Pasadena Presbyterian Church Sermon Text
October 17, 2004

"Dogged Prayer and Persistence"
Preached by The Rev. Dr. Mark Smutny

Scripture:  Psalm 13:1-6, 13-18; Luke 18:1-8

1) Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. (2) He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.  (3) In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, 'Grant me justice against my opponent.' (4) For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, (5) yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" (6) And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. (7) And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? (8) I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

- Luke 18: 1-8

  I grew up with the belief that if I put my mind to it, I could do anything.  I could accomplish any task and be anything I wanted to be.  If I wanted to be an astronaut, I could go to the moon.  If I wanted to be the President of the United States, I could.  If I shot hoops everyday, worked harder than anybody else, I could play in the NBA like Jerry West or Wilt Chamberlain.  Okay, so Wilt Chamberlain was a stretch.

  Like so many in my white, male, middle-class  subculture, I bought into the myth that the world was without limits.  I was without limits, and all I had to do was apply myself with high ideals, grit and persistence, and I could do it all.

  It took quite awhile before reality oozed around the edges of my armor.  I didn't make  high school varsity basketball, let alone the NBA.  It didn't matter, I was a debate champion.  Going to the moon seemed less attractive once Neil Armstrong made it there in 1969, but I aced every academic subject I put my mind to.  I just preferred not to put my mind to physics.  History, politics, literature and philosophy were my subjects in college.  I thought they were a breeze.  Though seminary was a bit more challenging, I was always in my element in academia.  I worked hard, studied hard, and as Barbara can attest, rarely lacked for confidence.  Humility was another matter. 

Sure there were bumps along the way.  I didn't always get what I wanted, but my basic attitude that the world was without limits and that I was without limits was pretty much confirmed by the evidence of my life.  I had great opportunities, accomplishments, and married a brilliant, beautiful woman.  I could be anything I wanted to be and do anything I wanted to do.  I was sailing to the moon.

You could say that the operating myth of my youth and young adulthood was that through a combination of brains, brawn and bravado, I could get anywhere.  Yet, I was not so dense as to believe my myth would work for everyone.  I may have been confident, but I wasn't clueless. 

For example, my pathway to ordination as a Presbyterian minister was lined with bouquets of flowers and warm affirmations by family and friends.  Meanwhile, for the woman I love, her path encountered stones and thorns amid the flowers.  There were accusations by some that for a woman to be a pastor was to be no better than a whore.   That's what the Orthodox priest of one of her best friends in college declared Barbara to be when he found out that she was going to study to be a minister - a whore, not a pretty word or all that encouraging.   Her pathway was lined with some flowers to be sure or she wouldn't be a pastor, but it was also littered with stones and thorns.  Doors are not open to all and only if you've never been on the outside of a locked door trying to get in, would you have no clue as to what I am talking about. 

For all kinds of other people the myth of brains, brawn and bravado, while the dominant myth of our culture, doesn't completely cohere with experience.  Maybe I could do anything I wanted to do, believe that the world was without limits and that I was without limits, but my myth was not everybody's myth.  Cracks began to appear in my consciousness.  I was confident, but not clueless.

The fissures in my myth began to spread when I began to open my eyes.  The athletic young man who came back home from the dirty war of my youth, wasn't ever going to win the pole vault competition again - never again would he do so.  Without that leg that had been so muscular, there was no way he was going to cross over that bar 13 feet in the air at the local track meet in my hometown.   A limit to his world had been imposed on him despite his brawn and bravado.  Any fool could see that his brains, brawn and bravado would need to be re-directed or he would be destroyed by torment from within.

There were others who taught me about limits.  My favorite uncle - who taught me a love of botany and how to strip the savory, brown skin off a Thanksgiving turkey and plunk it in your mouth when no one was looking - encountered his limits when the cigarettes and pipes he had smoked his whole life caught up with him.  No force of will was going to do a whole lot about his curing his emphysema nor the desperate gasping of the last two years of his life.  My personal doctrine of invincibility took another hit. 

A few years later, when my dad and my mom - good people, hard working people who taught me the values of hard work, thinking critically and the importance of diligence - came upon rough times, the myth was riven even further in two.  These good business people had to declare bankruptcy in the early 80s after a corporate partner royally swindled them. 

Maybe they should have seen it coming.  Maybe not.  It doesn't matter.  I saw their shame and devastation and it broke my heart.  At first it was as though they believed they had a scarlet "B" affixed to their hearts. 

I also saw how over time, they found their courage.  Their faith deepened.  I saw how despite their incredible stress they relied on one another, seeing the best in each other, so that they became stronger and deeper and richer in matters of the Spirit.  They made it through not by chutzpah, but through clinging to one another, love and faith and prayer.  But if they were not invincible, maybe neither was I.

Sometimes you try. Sometimes a person tries very, very hard, and no matter how hard you try, you can't get the world to move in the way you so desperately want it to move.  What do you do then?  Maybe a loved one doesn't get well.  No combination of medical science, bravado, or brawn seems to work.  Maybe the world that you so deeply wish were more peaceful just grows more cold, more hateful, more riven in two and it seems that conviction and resolve and brains and brawn and high ideals are just flailing against the wind.  What do you do then?  What do you do when you are tempted to give up?

Jesus tells a parable about two characters: a persistent widow and an unjust judge.  It's a simple story.  Jesus tells this story to his disciples, according to Luke in the New International Version, "...to show them that they should always pray and not give up," (Luke 18:1) or in the New Revised Standard Version, "... that they needed to pray always and not lose heart."

"Always pray and not give up." "Pray always and not lose heart."  It's a simple story with just two characters, a persistent widow and an unjust judge, but you need to know something about the social status of widows and the expectation placed on  judges in early Palestinian society to understand what Jesus is trying to tell us about dogged prayer and persistence.

