In his teaching Jesus sometimes uses the formula; if someone who is bad can do X then how much more should you or how much more will God do X. He uses it, for example, when he talks about God giving the Holy Spirit: if father’s who are bad know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more will God give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.
When he is at the home of a Pharisee, he uses the example of a person who takes the place of honour at a feast but is moved to the lowest place when someone more important comes to challenge us to be the one of takes the lowest place first. In the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, he challenges us about the importance of relationships by telling the story of a dishonest manager who learns the benefits of relationships through self-interest after losing his job. In today’s Gospel reading he challenges us to go further towards self-sacrifice by saying in the Parable of the Persistent Widow that, if hard-hearted people, like the Judge in that story, can do kind things for selfish reasons, should we not go further and do what is kind anyway, regardless of return.
The widow in the story provides us with an important example of persistence in prayer, while the parable also assures us that God is responsive in a way that the unjust Judge is not initially.
You may have heard stories of those who persisted in prayer or may have had that experience yourself. I like the story of Monica, the mother of St Augustine, who had to persist with her prayer that Augustine would come to faith. Augustine writes in his ‘Confessions’ that God did not grant what she desired at the moment that she first prayed, but, true to his higher purpose, God met the deeper wish of her heart. Monica had to learn to persevere in prayer in the face of what seemed to be a lack of response from God to her prayer. When Jesus told parables about prayer, the stories he told were of those who did what Monica did and kept on praying no matter what. When Monica’s prayer was finally answered it was the deepest wish of her heart that was realised as her son becomes one of the most influential figures in the history of Christianity.
This story gives us one answer to a question that we might well have about the importance of persisting in prayer. We might well ask why, if God is responsive to our prayers, we need to persist with our prayer. One answer is that flagged by Augustine in relation to his mother i.e. that the time is not right yet for our prayer to be answered and therefore we need to wait while continuing to pray. The time may not be right in terms of circumstances. That was the case in Augustine’s life. But it could be that change is needed in our life in order to be the answer to our prayer.
In 'Letters to a Young Poet' the poet Rainer Maria Rilke calls for the unknown to be embraced, and not necessarily puzzled out. Rilke writes: “…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing, live your way into the answer….” Rilke suggests that we may need to change in order live our way to become the answer to our prayer.
Another reason why we might not recognise God’s response to our prayer is that he may give us what we need, rather than what we want.
There is an old joke about a man caught in floods who believed that the Lord would rescue him. He turns away a neighbour in a dinghy, a lifeboat and a helicopter before the waters rise over his home, all because he believed that the Lord would rescue him. He arrived in heaven in a state of shock. “Lord,” he complained, “why didn’t you protect and rescue me?” “I sent you two boats and a helicopter, “ said the Lord wearily, “what more did you want.”
Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, has written about this phenomenon in terms of the cornerstone, the stone that the builders rejected. He notes that: “The stone that the builders rejected didn’t find a place in the wall somewhere by being thoughtfully included like a last-minute addition to a family photo. The rejected stone became the cornerstone, the keystone – the stone that held up all the others, the crucial link, the vital connection. The rejected stone was Jesus, as our Gospel reading makes clear. In his crucifixion he was rejected by the builders – yet in his resurrection he became the cornerstone of forgiveness and eternal life.”
He goes on to argue that that’s “what ministry and mission are all about – not condescendingly making welcome alienated strangers, but seeking out the rejected precisely because they are the energy and the life-force that will transform us all. Every minister, every missionary, every evangelist, every disciple should have these words over their desk, their windscreen, on their screensaver, in the photo section of their wallet, wherever they see it all the time – the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”
This is important, he says, because, if we’re “looking for where the future church is coming from, we need to look at who or what the church and society has so blithely rejected. The life of the church is about constantly recognising the sin of how much we have rejected, and celebrating the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives. That’s what prophetic ministry means.”
As a result, like the drowning man in the joke, we may not recognise the people who can be the answer to our prayers, and may even reject those people, because they are not the people we expected to come along to help. As church and society, there are many people that we reject and exclude, so, as Sam says, we need to look at who or what the church and society has so blithely rejected, to constantly recognise the sin of how much we have rejected, and celebrate the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives.
I saw this happen in practice one year at St Martin-in-the-Fields when Jesus and the disciples in our Palm Sunday Passion Drama were members of the weekly 45-strong asylum-seekers group that meets at St Martin’s every Sunday afternoon, many of them experiencing homelessness and destitution in London – including a Kurdish Iranian, a Ugandan, a Dominican Republican, a Bangladeshi, a Kenyan, a Zimbabwean and a South African. One, a Ghanaian, spent two years travelling to the UK, crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa in a boat and waiting for many weeks in the Calais Jungle. In our Passion Play, at the last supper they gathered around Jesus – played by Sam, a young Afghani refugee - waiting on his every word, knowing from their own lives what it means to hope and pray for salvation.
Sam Wells described what happened to those of us watching this Passion Drama:
“The British public sees asylum-seekers as a threat or at best an administrative burden. The churches tend to see them as objects of pity and mercy. On Palm Sunday they were none of these things. They were prophets, preachers, provocative witnesses to the gospel, challenging us at St Martin’s, used to thinking of ourselves as edgy and politically engaged, with the question of where we each stood in the passion story. This was the first time our International Group has led us into worship. In the past, members of the group have joined our fellowship by acting as wicket-keeper or demon opening bowler in our cricket team, or as waiter for our hospitality events. But on Palm Sunday they were swept up into the passion narrative itself. And they changed the whole way we thought about the story we thought we knew.
Sam from Afghanistan sums up St Martin’s because he is the asylum-seeker who played Jesus in the drama and was water boarded for our salvation. He sums up St Martin’s because we aren’t about condescendingly making welcome alienated strangers, but instead about seeking out the rejected precisely because they are the energy and the life-force that will transform us all. Sam sums up our community not because he gratefully received our pity but because he boldly showed us the heart of God.”
In this way, these people who experience rejection in our society became the answer to our prayer.
Is there a prayer that you have prayed for many years and to which you think God has not provided the answer? I want to encourage you to persist in your prayer but also to look out for unexpected people who might be the answer to your prayer and to consider the times and circumstances of your life which may also bring the answer that you need. For others of us, there may be a prayer that we need to begin praying knowing it will not be an easy prayer to see answered but knowing, too, that it is when we begin to pray that God can act in our lives and the lives of others too. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.
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Aretha Franklin - Are You Sure?
