Luke 18:1-8
The late Nobel laureate and holocaust
survivor Elie Wiesel once recounted an incident that happened when he was 15
years old and a prisoner at Auschwitz. One day a group of his fellow prisoners
who were also Jewish scholars put God on trial, accusing him of being
indifferent to the suffering of his people and failing to save them. After much
discussion, they reached a unanimous verdict: chayav, guilty. After pronouncing it, Wiesel said, there was a
minute or so of silence – and then they all said evening prayers together. What
a striking, even shocking juxtaposition: God doesn’t care . . . Let us pray.
Consider with me for a moment: why do we
pray? Maybe we just go to church on Sundays and say grace before meals because
it’s a habit, something we think we are supposed to do. Or maybe we pray every
day that God will bless the people we love. Maybe we ask God for particular
things, like getting a new job or being healed of some disease. Maybe we just
pray when we feel desperate and don’t know what else to do. But if we have
prayed at all, then we will probably be able to sympathize with those Jewish
scholars putting God on trial. We are not, thankfully, in a concentration camp
— hopefully none of us here has ever experienced something so horrific — but
many of us here have no doubt prayed for things that we did not get: healings
that did not take place, blessings that never materialized. And perhaps we also
felt that God was indifferent to our prayers, or at least nonresponsive. S0 we
might well ask ourselves: why do we pray?
Jesus tackles that question in the Gospel
today, but I don’t think his message is as simple and straightforward as it
might at first appear. He tells this parable about a widow who relentlessly
hounds an indifferent judge until he finally gives in and grants her request.
If a sinful judge like that will respond to such pleas, Jesus says, how much
more will a good and loving God respond to us: 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. The problem is that we know God does not always
respond quickly to us. In many cases, God never seems to respond at all. And
Jesus knows this. He tells this parable while the Roman Empire is oppressing
the Jewish people in an occupation that has already lasted decades and will go
on for many years to come, even though they are praying for deliverance. Jesus
knows that when the Israelites called out from their captivity in Egypt, they
remained slaves for some four hundred years. In John’s Gospel, he encounters a
man who has been ill for 38 years. Will
he delay long in helping them? Well, yeah, he will. People have faced long
delays in the past; they continue to experience long delays in the present.
And since Jesus clearly knows this, the
problem must be with our interpretation. A simplistic, transactional
understanding of prayer – “tell God what you want, and God will give it to you
fast” – just won’t suffice, even if we add the caveat, “you gotta tell God a
lot.” It just doesn’t work that way. I think the only way we can understand
this teaching, and the way I think Jesus meant us to understand it, with the
end in mind, the final consummation of all things. It’s only then that God’s
justice will be fully established, only then that God’s love will fully
prevail. And while that may seem a long ways off to us, in the light of
eternity it will come quickly. We know Jesus is thinking along these lines
because he says: And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? He’s
referring to his coming again at the end of time. Will people persevere in
prayer until that time, even when they receive no immediate reply? Will you and
I persevere?
We might say, “What’s the point? Why pray
when we don’t get instant gratification?” But prayer is not about instant
gratification. Prayer is not transactional at all. A few moments ago I asked,
why do we pray? But that was a trick question: Jesus actually tells us why at
the very beginning of the passage: Then
Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose
heart. People, we pray so that we don’t lose heart. What matters in prayer
is not the outcome: what matters is the connection. When we pray, we stay
connected to God’s presence and grounded in God’s love. That is the beginning
and end of all true prayer, and the source of tremendous strength and endless
hope.
But here’s the amazing thing about God’s
economy of salvation. If we adopt a tit-for-tat idea of prayer – God, I’ll say
these words if you’ll give me what I want – our prayer will probably not be
productive at all. But when we love God, love others, and love ourselves in
prayer and through prayer, then the Spirit moves and our prayer often does
produce visible results. When our focus is on loving and not losing heart, then
God’s power is unleashed and good things happen, things that lead to greater
justice, greater healing, greater peace. We can’t control how that happens, nor
should we try: we don’t have the wisdom for that. But consciously staying
connected to God’s presence and staying grounded in God’s love changes the
world and gives us all we need until God’s kingdom comes in all its fullness.
Let me end with a story. Years ago, when
I was serving a parish in Rhode Island, one of my parishioners had liver
cancer. The prognosis was bad from the beginning. Praying for the cancer to go
away did not work: the cancer continued to spread. Feeling powerless, all I
could do was to pray for God’s love to enfold him and all who were close to
him. One day, towards the end, I visited him and prayed with him. But right as
I was about to leave, he did something he had never done before. He took my
hands and said, “Now I want to pray.” And he thanked God for his wife and his children,
for his church and for me, and told God how much he loved God and all of these
people. It was a holy moment. He died not long afterwards. Did our prayer work?
He lost his battle with cancer, but he did not lose heart. Nor did I. I know
that I will see him fully alive and healed in the world to come, along with
everyone else I’ve ever cared for. And until then, I keep on praying, with or
without visible results. I have experienced the reality of God’s love – and
that is reason enough to pray and never to lose heart.
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