SERMON 7-25-2010

Luke 11:1-4 & 9-10                                                                            Luke 18:1-8

“PERSISTENCE”

There are three answers we can expect from God when we pray: Yes, no and wait, so why the persistence?

Prayer

The disciples asked Jesus, “teach us to pray.”

How do you pray? When do you pray? What do you pray for?

Who taught you to pray?

“If God is, and has chosen to be known by us in the one who is teaching us to pray, then prayer becomes a conversation with one who is our friend. “Jesus is that friend for those who enter into this holy conversation. In him we know to whom we are talking when we bow our heads and close our eyes.”

                                           (Cynthia A. Jarvis, “Feasting on the Word,” Year C, vol. 3, pg. 288)

A conversation Jesus had with his own Father. He models for us, an informal dialogue. “When we pray we are in conversation with a friend who knows us… one we trust… a God that will come after us when we are lost, dine with us when we are cast out by others, welcome us home after we have wasted our lives, and who will keep us from falling to far. How else but through prayer can God’s spirit intercede for us?” (idem, pg. 290)

This prayer is a model, as there is no right or wrong way to pray. We see in it praise to God, and a request for his coming again, provision for our “daily sustenance, forgiveness for our wrongs and for those indebted to us, and finally preservation, and protection from the circumstances that test our faith.”

                                        (Matthew L. Skinner, “Feasting on the Word,” Year C, vol. 3, pg. 289)

How and when we pray is not the matter, what Jesus invites us to do is to ask, in order to receive; search, in order to find; and knock, for doors to be opened.

“God gives us what is necessary and beneficial, not whatever we desire.”     (idem)

We pray persistently to find in the answers God’s will for us, we pray so that we may be able to ‘discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.’ Rom. 12:2c

“The parable of the Persistent Widow and the Unjust Judge… is just a rich resource for theological meditation and consists of so many different layers.

In these eight verses, we find theological key words and topics referring us to an abundance of complex Christian doctrines: prayer and trust, justice and deliverance, judgment and faith, persistence and resistance, the first and second coming of Christ, and the life of believers. The focus of this parable is on God and how God acts, and on believers and their call to faithful life. Conservative interpreters make their emphasis on the need for a devout piety in one’s private prayer life, liberals interpretation make their emphasis on communal resistance against injustice. John Calvin, a reformer theologian, has always emphasized that we cannot separate God who is and what God does from who we are and what we are called to do. God’s sovereignty over all areas of our life does not allow for a disconnection of private and public faith life. If we agree with Calvin’s guiding principle, we can say that this parable is about God as such as it is about the believer.” (Margit Ernst- Habib, “Feasting on the Word,” Year C, vol. 4, pg. 188)

When we talk about prayer we need to keep this dual perspective in mind. It’s about God talking to us and us talking to God.

“Let’s take a closer look at persistence – not ours, though, but God’s persistence. One way to summarize the biblical message, the good news of the O.T. and the N.T., would be to speak about God’s persistence, unshakable, everlasting love for us, for all of God’s creation. Yes, we deserve God’s condemnation, but God is so persistently in love with us, God’s love is sovereign and unshakable that we can trust in this God to bring about justice. We can be sure that God hears our prayers, our crying day and night, even though we may not see any results yet. God has not forgotten us; God will not delay long in helping. Of course, we grow impatient, losing heart and hope. How could we not? Does the world we are living in come even close to the world Christians have been praying for since Jesus’ first coming?

As Fred Craddock puts it; ‘All we know in the life of prayer is asking, seeking, knocking and waiting, trust sometimes fainting, sometimes growing angry.’

It is here that the persistence of the fateful enters the picture. Because we know of and have experienced God’s persistent love in Christ, we try every day anew to persist in praying ‘Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done…’

Praying is and always has been hard work in the interim – between God’s promise and its fulfillment, in the life of Israel and in the life of the church living between the first and the second coming of Christ – as is keeping the hope in our hopeless world. Praying means hopeful trusting in God, not in ourselves.

The widow kept coming to the judge, hoping against all odds, persistent, determined, and relentless. The believers keep praying, hoping against all odds, persistent determined, and relentless. Not because they are “good Christians” or because they possess such a great and strong faith, not even because it is “the chief part of the gratitude which God requires of us,” but because the Spirit has given them the courage to do so, to pray without ceasing in a broken and fearful world. In a way the widow in Jesus’ parable represents not only the need to pray always,  as Luke puts it, but also the Spirit’s constant work of encouraging us to pray, the Sprit’s nagging persistence and unrelenting perseverance.

                                  (Margit Ernst- Habib, “Feasting on the Word,” Year C, vol. 4, pg. 190-192)

Here is another example of persistence:

Scientist may think this way…

“Oh, I’ll never get it right. There just no cure. It’s hopeless.” Maybe that’s what a lot of scientists were thinking in the first part of the twentieth century, when a disease called polio crippled and killed millions. Hundred of researchers looked frantically for a cure. It seemed like an impossible task. But then in 1954, Dr. Jonas Salk announced that after two hundred attempts he had developed a vaccine. This terrible disease disappeared virtually overnight.

Later, a reporter asked Dr. Salk how it felt to have had two hundred failures and only one success. Salk replied that he had never experienced two hundred failures. He had learned two hundred lessons. And those lessons had enabled him to create a usable vaccine. Rather than viewing each unsuccessful attempt as a tragedy, Dr. Salk chose to see it as an opportunity to learn. Dr. Salk saw a need and didn’t stop until the need was met. Similarly, persistent prayer is what Jesus recommends as one of the best ways to find answers in life.”

                                                        (The Youth Bible, New century version, pg.1024).

“Today’s Gospel reading invites us to reflect on the story of our prayer life and where it has taken us. We owe a debt of gratitude to those who put us on the path to prayer as an essential part of our life. So we continue to ask, Lord, teach us to pray. Teach us truly to pray the words given by your Son, calling on God as our parent and protector. We can take comfort from the fact that, even when we do not know how to pray as we ought to, the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness… Our part is to continue praying and teaching those entrusted to us to pray as Jesus taught us, confident that our prayer will find favor with our God.” Amen!

                                (James A. Wallace, C.SS.R. “Feasting on the Word,” Year C, vol. 3, pg. 291)

BENEDICTION

Let us go out into the world,

trusting that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven!

Let us go in the persistent, generous, living love of God,

in Jesus Christ and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit! Amen!