Sermons

October 28, 2007

Rev. Scott Swanson

22nd after Pentecost - Luke 18:1-14

Prayer. Funny thing, really. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really felt like I’ve had a handle on it. When I was a child, I would pray every night before I went to sleep. Well, that’s not entirely true. When I was a child, I would pray every night before I went to sleep for a while, and then I would forget for a while, feel guilty for forgetting, ask for forgiveness, and start up again. Or I would wake up in the morning and remember that I hadn’t finished my prayers the night before, so I would try and finish them then, or apologize to God for falling asleep in the middle of praying and ask him – God was a “him” to me then – to forgive me.

And they were often very childish prayers. For a long time, I prayed every night that God wouldn’t let my parents or any of our cats or dogs die that night while I was asleep. I went through a long stretch of thinking that I was wasn’t very serious about what I was praying for, so I would ask God to help me “mean” my prayer. And then, afraid that I hadn’t “meant” my prayer about wanting to “mean” what I was praying for, I would ask God to help me mean that prayer as well. None of this struck me as humourous at the time, of course. Then it was earnest, real, important.

This past summer I was deeply affected by a course I took on centring prayer – a form of prayer some of you have heard of and some likely haven’t. It is part of the not-so-well-known Christian contemplative tradition. Centring prayer is very different in many ways from the type of prayer we’re used to in that its focus is not on speaking to God but listening for God. The purpose is not to come before God with our thanksgiving followed by a shopping list of things we want God to do, but to still ourselves on the inside enough that we can hear. The 16th century mystic St. John of the Cross said that “silence is God’s first language,” and centring and other forms of contemplative prayer help us to learn this language. What contemplative prayer forms share with better known forms of spoken prayer is their basic intent: to connect with the holy, to be in touch with God.

I put together last week’s gospel text and this week’s gospel text for the same reason that I suspect Luke put them side by side: they are both parables about prayer. They are both examples of the kind of prayer we’re more familiar with: the talking-to-God kind.

The first is introduced as a parable about “the need to pray always and not to lose heart,” in the words of Luke. Need. Prayer, this text seems to suggest, is an essential element to the Christian life. The point of the parable is the classic philosophical argument from the lesser to the greater. If such a reprehensible figure as the judge can do right, how much more will God do right? If the unjust judge will listen and grant our desires, will not God do the same?

Luke’s gospel is written several generations after Jesus taught his followers how to pray. In the intervening years, there had been many reasons to become disillusioned and stop praying: Jesus’ prophesy that he would return in the lifetime of those who had known him had not come to pass. God’s kingdom had not come, God’s will had not been done. In fact, things had become steadily worse for Christians in general. There must have been widespread feelings that God was not listening to their prayers, not responding to their concerns. In the parable of the judge and the widow, Jesus assures his listeners that God hears and will respond.

Our experience is that this is not always the case. There is a story in one of my commentaries about an elderly black minister in a gathering of social justice workers who read this parable and interpreted it in one sentence: “Unless you have stood for years, knocking at a locked door,your knuckles bleeding, you do not really know what prayer is.”

When prayer goes unanswered, or seems to anyway, the natural tendency is to lose faith. The faithful, and much more difficult response is to keep at it, trusting that someday the answer will come – perhaps in a form we did not expect and do not welcome. Hence the saying: “Be careful what you pray for.” So Jesus’ question is a fair one: when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? Or will we all have given up and gone home?

The second parable is about those who trust in their own righteousness and regard others with contempt. The shocking nature of this parable is easily lost in the modern telling. Everyone hearing the story would have agreed wholeheartedly with the content of the two prayers, and they would have naturally assumed that the Pharisee would go home justified and the tax collector would not. Jesus’ claim that it was actually the other way around would have shocked or offended them. In this parable, God’s grace is not only amazing, it is outrageous.

Perhaps the point of the parable is humility. No matter how much good any of us does, we are all still imperfect and broken and in need of God’s grace as much as anyone. Perhaps the good news of the parable is that if God’s grace can justify those whom we may understandably be inclined to give thanks that we are not, God’s grace can also justify us.

I believe it is true that the fundamental goal of most and perhaps all of the world’s enduring religious traditions is transformation. I believe this is particularly true of Christianity. Listen to the words of Jesus: “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” (John 3:3) “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Matt 16:24-5) Transformation. Transformation. Transformation.

The truth is that most of us don’t want to be transformed. The way we are has more or less worked OK for us, and the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t, so we’ll take our chances with how we are, thank you very much. But the message of Christianity says something different. God loves you more than you can imagine just the way you are … and God wants to change you into something different.

One of my favourite authors, Richard Rohr, says there are two paths to transformation: suffering and prayer. And the truth is that the inner work accomplished through prayer does not have to be accomplished through suffering. Prayer helps us to navigate suffering. It does not remove suffering from our lives, but it makes it more bearable.

In a minute we’re going to sing a hymn called Come to My Heart, Lord Jesus. It is a hymn about prayer. It is also a hymn about transformation – about learning to walk in the way of Jesus. It is about learning to trust in the Big Love. Not just to talk about trusting, but actually doing it. To pray because you know it matters, and because you know you need to pray. Because you long for God, and God longs for you, and prayer is what brings you together.

For more information or to comment on this sermon, please email Rev. Scott Swanson.