Hello, we were just wondering when we were
on the schedule to get our new gutters that we ordered on June
15.
Oh Mr. Meyer..your gutters should be put on in the next week or
so. I'll put it on my calendar.
Hello, we were just wondering if you had misplaced
our contract for new gutters, it has been five weeks.
Oh Mr. Meyer, the rain, all the rain we've been having. Our crews
are a little backed up. Next week for sure!
Hello, you know you promised that the new gutters would be coming this week. It's Friday, they're not here. Do we know when we might be getting them.
Oh Mr. Meyer, you mean that crew didn't get to you this week. I'll just have to speak to them. I'll have the crew chief call on Mon. They'll be there.
Hello, I've got a letter here to the better
business bureau. It's been three months since we signed the contract
for our gutters. Are they ever coming?
Oh Mr. Meyer, the crew chief told me he was out to look at your
job last week. He wasn't there?
It's all about persistence. Jesus said there
was in a certain city a judge who had no reverence for God nor
respect for people, and there was in that city a widow who kept
coming every day saying, "Give me justice, vindicate me against
my opponent."
He paid no attention to her until finally he said, "I'm going
to have to listen to her lest she wear me out, some translators
interpret that last phrase as meaning lest she give me a headache."
I didn't have to go far into my personal experience
to feel some affinity to this poor widow in our story today.
I'm sure you don't have to go far either for the last time you
were ignored or given the run around. Feel it for a moment.
The frustration, the annoyance the anger. After a while it just
isn't worth it any more. It's tempting to give up or to give
in.
Luke says this story is a parable. That's odd because I've always
thought that parables were designed to leave the mind in sufficient
doubt as to its precise meaning so as to tease it into active
thought. If that's right, then this is not really a parable because
there is no doubt about the meaning.. This is one of those texts
that doesn't need a candle. It has its own light: the light of
common human experience. This is a story of the powerless banging
on the locked door of power. That's it. Who needs a commentary?
There is no teasing the mind into active thought. Everyone of
us here has had or will have an experience just like this.
It does get a little complicated, though, because Luke says (and
he's the only one that records it) that this story was given by
Jesus as instruction in prayer. That Luke would give us instruction
in prayer is understandable because it's one of the central
themes of Luke's gospel.
But what does this story have to do with prayer?
I don't get it, do you? I know prayer is not sweet. Prayer is
not casual. Prayer is not easy. Jacob, whose name was changed
to Israel, who gave a nation their name, most of his adult life
walked with a noticeable limp, and you ask him why, and he will
say, "I prayed all night."
The Apostle Paul, when he wrote to the church in Rome said "I'm
now going to Jerusalem with the offering for the Saints, and I
know there are people there wanting to kill me, and I don't even
know if the Christians there will accept the money. I want you
to pray with me", and what's his word...Synagonizo......agonize
with me in prayer.
I know prayer has sweat on its brow. So did
Jesus. He sweat as it were, says Luke, drops of blood. Hour upon
hour upon hour he prayed.
It is quite clear in all the scripture that a fundamental ingredient
of faith is prayer and a fundamental ingredient of prayer is tenacity.
Tenacity!
She could have given up years ago. Just about everything indicated
her chances of winning were futile. Not once, but twice, there
had been a trial - both times with devastating results. At least,
though, she had had her day in court; did it really matter whether
justice had been served? Yes, justice did matter - it mattered
to a woman named Merlie Evers.
Her husband, Medgar Evers, had been murdered on June 12, 1963.
An advocate for Civil Rights, Medgar Evers was shot down in Jackson,
Mississippi, outside his own home. It was widely suspected that
a man named Byron De La Beckwith had pulled the trigger. It seems
that De La Beckwith, a white man, even boasted about the shooting.
But when it came time for the trial, an all-white jury unanimously
declared him innocent.
But Medgar Evers' widow did not give up. In 1989, the trial was
reopened; and in 1994, over 30 years after the crime was committed,
Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of the murder of Medgar Evers.
The truth had finally been heard, and justice had been served.
What kept his widow, now Merlie Evers-Williams, from giving up
over all those years? After all that time, why hadn't she lost
heart?
If we had the privilege of meeting her in person, I suspect we
would find that Merlie Evers-Williams is a woman who maintains
a rich prayer life. It is difficult for me to believe that she
could have survived such a long and painful ordeal without the
benefit of prayers to her Maker. Otherwise, after 30 years, I
doubt whether Merlie Evers-Williams would have been able to sustain
her pursuit to expose the truth. Without a deep sense of God's
ultimate justice, I would guess that Medgar Evers' widow would
have turned into a bitter, vengeful, and cynical woman.
