Luke 18:1-8 with
Jeremiah 31:31-34
A lot of our Sunday sermons are about
external actions. Are we being good
people? Are we doing the right
things? Are we working to bring about
the Lord’s justice in our world? In
contrast, this morning’s sermon is all about the internal life of faith. Are we praying? Are we studying? Are we carrying the law of God in our hearts
as we enter the world each day? These
too are important questions to consider.
This morning’s parable from Luke’s
gospel is one of Jesus’ more disturbing stories. The story of the widow and the unjust judge seems
as harsh to us as it surely did to Jesus’ first listeners. The author of Luke prefaces the story by
telling us that Jesus wanted the disciples to understand that they needed to
pray always and not to lose heart. In
the story the widow begs daily for justice from a judge who is not interested
in justice. Only because she bothers him
so much does the judge relent and offer justice to her.
This is very hard to understand. Are we the widow? Is God the judge? That doesn’t seem right. Jesus is employing a rhetorical technique
from his time called “from the lesser to the greater”. One gives an example of something and the
listener infers a greater example. When
we apply this principle we find that the judge is unjust, but God certainly is
not. It follows then, that even if an
unjust judge answers a persistent widow’s request, how much more will God
respond to us when we approach God consistently in prayer.
That is all well and good, except we
can all think of prayers long unanswered; prayers that we have offered over and
over again in our faith. And yet God seems to be silent, or God seems to delay
in action. What are we to make of these
situations? Jesus too, seems to sense
the reality as he asks “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on
earth?” Two thousand years later these
words ring especially true. Just how
long are we called to pray?
The answer, it seems to be, is
forever. We are called to pray
forever. We are called to pray daily
without ceasing. According to the writer
of the gospel of Luke, these are the true elements of faith, to pray always
without losing heart. This is the
internal life of faith, a constant yearning and leaning toward God in
prayer.
In her article in The Christian Century, author Debie Thomas has some wonderful ideas
about this persistence in prayer. She
writes . . .
“What happens when we pray? What is prayer for? I can only speak from experience, but I know
that when I persist in prayer – really persist, with a full heart, over a long
period of time – something happens to me.
My sense of who I am, to whom I belong, what really matters in this life,
and why – these things mature and solidify.
My heart grows stronger. It
becomes less fragile and flighty. Once
in a while, it even soars. And sometimes
– here’s the surprise – these good things happen even when I don’t receive the
answer I’m praying for."
I hope that you have had an experience
like hers; an experience of a lifetime of prayer shaping and changing who you
are. These practices of habitual prayer
are what constitute our internal life of faith, and will eventually change and
influence our external life of action.
Some of us though, might feel like we
struggle to pray without ceasing. When
we hear this text this morning it may sound foreign and challenging. We have enough trouble as it is offering
structured prayers to God in church, let alone praying with such persistence
and dedication on our own at home.
In her book An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor has a wonderful chapter
where she discusses her difficulty developing a prayer life. She writes . . .
“I learned that prayer was not a contest. The categories in the prayer book were for
sharpening my intention, not for winning God’s attention. How then should I pray? When I fretted over people I knew who were in
trouble, so that my worry for them followed me around all day like a hungry
dog, was that prayer? When I cooked
dinner for people who had plenty to eat at home, thinking about them while I
chopped turnip greens and mashed the sweet potatoes, was that prayer? When I went outside after everyone had gone
to bed and moaned at the moon because I could not come up with the right words
to say what was in my heart, was that prayer? . . . Prayer is happening, and it
is not necessarily something that I am doing, God is happening, and I am lucky
enough to know that I am in The Midst.”
When we think of things this way,
praying without ceasing seems less of a daunting task. Do our actions of prayer, our acts of caring
for others on a daily basis, not underscore an internal life of faith that
compels us to pray always and not to lose heart? I certainly see this being lived out
throughout the work of this congregation.
Our reading for Jeremiah brings us
back once again to the story of the Israelites at exile in Babylon. God is offering a word of hope, a word of a
new covenant. This law of forgiveness
and love will be written in the very hearts of the people. No longer will the law of God be a yoke or a
burden upon our lives. Rather it will be
the word of love, planted in our hearts, and embodied in our behavior. This too is the internal life of faith. God is offering us a relationship we can live
into, rather than a standard we must live up to.
This past Tuesday night was our first
Labyrinth walk for the month and I always find these to be insightful and
moving times. I consider my role on
these sacred evenings as one who sits and holds the place in prayer. I think of it as a privilege to be the host
of the event, to hold the space, and to pray for those who are walking the
pattern of the labyrinth.
As folks were meandering along the
track this past Tuesday I was struck by what an outward expression the
labyrinth is, of the internal life of faith.
Jeremiah writes “no longer shall they say to each other ‘know the Lord,’
for they shall all know me.” In the
silence of the labyrinth walk I saw this played out. Folks pass by one another in peaceful prayer
and there is no need to talk, no need to teach.
Rather, we can simply be together in companionable silence. We don’t need to tell one another about our
faith using words, rather we can feel the truth of faith that is present in
each person’s heart.
So too, the labyrinth is a powerful
metaphor of the internal life of faith.
As one walks the pattern, one often finds themselves turned around, or
walking in a confused way. One’s desire
is to move towards the center of the labyrinth, but to achieve that goal one
must often be turning out, toward the outer rings. Similarly, when one is ready to leave the
labyrinth, one finds themselves needing to turn continually in instead of
out. So much of our prayer life is like
this. Following God in faith as we seem
to turn out, turn in, and turn every which way in life. Sometimes the right direction feels like the
wrong direction and we are called to simply trust in faith. We are called to pray always and to not lose
heart.
Jesus asks “when the Son of Man comes,
will he find faith on earth?” I
certainly hope so. I hope by that time
that we will have been able to keep praying to the best of our ability for
God’s justice, hope, and healing for our world.
I hope that we will have survived the odd turnings of the internal life
of faith, and that like the widow in Jesus’ parable we may finally receive the
answer that we are so longing for. I
hope that through continually turning to God in our hearts, we become better
people in our outer lives. And I hope
that our external actions of prayer, showing care and concern for those around
us, draw us ever deeper into an internal relationship with the divine.
The life of prayer is one of mystery
and wonder. It is full of difficult
questions and uneasy answers, found right alongside moments of love and
glimmers of healing and hope. God has
written love deep into our hearts. Our
internal life of prayer is what will connect us to that love, connect us to
God, and connect us to each other. May
God continue to strengthen our hearts in prayer, and may the Son of Man find us
faithful when he comes in his glory.
Amen.
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