Reflection on Luke 18:1-8

 

Luke 18:1-8 (NRSVue)

18 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. ² He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. ³ In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ ⁴ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, ⁵ yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” ⁶ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. ⁷ And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? ⁸ I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Reflection

God listens to prayers.  If there is one thing that the Bible makes abundantly clear, it is that God listens to prayers.  Way back in Egypt, when “the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help,” the Bible says, “Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.” (Exodus 2:23-25). God heard their prayers and acted.

That same truth echoes in Psalm 34:17. It promises that “When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.” 

God not only listens to your prayers, but also to the prayers of people who may need to be protected against you.  For example, if you have someone’s cloak as collateral for a debt, you are instructed by God that you must return it before the cold of the night comes because, “that is his only covering, and it is his cloak for his body; in what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate” (Exodus 22:26-27). 

God hears all of our prayers, especially when we are being treated unfairly, and God acts.  The Bible is clear.

Jesus even tells us this whole parable about a widow who sought out justice.  She wanted things to be made right.  The widow sought the help of a judge who happened to have no respect for anyone.   But the Bible says that she “kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grand me justice against my accuser” (Luke 18:3).  After being ignored again and again, and after persistently asking, again and again for things to be made right, the widow was finally heard. 

The Bible says that it is because of her persistence that justice finally came.  Annoyed at her persistence the judge says, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming’” (Luke 18:4-5). 

She made herself the squeaky wheel. 

I have seen many of these squeaky wheels throughout life.  They usually look a lot like parents who are just trying to get the school to recognize that their child needs help with learning.  Or they look like the spouse trying to convince the doctor to keep trying as their loved one slowly slips away toward death.  I have known a couple of nuns who were relentless in their attempts to expose the training of children for guerilla warfare in South America. 

All of them make their requests known again, and again, and again, never stopping; never accepting the status quo; never listening to the voices of those who say, “Just let it go already.”  Jesus teaches the opposite.  Jesus teaches that we do not just let it go already, especially when it comes to prayer.  Jesus teaches that if even a corrupt and faithless judge finally gives in and listens, how much more will God listen to our pleas?

If Jesus were walking around on earth in bodily form today, I am convinced that Jesus could have told a parable about the child who says, “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom” until the mother finally gives up the important thing that she is doing and answers the child.  Now, if a mom listens to that sort of nerve scraping request, how much more will God listen? 

I would just like to point out that Jesus is truly requesting that you be annoyingly persistent in your prayers.  It is the one time in life when being annoying is appreciated.  There is a certain amount of faith or trust found in the person who annoyingly prays that things be made right over and over and over again.  It is a faith that says, “Even though I did not see you answer the first time I asked, I know that you, O God, will hear and that you will act.” 

I think that is where I fall short in my prayers.  When I pray, I think that I unintentionally picture God as being like the unjust judge in the parable.  You know the unjust judge.  He hears the requests of the widow again and again and again.  She is desperate for things to be made right, but to him, she is like a mosquito.  She is small and annoying, with little power to affect much of anything.  She is easy to brush off as unimportant and of little consequence.  She is a poor widow after all.  What is she going to do?  She has no power in her culture.  She is easy to dismiss, and so he does. 

I think that is how I, unconsciously picture my relationship with God.  I am just an annoying little mosquito to God.  My requests, when considering the enormity of the concerns of the world, seem like nothing.  But, unlike the widow, I tend to ask once and give up, uncertainty covering my prayer with a dark glaze and blinding me to God’s response.

One day, while learning to be a chaplain, I found myself alone in a room with a failing, unresponsive patient on a ventilator, with tubes and lines running everywhere.  “Why was I called up here?” I asked myself.  “What good will any of my prayers do?”  I left the lonely room without saying a word.

When I mentioned to my spiritual mentor that I did not understand why I was called up to that room, there was no family around to whom I could minister, and the patient was almost certainly brain dead so my prayers would literally fall on deaf ears, my mentor, who was a kind but firm nun responded, “Who ever said any of this was about you?  What happens to this patient is up to God, so we pray to God.  We pray over and over again to God precisely because we have no control over any of it.  We pray to God because we believe that God listens.”

One truth that I have learned about praying over and over and over again is that when we actually pray again and again and again, we do not lose heart.  The Bible explicitly says that “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart” (Luke 18:1-8).  There is something about praying again and again and again that reinforces our trust that God will hear and God will do something. 

How will God respond to my prayer?  I have no idea.  Will God do what I want?  Only God knows.  But, by choosing to leave that room and choosing to not pray, I was embarrassingly revealing that I had actually lost heart.  I had lost faith.  I had lost the trust that God would hear and do something.

And, in a world that seems like it is falling apart and there is nothing that we can do about it; it is easy to lose heart and to lose faith.  In the Bible, right before Jesus tells this parable, he had just talked about the dark days ahead.  He had just talked about the last things, and I imagine that the disciples were just standing there; looking around at each other dumbfounded, wondering, “What is the point of it all?”  This parable is Jesus’ answer to those of us who see the world falling apart, who want it all to be right again, but who cannot possibly see how that is ever going to happen anytime soon.

“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,” Jesus promises the disciples (Luke 18:7-8). 

“What happens is up to God, so we pray to God,” the nun instructed me.  “We pray over and over and over again to God precisely because we have no control over any of it.  We pray to God because we believe that God listens.” 

We pray persistently because we trust that God hears. We trust the Lord.

When a pastor friend of mine discovered that he was suffering from a tumor the size of a volleyball in his body, his wife asked all of his closest friends to pray.  But, she quite explicitly stated that she did not want any weak and pathetic prayers.  You see, she knows us pastors all too well.  She knows how we develop these eloquent prayers that sound faithful but lack anything bold.  She knows how pastors are too scared of overpromising and under-delivering.  She did not want any of that weak pastoral garbage.  She wanted bold prayers, asking that things be made right.  She wanted prayers, asking nothing short of a miracle.  She wanted prayers that would lead to the saving of his life and the saving of his family.  He could not leave their two boys.  He could not leave her.  She only wanted the boldest of prayers from us.

So, I prayed.  I prayed for him to be healed.  I prayed for the tumor to disappear.  I prayed that those boys would not grow up without their father. 

Did I know how God would answer those prayers?  Of course not! 

God can answer “Yes,” “No,” “Not Yet,” “Something must be learned first,” or “I have something better.”  God’s answer may not be what we expect.  Even Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane before his death that “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).  God’s answer was “I have something better.”  Resurrection and eternal life for us all was a much better answer, but no one faults Jesus for asking.  When we pray, we do not tie ourselves to the outcomes we envision in our heads, rather praying ties us to God so that we do not loose heart.

Jesus deeply desires that we not be people who have lost heart.  Jesus deeply desires that when the Son of Man comes, he will find trust in his people…a deep trust that the Lord will listen and that the Lord will make things right.

It is true after all.  We have a Lord we can trust!  We have a Lord who will go to any extent to make things right.  We have a Lord who will die on a cross to make this broken world right again.  We have a Lord who cares deeply about justice and grace.  We have a Lord to whom we can pray again and again and again, who will listen and who will act.

Be persistent in your prayers.  Do not lose heart.  Be as annoying as possible for the sake of justice.  It is OK; go ahead; Jesus wants to hear your annoying voice.  Your scratchy, annoying voice is truly music to the ears of the Lord who listens.