St. Andrew’s United Church Sunday, October 21, 2007

Persistent Prayer – Rev. David Mundy

Jeremiah 31:27-34 Luke 18:1-8

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When I am in the heart of Toronto the Good I take a detour whenever possible into a cathedral-like Anglican church that makes sure its doors are open on weekday lunch hours. The building is huge and beautiful with a seating capacity of nearly two thousand. It offers an impressive mixture of traditional architecture and modern decoration, with provocative banners complementing the stained glass windows.

Because of its size, it is easy to feel lost in this space dedicated to the glory of God. I have been in this church a number of times at mid week and while I have been told that every year approximately eight thousand visitors pass through the doors at lunch time, it always seems virtually empty. One day when I entered there was a handful of people in the pews as I wandered to the front. A man and a woman were in earnest and fairly vocal conversation near the back. Near the front sat a woman who leaned against the pew ahead of her. When I turned to walk back down the aisle, I saw her face and was truly aware of her posture. She was obviously Asian in origin. Her eyes were closed and her face was upturned with a beatific expression that conveyed a sense of earnest yet peaceful prayer. Her forearms rested along the top of the pew ahead and her hands were raised in a simple gesture of openness and praise.

It is hard for me to describe the impact of seeing her this way. One of the reasons I was there that day was my need to find a few moments of prayer as I sorted out some important things in my life with God my creator and redeemer and sustainer When I walked past this woman I had the overwhelming urge to stop and ask her to pray for me. I had the conviction, just from looking at her, that her prayers must be heard just because they were being offered in an earnest and heartfelt way. This was someone who trusted that her conversation was with a God who listened and cared. I kept glancing her way all during my visit. I’m glad her eyes were closed because she might have decided I was a stalker!

All prayers matter, don’t they? All prayers are heard by God, aren’t they? We would certainly like to believe this to be true, although there are times in our lives when prayer seems a better spiritual concept than spiritual practice. There is some part of us, though, that appreciates that prayer is a matter of the heart.

This morning and next week our gospel lessons are back-to-back parables of Jesus in which he speaks about prayer. The verse which introduces today’s parable says; “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not lose heart.” Then we hear about a woman, a widow who in the culture of Jesus’ day would have been one of the most vulnerable of people, and yet protected under biblical law. She comes before a judge who is described in the New Revised Standard Version of the bible as unjust, but in other translations is called a rogue or unrighteous. Perhaps rogue is not the most accurate word but it certainly conveys a sense of someone who acts as he will, and the parable says that this judge has little regard for God or for human beings. The judicial system in Jesus’ day was very different than ours. Still, there was an expectation of fairness and what we would call justice. The widow eventually does receive justice, but only because she can’t be silenced.

The imagery of a judicial hearing is an interesting one for prayer, especially if we have been in a court of law. The notion of “making our case” before God is one that certainly intrigues me because people often ask me if I will pray for them as they are about to undergo medical procedures or when they are going through difficult times in their family life or as they are making decisions about the future. In a way they are asking if I will be their “prayer lawyer” and of course I always agree to represent them.

Many of you know first-hand that nine times out of ten I offer to pray right then and there and that I encourage you to pray for yourselves. But you often give a little smile and suggest that my prayers will have extra “pull” with God, which I don’t believe for a moment. I do feel that this is one of the great privileges of ministry although I have come to realize that prayer is a deep mystery which I will attempt to plumb for the rest of my life. All I can do – all any of us can do – is bring the circumstances before the God who desires our highest good.

I am heartened that Jesus seemed to appreciate that one of the difficulties of prayer is that we weren’t always sure that the God who has supposedly become love incarnate does listen and care. Yet we can’t stop. We continue our entreaties, hoping beyond hope that God can be moved, even though we aren’t always sure about who that God is or whether God even exists. I have mentioned before a book called Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer which is extraordinarily wise on the subject of prayer. The authors, Barry and Ann Ulanov say that prayer can be and is an honest speech;

If we are ever honest with ourselves, it is here, in prayer, that we must be, though we are not often sure about who it is that we are talking to or how well we are talking or that we are even talking. Sometimes the honesty comes because we are confident that nobody can overhear us, not the God in whom we have such shaky faith or no faith at all . . . Sometimes the honesty comes because we do know who it is that is listening, because we feel sure that there is a listener somewhere in us or outside us, because we know from experience that what we have said in prayer, or not quite said but somehow expressed, has been heard.

What sort of God do we pray to? We don’t want it to be a capricious or indifferent judge who can’t be counted on to hear us out or to act fairly. We want God to be a turbo-charged version of Judge Judy, listening carefully, getting to the heart of the matter, fair in her judgements.

Children believe this, and to listen to them pray can be deeply moving because they have so little life baggage to hold them back from unfettered prayer. When we hear our kids pray it is touching because they expect God to answer and act. It is often as we get older that we have greater difficulty with prayer, sometimes because of the crushing weight of the great tragedies of life and death, but also because of the thousand smaller disappointments which leave us wondering if God is a rogue who can’t be trusted.

And which prayers get God’s attention and why? Three weeks ago a commercial airliner crashed as it landed in Thailand. There was a young Canadian woman on board who was one of the few who didn’t perish in the fiery wreck. Her mother, a devout Christian, had a premonition that things weren’t right in the hours before the crash so she prayed for her. She was convinced that God had spared her daughter. But what about the people who did die? Why couldn’t God have miraculously saved everyone on board? A couple of days later we were told that another Canadian woman was on that same plane. She died. Wouldn’t God want to protect her as well?

I think I have asked nearly ten questions so far in this sermon! It is a reminder that when it comes to prayer there are many things which puzzle us. Are there any answers?

The Good News in the parable is that while the judge does not become more just or caring he does give in. It is eventually worth his while to accede to the woman’s request, just to get relief from her pestering.

The implication is, that the God who does love us, who does care for us and knows us by name, is far more likely to respond. Just so we are not in doubt, Jesus asks the question at the end of the parable, “will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?”

So we keep pestering God, we file for appeal after appeal, unwilling to take “no” for an answer. Even when we wonder why God is silent we seek and find. Mark Harris an episocopal priest who has reflected on this passage from Luke comments that

It turns out that life is not fair – not to the poor or the poor in spirit, to the comfortable or uncomfortable, to the rich or powerful . . . Neither the judge nor God can make this unfairness go away. But our vindication is nearer than we supposed. All the widow had to do was pester the judge until he felt something. All we have to do is find God in Jesus Christ by our side, no stranger now, but someone who feels for us, and with us.

This morning we can choose to be people of prayer. We can choose not to lose heart. However, we approach God, whether it is contemplation without words, or on our knees in conversation, or through traditional prayers committed to memory we will be persistent. Our answers may not be the ones we expect, yet God does not ignore us or forsake us.

As we pray we can remember the example of Jesus who prayed early in the day on a hillside in Galilee and prayed with his disciples during their last meal together and when those same followers fell asleep in the loneliness of the night at Gethsemane and even on the cross when he cried out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus was persistent in prayer and we can be too.

It seems fitting to close a message which began with a story on prayer in an Anglican church with an Anglican prayer. This is from that remarkable liturgical resource known as the Book of Common Prayer.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of they Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify they holy name, through Christ our Lord. Amen.