Instead, Mrs. Evers-Williams has emerged as a widely respected
national leader. Recently, without seeking the office, she was
elected to head the NAACP
Life is sometimes just hanging on...hanging
on...digging your spurs in the side of something and holding.
Winston Churchill's once gave a famous commencement address. That
huge bull of a man stood up and shared these words of wisdom with
the graduates, "Do not give up. Do not ever give up. Never
give up." And he sat down. That was it. What makes that speech
so memorable? Why did that strike such a note? Because that's
just the way life is.
A fundamental ingredient of faith and therefore of prayer is
tenacity. Maybe Jesus gave this story because that's just the
way life is. Maybe he shared this story with his disciples because
some were already quitting. They were, you know. John 6 shares
that painful story of Jesus feeding 5,000, and they loved it.
They came the next day, and he preached a sermon full of demand
upon them, of sacrifice of life, and they began to walk away.
He looked at the twelve, and he said, "Are you going to leave,
too?" They said, "We don't have anywhere to go."
It came down to that even in those very early days.
Later on after the disciples had been out on their own for a while
spreading the gospel Pliny was appointed by Trajan to investigate
affairs in Northern Turkey (it was Asia in those days). He discovered
and began to investigate a club there called Christians. What
do I do about this club, Trajan? " Don't accept rumors"
Trajan said, " Investigate, interview, find out for yourself."
He wrote back later and said to the Emperor Trajan, "An interesting
thing in my interviews, I have found more people who once were
Christian than I find who are Christian now." Conditions
hadn't developed as people had expected. The kingdom hadn't come
in a flash of glory to vindicate all those believers. They were
frustrated, discouraged. That people would quit is certainly
understandable.
A few years ago an issue of the magazine, The Lutheran told the
story of Lutheran history in the former Soviet Union. Before
1928 there were 13 million Lutherans there. Between 1928-1936
there were still 200 functioning parishes with 920,000 Lutherans
and 98 pastors. In the latter Thirties, a mounting Communist persecution
began against these Lutherans due to their German ethnicity. In
1937 the last two pastors were finally arrested, and the following
year the last Lutheran Church property was confiscated by the
Soviet authorities, the Church of St. Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg,
where Czar Peter the Great had laid the cornerstone in 1694. The
Lutheran bishop of that city, then called Leningrad, Arthur Malmgren,
had written to his people beforehand, "The gospel shall remain
and not perish, for not even the gates of hell shall destroy it,"
he wrote. Then he prophesied correctly: "But our organized
Lutheran Church of Russia will disappear." And so it did
... for a time ... on the surface ... officially
Underneath, it continued. The Church had gone underground. Eugene
Bachmann, a labor camp survivor, started traveling among the former
Lutheran communities in 1955 to rally them together. There were
many still thriving within homes, quietly and unofficially. With
time, the Lutheran Church gained official recognition once again.
By 1974, Lutheran World Federation representatives were able to
travel through the area with the former "secret bishop"
of the Lutherans there, and discovered hundreds of existing congregations.
Today, that "secret bishop" is secret no longer. Bishop
Harold Kalnins ministers to tens of thousands of Lutherans, who
never gave up, who prayed when it seemed useless, who persisted
in the face of terror.
But why is this tenacity needed? Why doesn't
God just immediately give us some answers? Why wait around? I
am told, the most characteristic prayer in the history of the
Jewish people is "how long, oh Lord, how long?" Why
so long? Why not immediately? Well, I don't know. I have no idea.
But perhaps it has something to do with giving us time to clean
up our prayers. Children used to eating cake have lost the appetite
for bread, and it takes awhile. Maybe it takes awhile to clean
up the prayer that wants for ourselves comfort and happiness and
to get to what it's all about: the love of God for every person
in the world. Maybe that just takes a lot of time. It takes a
lot of time to grow toward God so the prayer is really a talking
with God.
Well, it takes awhile, but what really takes time for me is to
focus on the prayer itself. Did you notice the last of that little
passage? What is being prayed for? That God will bring justice
to the saints whose prayers rise night and day. What are they
praying for? We call it: "Let thy kingdom come." Let
the realm of God, the realm of justice come. Do I really want
to pray that? Believing, hoping, trusting it will be true when
I know for a fact that if that prayer is answered I may suffer
severe dislocation: geographically, and socially, and economically,
and professionally because I must fit into thy kingdom come. Do
I really want that? How could those early Christians pray "Maranatha!"
"Come Lord Jesus." To mean what I pray, to be willing
to accept the answer takes time, and during that time Jesus said,
"just hang on and keep praying." Amen.
Amen.