“Do your prayers work?”
This question is the question I have been asked the most consistently throughout my ministry. I was prepared to answer all kind of questions: “How do we know that God is real?”, “Did Jesus really exist?”, “How can we prove the Resurrection?”, but the thing is I was never asked any of that. Most of the time, people want to know if my prayers work. People, that is, those of my friends and family who are non believers, or “seekers”, or “non practicing Christians”. Among us, “practicing Christians”, it’s not a question we often ask aloud: after all, if we show up at church on Sunday to pray, it’s because we assume that prayer works, right? And yet. Who among us has never felt discouraged, wondering if their prayers would be answered when praying for personal matters, wondering if their prayers made any difference at all when praying for the world, and probably a few times we have even felt close to give upon personal prayers or to give up on asking for anything specific for fear of not being heard? Maybe some of us have given up already. One thing is sure though: if we have ever experienced some of that, we are in good company because it looks like Jesus assumed that his disciples would go through these times of questioning and discouragement. Actually, Luke tells us today that Jesus told his disciples a parable specifically so they would understand their “need to pray always and not lose heart”. So let’s listen to Jesus.
In a certain city, there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for the people.
Well, I don’t know how you react to that, but I started thinking: Maybe it’s not such a bad idea. I mean, in our days, a lot of people would consider it a blessing to have a judge without religious prejudices (think Supreme Court!). We could also admit that a judge who does not defer to anyone can be quite independent, and that certainly gives them some impartiality. This is not what Jesus was saying though and people at the time would have understood that immediately. This judge was godless and inhumane. In the second book of Chronicles (Ch 19), we see that King Jehoshaphat appointed judges in Israel with this recommendation: “Consider what you are doing for you judge on (…) the Lord’s behalf (…) Now let the fear of the Lord be upon you”. This man Jesus talks about was failing his basic duties: applying God’s law, a law that required that they would protect the most vulnerable. So this is a bad, bad guy. He is also quite a stereotype.
The widow in front of him is more interesting though, more complex. As you probably know, widows in Jewish literature were often used as the perfect example of vulnerability. Because most of them were left without family, social status or wealth, the law actually required that they would be protected. Knowing this makes the uncaring attitude of the judge even worse, of course, but it also also makes this specific woman’s character more remarkable. Indeed, what I think is important for us to notice is that Jesus does not present this woman as a “poor widow”, needy and helpless as we would expect her to be. On the other way around, Jesus says that the woman was outspoken and stood up for herself. She kept pestering the powerful and macho judge, to the point where he gives up, afraid as he is that she would “beat him up” or “give him a black eye” (That’s the literal translation).
This must have made people laugh. I think this outcome was so unexpected that they probably laughed out loud at Jesus’s story. And yet, this is quite a serious teaching. The way this woman behaves is an example for all of us. Not because this woman was good or innocent (Jesus does not say a word about that actually) in front of an unjust judge, but because her insistence leads to a power shift. The parable is not about morality, it’s about power shift. And so what we can hear in this story is this: Prayer is about bringing on a power shift. The one who had the power at the beginning is worn out by the one who didn’t let go in her request. The one who had the power at the beginning gives up because of the other one’s insistence.
So is it the way we are supposed to pray? By our insistence, will we be able to wear God out and obtain what we ask for? I think this often the way we understand prayer. If we really ask God and if we don’t let go, maybe God will agree in the end to give us what we ask for. That’s how we make prayer “work”, isn’t it?
And yet. It’s often a temptation when we hear a parable to compare authority figures to God, but it’s quite impossible to do that in our story. Not only because the judge does not respect God’s law and God’s people, but because Jesus tells us that indeed God is nothing like the judge. The people listening to Jesus would have known that. Of course God is on the side of the poor, the foreigner and the widows. So we need to dig a little deeper to understand what it is really about.
We are at the beginning of Luke’s Chapter 18, but if we go back to the former chapter, a passage that actually has been skipped by our lectionary, Jesus talks about the end of times and the coming of God’s kingdom and God’s justice. And Jesus develops here the same idea: the widow is looking for justice and, Jesus says, God will grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night. Jesus is not talking about us using prayer to ask God for whatever we may need (In other passages, like the teaching of the Lord’s prayer, we have seen that Jesus tells us that God knows what we need and will make it happen for us), it’s about us seeking justice, the justice of God’s law and God’s kingdom. In this prayer indeed we have to be persistent, involved in our words and actions, almost enraged like this widow was and not let go but it’s not a confrontation between the one who prays and God, it’s a confrontation between the kingdom and the forces that oppose the kingdom. Let’s remember here that Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. Before he finds victory, he will meet the defeat of the cross. But by his persistence in seeking justice and obedience to God, he will also wear out his opponents. This parable is a cry to trust that God will indeed bring out God’s justice and an encouragement to remain faithful in face of adversity, and we know how much the disciples will need it, and how much we also need it too.
And so this is to me why Luke said that Jesus showed his disciples how they “needed to pray and not lose heart”: They needed to pray so that they would not lose heart. Like the widow clung to her request, we need to cling to God and the hope of God’s justice no matter what the world throws at us. We need to remember that God’s justice will have the final word in the end and do all in our power to side with this justice right here and right now. We are not only encouraged to do prayer, prayer is the encouragement. We are not only asked to endure in prayer, we are told we cannot endure without praying. The question is not so much about knowing if our prayers work, rather it is about knowing if we can function without prayer. In praying, we look for the presence of God with us in our world, and it’s actually about letting God work through us to bring about the kingdom.