Year C Proper 24 Luke 18:1-8

One thing that most religions encourage their members to do is pray.As Christians, St. Paul has told us we should “pray without ceasing”, but what does that mean, and what do we really know about prayer?

For example, not everyone knows there are five types of prayer. Adoration: Praising God. Confession: Asking for God’s forgiveness. Petition: Asking God for a favour. Intercession: Asking God for a favour for someone else. And Thanksgiving: Showing God gratitude. There’s even a suggested order for saying a prayer. Begin with adoration, confess our unworthiness, petition God or intercede with God, and end with thanksgiving. But that’s a pretty logical, almost mechanical breakdown of prayer – which doesn’t tell us a thing about the actual experience.

Prayer doesn’t mean only the time spent on our knees, or sitting quietly, talking to, or listening to God. We need that type of prayer, of course, it is essential to our spiritual wellbeing, but prayer needs to be much more than that. Prayer is meant to be the fabric of our lives, the basis for our actions.

Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.

What follows is the parable of the widow and the rogue of a judge who fears neither man nor God, and certainly doesn’t want to be bothered with the widow. Jesus chose a widow because of her status, or lack thereof. In the society of His time a widow had no legal rights whatsoever; she was powerless, incredibly vulnerable, regularly listed with orphans and aliens as those persons deserving special protection. The fact that this particular widow must beseech a judge, unattended by any family members, shows us her extreme vulnerability, and she is dealing with a judge who doesn’t care, and who believes there is nothing the widow can do about his total indifference to her plight.

All those, hearing this parable, who felt powerless or disenfranchised, facing some personal struggle, catastrophe, or crises of faith, could relate to this seemingly powerless woman. We can also relate to her today, and in the parable we are struck, as Jesus meant for His listeners to be, not only by her vulnerability, but by her determination. Jesus has chosen to use her and her dogged persistence as an example of what it means to “pray constantly”, without ceasing, to hold tight to faith, to have God at the center of one’s life. So, we wonder, is her “constant prayer” the way she annoys the judge on a daily basis? At first, it seems like that is the obvious explanation.

However, it’s far more likely that what Jesus wants us to think about is the way the widow’s legal case never left her thoughts, how her whole life was centered on winning it and on doing anything that victory would demand. Her days were punctuated with visits to the judge; her nights with finding new and more forceful ways to influence his decision. This is something we can all understand, because most of us have at one time or another been thus filled with and focused on one particular thing. When we were young, it might have been a school assignment, in our lives now it could be a financial problem, or the concern we feel in caring for someone we love. Whatever it is, we find it floods our thoughts and lives, even invading our dreams at night. We are centered on this one issue.

There are also many everyday examples of people whose lives have a continual centeredness. Sometimes these people are lauded by society, sometimes criticized for being too focused on one thing. There are mothers and fathers who sacrifice every day for their children’s welfare, teachers whose concern and patience motivate their students to develop their potential. There are dedicated physicians and nurses, care givers, politicians, athletes, bakers, artists, volunteers, so many workers, blue collar and white collar, who are totally absorbed in, and centered on their work. They will say to anyone who asks, “Thus and so is my whole life.”

Such focus, such concentration is something we can say is always with us. But all the pursuits just mentioned are worldly. We strive and strive until eventually, we reach a level of proficiency and there we stay – lauded for our work, unfulfilled because we have nowhere else to go. This occurs because we haven’t realized that we can continue doing our daily business, but find a new fulfillment. God has offered us the opportunity to focus on the work we do as something we are doing purely for love of Him. Jesus has told us we can be fulfilled if we pray constantly.

To pray constantly we don’t have to change what we do, but we need to begin doing it, not for ourselves, but for God. Our work needs to be done, not out of desperation, and conversely, not for our own personal pleasure, or for the recognition or rewards we might receive from the world, but solely for the Lord. We can continue doing our daily business, all we need do is focus on the work as that which we are doing purely for the love of God. Instead of doing what we do for ourselves, or even for others, we shift our focus, and we do it for Jesus.

Today’s parable, retold by the Gospel writer to the Lukan community, responds to the concerns of those in that ancient community, who would question the faithfulness of God, because their hopes for the Second Coming of Jesus have not been met. So we also need to look at the other character in Jesus’ parable, the judge.

For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, `Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'"

Is this person meant to be God? It certainly doesn’t sound like it. The judge is a person totally centered on himself. He is a good example of the faithless, uncaring world in which we live, against which we struggle, in the face of which we are called to hold firm to our beliefs. But there is more here. Something else we’re meant to see.

This judge eventually responds. Like all early Christians, the Lukan community was concerned about an uncaring God as they waited for Jesus to return. They were focused on the Parousia, on Jesus’ coming again, and it wasn’t happening. To them, it seemed God wasn’t listening, wasn’t responding, and couldn’t care less. In His parable, Jesus is saying that God’s response may not be what we expect nor may His response come when we want it to – but in the give and take that our lives, based on prayer, create between us and our Maker, changes can and do occur.

The widow’s persistence would have changed her. She would have made deeper and deeper contact with her inner strength, and her own wisdom. The helpless woman who began the appeal would have become a stronger person. That’s what our praying constantly does to and for us. As we live our lives toward Jesus instead of toward worldly goals and rewards, we change. We become deeper more spiritual people, people of deeper, stronger faith, and as we change, God’s response to us becomes clearer and seemingly more generous. God is faithful and constant, but we cannot recognize this fully until we too become faithful and constant toward Him. Then we can see that all prayer is answered.

We, gathered here today, strive to be devoted followers of Jesus. We find it easy to focus on the reward, the love Jesus offers us, the promise of salvation and life everlasting, but like the early Christians, the hard work we are called to do is to shift our focus from the reward to the task at hand, to the work of praying without ceasing, to Jesus’ call to make Him the center of our lives, the focus of everything we do. We learn how to do this the same way we learn to do anything, through practice; through, no matter what the situation, reminding ourselves we are doing what we do for Jesus. We are doing what we do, with Him, to Him, and for Him. This is prayer without ceasing.

God will and does respond to each soul that approaches Him in prayer. The deeper we grow in prayer, the closer we grow to our Lord. The closer we come to Him, the more aware we become of Him moving in our lives. Holiness is a slow process, but as we grow in our prayer lives and our devotion to our Lord, there are some instant and surprising rewards, as we find and meet Jesus in each other and in those we serve in His Name.

In this world, we always want things quickly. We want to ask and immediately receive; we seek for and are satisfied only with instant gratification. It’s not a world that encourages a faith that requires patience and hard work. Yet, we are the people Jesus has called to persevere in the face of a faithless world, to seek only Him, to pray continually, constantly. We are the ones whose lives are meant to be the “Yes” to Jesus’ question.

When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

Let us pray:

Lord, we do not know not what we ought to ask of You; You alone know what we need; You love us better than we know how to love ourselves. Heavenly Father! Give to us what we do not know how to ask. We present ourselves to You; and ask You to open our hearts to You. We give ourselves to You. May we have no other desire than to accomplish Your will. Teach us to pray, Lord. Pray Yourself in us. Help us to pray without creasing. We ask in Jesus’s Name. . Amen