In ancient Israel, the duty of a judge was to maintain harmonious relations and adjudicate disputes between Israelites.  Fair enough.  Judges were high on the food chain with important responsibilities.  Judges were charged with the clear task of hearing complaints fairly and impartially.  There were no juries.  Their judgment was final and was understood to be the same as though God had issued the judgment.  In turn, God would judge them according to whether they upheld shalom, or not, peace or not, justice or not, harmony or not.

On the other hand, widows were on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder where they had fallen after their husband's death.  Down there at the bottom, not only had they been deprived of their husband's support, but according to Hebrew law, they could not inherit their husband's estate, which instead passed on to the sons or brothers. To our modern sensibilities it was not fair at all, but was understood to be warranted by scripture, authoritative, and allegedly from God and all that literalist stuff.  As you can imagine, disputes involving widows were common and frequently came to court.

Because widows were frequently in one heck of a predicament, the expectation regarding how the covenantal community was to treat widows was equally clear.  The Hebrew community, forged in a covenant with God, was to have special concern for those in need: the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.  Care for the least of these was essential to Hebraic identity.  Why?  Because in the best of their tradition, which of course, is our tradition, they were to be a people who never forgot from whence they came.  Once they had been in bondage in Egypt and were like widows, orphans and foreigners.  They were "strangers in a strange land" (Psalm 137).  To forget was to desecrate their history, their identity and their unique relationship with God.  So they were to remember. 

The way they were to remember from whence they came, their vulnerability and their deliverance at the hand of God, was to care for the vulnerable in their midst.  This was their family values, their nation's birthright, and their morality.  So, for example, in Jeremiah we hear this command, "Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow." (Jeremiah 22:3)  In Isaiah, "Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow." (Isaiah 1:17) 

The early church had similar concerns.  James declares, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." (James 1:27)

Jesus tells a simple parable about a widow and a judge.  This time the judge doesn't see himself as God's representative.  He is unjust and neither fears God nor any human being.    is far from his mind.  We don't know from the story how he was unjust, but according to some commentators, it is likely he took bribes.  Back then apparently, they used to meet in secret, cut deals with those who had money and power, and then in public looked pious in black robes.  Go figure.

A persistent widow comes along pressing her case.  From the perspective of the judge she is a nag, a flea, a tick to be flicked away and dismissed.  We can imagine muttering to her, "Now, now, what seems to be the problem?  Now go away.  Pretty yourself with your embroidery.  Go along now."

The widow demands justice, demands to be heard, demands to have her place in the sun, to secure the means in this universe to feed her children, so they won't cry at night from the pain in their swollen bellies.  Justice. You go girl.

She persists.  She nags.  She gets in his face. The unjust judge gives up and grants her relief.  Why does he do this?  Most translators of this passage give the impression that the judge relents because she has worn him out with her nagging, a rather mild rendering of the text that can also be literally translated "so that she will not strike me in the face." She was going to slap him around.

How did she get her grit?  Was she constitutionally strong?  Did her genetic make-up predispose her to gutsiness? Was she raised with strong role models?  Was she a lunatic?  "Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart, never to give up." (Luke 18:1)  Or did she know the power of prayer?

What do you do when you want to give up? 

• When your heart breaks when a loved one is dying?

• When the grave door is already shut?

• When the constitutional doors to ordination in the PC(USA) are locked to some because of cultural homophobia?

• When the streets of Baghdad are red with terror?

• When the streets of our cities are lined with human discards and no politician, Democrat or Republican, will talk about it because the discards don't show up to vote?

• What do you do when you are sickened by the way most of us seem to bow down before the idol of power and the myth that you can buy your salvation? 

What do we do when we want to give up?  When we try and try and try, and brains and brawn and bravado don't seem to do any good?  When the myth of invincibility is pulverized by reality?

We do what is the most courageous act a person of faith can ever do.  We get down on our knees and humble ourselves before the Almighty.  When we're real low, we pray.  "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?  O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not put to shame." (Psalm 22: 1-5)  Jesus prayed this prayer as he was dying.  It should be good enough for us in our hour of need.

I believe that doggedly persistent widow with the guts and the audacity to stare down a judge and knock him aside the head until he gave her justice, knew all about humbling herself in prayer.  Her knees were calloused.  Her heart was both tenderly open and toughened for the task ahead.  I imagine that when she had finished praying, she got up off her knees and her voice became clear and strong.  She went to that judge and she got the justice God had promised her from the beginning of creation. "I have called you by name, you are mine" (Isaiah 43:1)

We pray and then we get up off our knees.  Like that gutsy, fearless, demanding, doggedly persistence widow we get out there and never forget from whence we came and to whom we belong.  We seek justice for the oppressed for we are God's own.  Precious.  Beloved.  Redeemed. 

We work for peace.  We work for justice. We practice mercy.  We work humbly and persistently to redeem the times.  We love our loved ones, the sick, the dying, the grieving, the lost and the lonely, and not only the ones we know, but also the ones we will never know, but who God knows.  We do it again and again, with prayers never ceasing, with our eyes on the prize: a world of God's own shalom. 

This broken world, my friends, will never be healed by the myth of invincibility, but can only be healed with prayer.  It's like that doggedly persistent widow.  It's like Jesus Christ, himself, who  "humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death- even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:8)  Taking the form of a servant, he died for our sake and was raised so that we may truly live.  In the providence of God Almighty, the power of the risen Christ and in the leading of the Holy Spirit, we pray. We pray without ceasing: "Come Lord Jesus. Come."  Amen.

(c) Copyright 2004 by Mark K. Smutny.  All rights reserved.  Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution.