet, believing that he would immediately establish a new social order. They were surrounded by oppression and injustice. The pitiful bodies of hungry peasants pressed upon them. The rotten bandages of the diseased poor filled their nostrils with the smell of despair. Did God not hear their prayerful petitions when they cried out for deliverance? They now passed through treacherous Samaria in route to Jerusalem. Tension was building with every step. Sensing their anxiety, Jesus told them a parable
Ato show them that they should always pray and not give up.3
Jesus
' story painted an absurd contrast between a corrupt judge and a righteous God. The judge "neither feared God nor cared about men."4 He was a callous man who could care less what people thought of him. He was, after all, accountable to no common citizen. He received extravagant financial reward for maintaining Rome's convoluted justice. He was as crooked as a snake, arrogant as a king, and abrasive as acid.
A pitiful widow approached this stern judge. Even if she had been a member of the royal family, she would have been invisible in this judge
's court. A woman's testimony meant nothing in a court of law in the culture surrounding Jesus. But this woman was a peasant, a widow, (and thus) a no-body. She had only one weapon in her puny arsenal: namely, a persistent tongue. So, she nagged the judge. She was in his face at every corner. She poured it on, telling her pitiful story like a street-corner fanatic. Every day the judge would look up and see her stalking through the chamber doors. Her tongue wagged incessantly, diligently, and aggressively. Finally the bedraggled judge submitted in order to get some peace of mind. Clarence Jordan, in his Cottonpatch rendition of the parable, translates the judge's cursory comment: "Even though I don't believe in God and don't give a hoot for people, yet because this woman has got it in for me, I'll hear her case before she finally nags me to death."5
If we transfer Jesus
' story into the contemporary arena, the story risks being politically incorrect. But, Jesus was not here making fun of a stereotypical woman. He was commending this peasant for her persistence. The story is not an allegory. The judge does not represent God. To the contrary: according to Jeremias (a careful student of biblical parables), Jesus contrasted the ways of this insensitive judge with the merciful ways of God. "If this inconsiderate man, who had refused to hear the widow's case, finally gives heed to her distress, and that after a long delay, only in order to rid himself of the incessant pestering of the plaintiff, how much more will God!"6 The parable is a word of assurance from Jesus indicating that we may not be answered when we want or in the way we want; but God will hear and answer every persistent petition.
Jesus himself was persistent in prayer. He retreated to hillsides overlooking the dark blue waters of the Galilean Sea. He prayed in Gethsemane that the cup of suffering be passed. But he concluded,
"Yet, not my will but yours be done."7 The cross appeared to be evidence that Jesus' prayer was not answered. But God's ultimate will for his Beloved was not diverted; it was only delayed.
There is a Catholic convent near the Canadian border that began a prayer vigil well over a hundred years ago. The sisters were appalled by the devastation of the Civil War. They began a twenty-four hour a day rotation. At least one of the sisters is upon her knees in a designated, candle-lit room at all times. Each gives intercessory focus upon one concern: peace. During the protracted era of the Cold War, did we remain safe because of the 9,500 nuclear missiles that were poised for lift off, aimed at the Soviet Union? Were we protected by the brilliance of our statesmen? There will be many historical theories about our survival during the latter half of the Twentieth Century. But some of us will be haunted by the realization that a steady flow of devout nuns in the American Northwest have prayed, and continue to pray, for the peace of this tottering globe.
Someone has observed that human engineers construct straight canals; only God makes winding rivers. Faith gives us the courage to pilgrimage down winding tributaries, knowing that we shall ultimately reach our eternal destination. This is the persistent faith of Elie Wiesel, the holocaust survivor, who entitled his autobiography, All Rivers Run to the Sea.
Jesus' parable about persistence in prayer reminds me of the oriental folkloric account of Scheherazade. This beautiful young Arabian woman was chosen to have the dubious privilege of being the sultan's wife. The savage sultan slept with each of his new brides only one night. It was his custom to have his brides executed the day after the wedding rites. But Scheherazade was a wise and skillful woman. On her wedding night she persuaded the sultan to hear from her lips a fascinating story. Her husband, the powerful ruler, became engrossed in her tale; but, at the height of her narrative, Scheherazade stopped. She promised to continue the story the following night. So, the sultan broke precedent, allowing his beautiful bride to live. The next night she finished her story and began another which she halted before a climactic ending. The tales continued a thousand nights, one by one. Thus, the famous folkloric The Arabian Nights: A Thousand and One Stories , had its apocryphal inception.
In a certain sense, the church has a Scheherazade-like role. We are sustained by the story of Christ and the acts of his apostles in every new era. Prayer provides buoyancy for our faith. Through intercessory prayer, the Christ Story intersects with our stories. Through intercessory prayer, we are absorbed into the spirit of Christ Risen. Prayer baths us in grace. It empowers us with hope. We do not get what we want when we want it. But prayer, like falling drops of rain that eventually wear down the stone, aligns us with the ultimate will of God. Intercessory prayer is rooted in a trust in God
's providential power. AIn life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. Thanks be to God": this is our creedal affirmation. The Westminster Catechism asserts that Aprayer is an offering up of our desires unto God for things agreeable to God's will." Through the persistence of intercessory prayer, we are not trying to get what we want; we are seeking to do what God wants.
In May of 1987 I travelled with Creighton Lacey of Duke University to the People's Republic of China. Craighton's father had been the Methodist bishop in Shanghai until the communist revolution. On this journey, we met with many Christian leaders who had painfully survived the Cultural Revolution. I shall never forget a crowded room at daybreak in Xian. The occasion was a mid-week prayer meeting. The pastor asked the people to bring to the altar table notes containing intercessory requests. He read all the names and began praying. All the people knelt on hard concrete. When the prayers were completed, I noticed that a small puddle of tears had formed beneath the face of the woman to my left. On the floor she had placed pictures of her family. I could only imagine the suffering she had endured in these years.
Had she wasted her time that morning? Or were her tears really conversation with God -- a compassionate God who shall wipe away all our tears? This trusting one prayed because she believed the good news that, through Christ, death shall have no dominion.
Footnotes:
1. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, 1948), pp. 14-15.
2. Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart
=s True Home (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), p. 197.
3. Luke 18:1 NIV
4. Luke 18:2 NIV
5. Clarence Jordan, Cottonpatch Version of Luke-Acts (New York: Association Press, 1969), p. 68.
6. Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (New York: Charles Scribner
=s Sons, 1963), p. 156.
7. Luke 22:42 NRSV