Proper 29, Year C

Each Sunday I take the Prayers of the People we pray together as part of our Sunday worship, and I pray them each day during the week as part of my own personal daily prayers.  As we celebrated Thanksgiving last Sunday, we included a Thanksgiving Litany, which comes from page 128 of the Book of Alternative Services, as part of our Prayers of the People.  As I’ve been praying it each day this week, I’ve felt particularly drawn to one section of it, which says,

“For those who are brave and courageous, patient in suffering and faithful in adversity, we thank you Lord.”

In the 21st century we are more attached to immediate gratification than any century in the past, with constant access to cell phones that are designed to be addictive, technology that gives us instant access to almost anything (good or bad) and I’m as susceptible to the desire for immediate gratification as the next person.  I also really don’t like either suffering or adversity, and I’m as susceptible as the next person to responding to them with various forms of anger or anxiety.  This prayer reminds me each day how thankful I am for those who are brave and courageous, patient in suffering and faithful in adversity.  It reminds me how much I admire them.  It reminds me how much I want to be more like them.

In today’s parable, Jesus gives us an example of someone who is brave and courageous, patient in suffering, and faithful in adversity.  She has no money, no status, no relatives on her side.  All she has is her bravery and courage to speak truth to power, her patience in suffering to keep persisting day after day despite the strain, her faithfulness in adversity in the middle of all the injustices.  Eventually, even the unjust judge gives her justice so he won’t have to keep listening to her hitting him with these calls for justice every single day for weeks, and months, and years.  

Jesus holds her up as an example for the rest of us, illustrating our need to pray always and not to lose heart, as he tells us right before the parable.  

To Love and Serve, the book we’ve been reading with the Inquirers’ Class recently says, “One of my favourite ways of describing prayer is by saying that “prayer is a conversation that takes place in a relationship.”  I think that’s a valuable way to look at it.  The author says, “One of the questions I am most frequently asked as a priest is “Does prayer really work?”  She notices that this question often comes from a situation of deep pain in which someone has prayed fervently for something that didn’t happen.  She says, “How we answer that question depends on what we think prayer is and what we think prayer is for.  If we believe that prayer is like a vending machine, where we put in our money and receive a product in exchange, then we become disillusioned when we don’t get what we ‘paid for’.  If we think that prayer is an assignment at work—something we do in order to earn money or status or acclaim—then we become frustrated when we aren’t rewarded for our our hard work and good behaviour.”

She asks, “What if the goal of prayer is not simply to put in our money and get what we want, but instead to engage in real, deep conversation with God? Then prayer works, not when you get what you want, but any time that you engage in conversation and you find relationship.

“Prayer works because it is important, in any relationship, to be honest, to say what we really want and really hope for and really need, and the act of approaching God in prayer, of naming what we yearn for, in itself builds relationship….In the act of praying, we are changed—we realize that we are not alone…we find strength or comfort or at least release of the feelings that have built up inside of us.”

She also goes on to make another important point.  That prayer does not only change us and our attitudes.  “The witness of scripture is clear that God sometimes miraculously intervenes to change circumstances…The prayers in our prayer books reflect the reality that we believe God does intervene with mighty action in the world, and we can and should as for God’s presence and power among us.  But just as prayer takes a lot of forms, the outcome of prayer can take many shapes.”  Sometimes the circumstance is changed.  Sometimes our attitude is changed, and we feel strengthened or comforted.  Sometimes our approach is changed, we are given insight so we know what we are called to do. Sometimes someone else’s heart or mind is changed.  Sometimes our relationship to God is changed.  “Prayer is powerful, but it is also mysterious….Much of prayer is beyond both our knowledge and our control.”

It is helpful to remind ourselves that suffering and adversity are simply part of life, and that suffering and adversity are simply part of a life of discipleship.  Jesus tells his disciples numerous times to expect both suffering and adversity.  Even though I should know better, and I do know better in many ways, I sometimes slip into a sense of frustration when I don’t get what I want even after lots of praying.  At those times, I ask myself, “What are you worshipping?  Are you worshipping getting what you want?  And trying to use God to get it for you?  Or are you worshipping God?”

In the gospel passage we read last Sunday, which appears almost right before this one, Jesus made ten lepers clean from their leprosy.  One of the ten, a Samaritan, came back to Jesus, overcome with thankfulness.  When he did, Jesus said, “your faith has made you well, or made you whole, or saved you, all of which are good translations of the Greek word σῴζω (sōizō).  We noticed that Jesus identifies his thankfulness as faith.  Thanking God is faith.

There are multiple aspects of faith.  In today’s passage, Jesus presents the widow’s persistence in adversity as a model for our prayer.  Right after the parable and the interpretation, Jesus asks, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  Jesus identifies the widow’s persistence as faith.  Persistence in prayer is faith.

In an era in which we expect instant gratification, it is countercultural to devote ourselves to what is cultivated over time, such as the ongoing conversations of developing a long-term relationship with God.  In an era in which we often try to escape difficulty by constant distraction, it is countercultural to face difficulty by being someone who is brave and courageous, patient in suffering and faithful in adversity. I admire those who are, such as the persistent widow.  I pray that I, and all of us, by God’s grace, will become more like them.