Sermon delivered Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013 (22nd Sunday After Pentecost, Year C, Proper 24) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN, on Luke 18:1-8.
“Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” (Luke 18:1) Luke tells us that today’s parable, about the widow and the unjust judge, is about persistence in prayer. It has a similar theme to another parable Jesus tells earlier in the Gospel of Luke, about the friend at midnight. We heard that parable earlier this year, at the end of July, but let me refresh your memory. The parable of the friend at midnight is in Luke 11:5-8:
“[Jesus] said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.” And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.’”
“Because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” Although the friend initially turns down the request, he ultimately gives in because the person knocking at his door just won’t give up. The same is true with the widow and the unjust judge. Though the judge cares nothing about the woman or about granting her what she asks for, he finally gives in because of her persistence and tenacity.
Jesus’s message in both these parables seems to be: if you know that persistence and constant asking can be effective in finally getting what you want from other broken and sinful human beings, who do not always have your best interests at heart, how much more should you be certain that God, who loves you and does have your best interests at heart, will give you what you want if you are persistent in asking?
These two parables are unique to Luke, but Luke links the parable of the friend at midnight with a saying of Jesus that appears in some form or another in all four Gospels: “ask, and it will be given to you.” The parable of the persistent friend at midnight in Luke is followed by this passage, which appears to be commentary on the parable: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Luke 11:9-10). The same exact words appear in Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:7-8). Mark and John do not have this exact passage, but the same theme appears in those Gospels as well. “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours,” Jesus says in chapter 11 of the Gospel of Mark (Mark 11:24). And in John 14, Jesus promises the disciples, “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” (John 14:14)
These passages seem to suggest that all we have to do is ask, and God will give us whatever we want. They can easily lend themselves to a “vending machine” view of God, where all we need to do is insert prayer, press D4, and health and wealth will promptly be deposited into the receptacle at the bottom of the machine, ready for us to grab and tear into like so many candy bars. But I expect that most of us would bristle at that concept of God, because we know that most prayer does not work that way. It does not seem to be as easy as “ask, and you shall receive,” as “select your desired outcome and it will be delivered to you, no questions asked.” Although sometimes our prayers do seem to be answered exactly as we have asked, I’m sure that most of us have any number of examples of times when we asked for something from God and did not receive what we asked.
This is not a new problem for the “modern believer;” the earliest Christian communities already recognized that they did not always get everything they asked for from God, that not all their prayers were answered by a fulfillment of the requests they had made. The author of the letter of James deals with this issue by arguing that the people are not receiving what they ask for because they are asking wrongly, because their desires are not in line with the will of God. James 4, verses 2-3, says this: “You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”
James’s answer for why some prayers go unanswered is that people are asking for the wrong things for the wrong reasons. That can be a helpful interpretation when we know deep down that our motives in asking or the things we are asking for are probably not the most godly, that they may be motivated by selfish desires. In those cases, we can accept that our prayers are not answered because we were not asking for the right things. But what about the cases in which we ask for something that we believe to be in line with the will of God, when we ask for the very things God has promised us, like life and health and justice and mercy and resurrection and peace, and we do not receive them?
Jesus tells the disciples that they will be able to heal in his name, and in the Gospels and the Book of Acts we have stories of the disciples healing the sick and raising the dead, but I have never known a Christian who was able to literally raise the dead. The prophets constantly tell us that God has promised to “restore the fortunes of Zion,” and yet the conflict in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas continues unabated. The prophets tell us that God wants “justice to roll down like waters,” but we see oppression and injustice continuing in our own society and around the world.
So how are we to reconcile these unanswered prayers with Jesus’s words that “if in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it”? That “everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened”?
Again, this is not a new question. The biblical authors also struggled with unanswered prayers. The psalmists asked, “How long, O Lord?” How long will you hide your face from us, how long will you not respond to our prayers, to our cries for help? The prophet Habakkuk asks, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?” (Habakkuk 1:2) Job cries out to God, “Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I am not answered; I call aloud, but there is no justice” (Job 19:7). In Psalm 22, the psalm Jesus quotes while dying on the cross, the psalmist says, “O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer. By night as well, but I find no rest” (Psalm 22:2).
Significantly, though, the biblical authors never take the step that so many people do today, to assume that the fact of unanswered prayer must mean that God does not exist. The biblical writers “keep the faith” even in the midst of unanswered prayer, even when God does not turn out to be their own personal divine vending machine. They express their anguish about unanswered prayer to God, not only to other people. And they remember the times God has answered prayer and how many blessings they have received from God. In the same chapter as Job cries out that there is no justice and his prayers are not answered, he goes on to say that “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth” (Job 19:25). Immediately after the verse in Psalm 22 about crying to God but receiving no answer, the psalmist goes on to say, “Yet you are the Holy One… our forefathers put their trust in you; they trusted, and you delivered them… you are he who took me out of the womb, and kept me safe upon my mother’s breast” (Psalm 22:3-4, 9). In the midst of laments about unanswered prayer in the Bible, there is almost always a recall of times that prayer has been answered, when we asked and it was given to us, when we sought and did find, when we knocked and the door was opened to us.
Perhaps this is what it means to be persistent in prayer: not only to keep asking over and over again, but to stay in relationship with God even when we do not get the things we ask for in that particular moment – to ask questions and struggle with God even when the door seems to be closed. To remember, even in those moments, Jesus’s promise that God has our best interests at heart and will in fact grant us the justice and the good things that we seek – even if it might not come in the ways we expect or desire. The biblical writers continued to affirm the goodness of God despite their unanswered prayers, and Jesus invites us to model their persistence not only in making continued requests for what we want, but not to lose heart as we ask – to remain steadfast in believing that the God to whom we pray does indeed have our best interests at heart.
