The Persistent Widow
It is a simple story about two unattractive people. One, the widow, powerless but persistent. Powerless, persistent, and utterly persuaded of the rightness of her cause. She is up against a man, a judge, who is powerful and indifferent and self-satisfied. He neither feared God nor respected people. What could she do with such an adversary? She really had only one course open to her. Get him where he lives. He prized his comfort above all else. So, make him uncomfortable.
Then he’ll respond. At the very least, he won’t ignore her and the most he might grant her where she wants whether it is just or not is beside the point. And so she makes a pest of herself, a relentless, nagging, unpleasant pest. The Judge finally relents not because it is the right thing to do, but merely to defend his own comfort. All in all, an unsavory vignette, our Gospel for today. No one in it has very appealing motives; no one is a character we should want to be like. Except in one respect. Be persistent in prayer, Jesus advises. Be as persistent as that widow. For surely, if such persistence can reduce the resistance of an indifferent judge who could care less about justice or anyone other than himself, how much more effective will prayer be on a God who is responsive and caring?
Responsive and caring. Perhaps that seems too large an assumption sometimes! For some, and for all of us sometimes, God may seem distressingly like that uncaring, resistant judge. Or at least remote and difficult to get to. It is at this very time that great growth is possible, Jesus counsels. Persist in these dry times especially, for it is then that prayer will prove most fruitful for it will drive us deeper into ourselves. So hang on, don’t give up. This is a difficult counsel in any case, but particularly if we are shackled to an undynamic understanding of prayer and what is going on with in it. So today, I want to talk with you a little bit about prayer. A massive and presumptuous undertaking, to be sure. So let me narrow the topic a bit. I want to talk with you about one particular field of prayer, just a bit of what is a very big picture. Just about our side of the conversation. Just about private prayer and just about one category of efforts.
I use the word conversation for prayer and that is not wholly accurate. If prayer is a conversation, it is unlike any that you or I have ever had. Or maybe, it is like the ideal of conversation in which every message is received and thoroughly understood. As I said, unlike any conversation, observations which I hope will be an encouragement for the dry times.
First, prayer does change things and one of the primary things it changes is the person who pays. We need to know this right at the beginning. That is, in taking prayer seriously, very seriously, we are opening ourselves to the possibility, indeed, the likelihood, of change. Note, I said, if we take prayer seriously. By that I mean, if we reflect on and continue to think about the content of our part of the conversation. For the content of our part of the conversation with God is ourselves. Prayer is the inward journey seeking the one who is seeking us. We need to ponder what we care about, who we care about, our aspirations and thanksgivings, the healings we seek or avoid seeking the injuries we have suffered and inflicted on others and on and on. All are little mirrors of who we are. When I was a young priest and folks would ask me how to prayer, questions like, “Well, what am I supposed to say?” I would advise, “Say whatever comes to mind.”
My rationale was “something is better than nothing,” and probably reflects my own discomfort with the subject than any real wisdom. Besides, I would tell myself, you don’t want people to get all tied up in excessively scrupulous matters like using the right words or sharing something you think you think is unacceptable as if God cannot hear beyond the words or cannot receive or manage the unacceptable. That advise is good for some circumstances, I supposed. At least as far as it goes. But it really doesn’t go very far. Now, I want to talk more with people about preparation for praying. It is important to think about what you will say, to formulate it in your mind before you offer it up to God who already knows.
Choose the right words – not fancy words, but words that you own and in which you believe. Honest words, words that are as truthful as you can utter. Eloquence has nothing to do with it. Eloquence and honesty are not synonyms. The goal is to make yourself present in your prayer and then offer yourself, and know that your offering is acceptable. The process of honest preparation is part of the prayer, and at least in terms of its effect on you, more important than finally saying the words themselves.
Second, the goal of the prayer is not sharing information, for what can we really inform God about. Not is it saying anything at all, though the saying has to occur at first. The end of the prayer is listening. And that is hard work. When the preparation has been made and the words said, then you sit or lie or stand or kneel and listen through the still quiet.
I worry in saying this to you because I am increasingly aware of the large number of us who have no experience of this kind of active, searching, receptive, listening. So many of the younger ones among us spend their lives in front of a screen or some sort. Computers or televisions – devices which tell and do not listen. People who have been deprived of the experience of being listened to deeply are deprived of the experience of acceptance. The mysterious process of being really heard is the process of being valued and affirmed. Being listened to closely means being received. It means being loved. It is a keystone in the process of how we grow into a fuller experience of living. Listened into living. After the prayers are said, then you listen to the one who has and does and continues to listen to you. And you look for the desperately subtle signs of response, responses which may well frame themselves as questions.
Sunday mornings in Church are really not good times to pray in this way. It is far to chatty and noisy. There is important community business to attend to. But this time together self-consciously in God’s presence is absolutely crucial in setting up the issues which will arise throughout the week, and throughout our lives. It is here that we get the words and the images and the issues and the interactions with one another that is the stuff of our prayer when we leave this place. Here is where the preparation for personal prayer begins in earnest.
Finally, the fruit of prayer is peace. Peace manifests itself in a number of ways. In a kind of centeredness or confidence about life and one’s place in it. In a kind of internal harmony which can reduce some conflicts to manageable levels or help us to take on conflicts which ache for resolution. But mostly, this is a peace which shows itself in our ability to accept and live in ambiguity, in the gray areas of life where direction is subtle and complex. It is one of the gift of prayer. Perhaps, the most significant point I can make about this peace is that it is costly. The model for it is the figure in the Old Testament, Jacob, the son of Isaac and Rebecca.
You may remember that Jacob was really not a very admirable character. He cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright. He tricked his poor old father, Isaac. He ran off to his Uncle Laban’s home where he lived for fourteen years . . . where he and his uncle constantly sought to get the better of the other and where Jacob finally and at last grew up. But despite his crafty and unsavory ways, Jacob was capable of thinking deeply abut who he was and where his life was going. And it is he who uttered the most heartfelt of prayers there by the river Jabbok as he was trying to return home to reconcile with all the people whom he had disappointed and hurt.
Note that this is a prayer that comes after a long night of wrestling with the Angel of God. Then as the dawn is breaking, exhausted after his long struggle , he asks God’s angel the most heartfelt of prayers. “Bless me,” he pleads. What does he mean? He means confirm that I am acceptable, that I am worthwhile, that God has heard even me and God receives and values me. And the angel blesses him. It is not an easy blessing for it comes with a sign. Scripture tells us that the angel puts Jacob’s hip out of joint as a paradoxical mark of his blessing and a reminder of his struggle of his struggle toward wholeness. He will forever walk with a limp and it will be a reminder of his acceptance. He will be at peace finally.
That widow was convinced of the justness of her cause. It gave her confidence to engage in the struggle. I wonder if at some point the rightness or wrongness of her cause matter less to her than simply being heard, being listened into a fuller life, by one who loves her and to find peace and the abundant life which was the fruit of her struggle.
Source: © The Rev. James Berg, October 20, 2013. Luke 18:1-8. Reprinted with permission from the author.