Sermon preached by Rev. Emily Tanis-Likkel, Eagle Harbor Church                    

October 21, 2007

Luke 18:1-8

Take Heart, and Keep on Praying

              I lose things.  Phone numbers, the receipt for the item I want to return to the store, the checkbook, stamps, keys.  Do you lose things?  I seem to lose things more often when my life is out-of-sync, when I'm trying to do more than one thing at a time, when harmony gives way to discord.  When I start to lose things there is often a greater loss at play.  The loss of an item can be an outward reminder of loss of sleep, loss of time, or loss of routine.  Life is full of losses.  The ending of a friendship, a marriage, a dream. Transitioning to a new city, a new school, or career is accompanied by loss.  The loss of freedom if you have children, and later the loss of your kids when you find yourself with an empty nest.  Loss ebbs and flows through our days.  We experience the loss of hair, memory and physical agility as we age.  And of course there is death.  Presbyterian minister Lynne M. Baab, in her book, A Renewed Spirituality: Finding Fresh Paths at Midlife, writes, “Often when we feel we cannot bear another ending, it is pressed upon our lives anyway: a parent's sickness, the death of a friend, the diagnosis of an illness.   Our spirits flag as lives are lost in Iraq, as unrest continues in so many places in our fragile world, as pollutants cause our planet to groan.   And sometimes, amidst our sense of loss, we lose heart. 

              Jesus told the disciples a story about their need to  pray always and not lost heart.  He had already taught them the Lord's Prayer.  Yet his teaching on prayer was not finished – there was another important lesson to be learned.  He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who was a real curmudgeon.  He didn't care about anyone but himself.   There was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice!  I have lost so much, and now someone has the audacity to wrest away the little I have left.’ The judge said, forget it!  Go away.  After more encounters with the woman than the judge could count, he couldn't take it anymore.  He said to himself, ‘I don't really care about her, but her persistence is making me feel like I've been beat up.  I'm burned out, exhausted!   She can have justice, as long as I can have quiet.  Jesus said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says – even he responded to the widow's cry. And will not God respond to our cries? Will God not hear us?”

               This  woman whose husband had died was desperate to be heard in her loss.  She lost the man that she loved.  She came home to an empty house, to eat alone, to sleep alone, to be alone.  She lost her property, her assets, and her security.  A widow in her time had no rights.  Her husband's property would have gone to his male relatives.  But she lost something else, too, she lost justice.  As if she didn't have enough to deal with.   We don't have a very full picture of her, but I love how blessedly persistent she was.  The judge would have called her annoyingly stubborn, but she was beautifully and desperately persistent.  She lost a lot, but did not lose heart.  She did not stop pleading.  We don't know how old the woman in the parable is, for not much detail is given.  I imagine her at midlife.  She had lived enough life to know a lot of pain and loss, but she had some time ahead of her, maybe decades even, and wanted to make meaning out of the time and space in which she found herself.  She was a determined and persistent woman, not one to take life passively. Instead of hiding from the world and giving up, she somehow found the strength to badger that judge.  This judge, even though unjust, ultimately extended the widow some grace. In the midst of loss, we are extended the strengthening grace of God.  Lynne Baab writes, “Our losses can be a call to reevaluate our lives and center ourselves around God in ways we have never experienced before.”   The widow had lost a lot, but she had not lost heart.  God hears us.  Take heart, and keep on praying.

              According to Luke, Jesus told this story so that the disciples would learn to pray always and not lose heart.  This parable underscores the need to live prayerfully in the midst of loss.  Yet prayer does not always come easily.  Distractions abound, and we don't live in a culture that nurtures a prayerful heart.  According to preacher William Willimon, “The problem beneath all of our problems with prayer is the very problem Jesus addresses here. We simply lose heart.”   Jesus understands this.  He lived it.  He prayed, “Father, remove this cup from me,” before his death.  But then an angel from heaven showed up and gave him strength.  He took heart, and kept on praying, all the way to the cross.  Jesus teaches in this story to pray with persistence.  How can we pray always?  Henri Nouwen taught to bathe our lives in prayer.  In one of his books he told a parable written by Leo Tolstoy, called “Three monks on an Island.” 

              Three Russian monks lived on a faraway Island. Nobody ever went there, but one day their bishop decided to make a pastoral visit.  When he arrived, he discovered that the monks didn't even know the Lord's Prayer.  So he spent all his time and energy teaching them the “Our Father” and then left, satisfied with his pastoral work.  But when his ship had left the island and was back in the open sea, he suddenly noticed the three hermits walking on the water—in fact, they were running after the ship!  When they reached it, they cried, “Dear Father, we have forgotten the prayer you taught us.”  The bishop, overwhelmed by what he was seeing and hearing, said, “But, dear brothers, how then do you pray?”  They answered, “Well, we just say, 'Dear God, there are three of us and there are three of you, have mercy on us!'”  The bishop, awestruck by their sanctity and simplicity, said, “Go back to your land and be at peace.”   God hears us.  Take heart, and keep on praying.

              Praying always, unceasingly, is about living prayerfully.  It is not so much the particular words we pray that are so significant, but the attitude of prayer that we have each and every day.  You may or may not be familiar with the Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.  Or simply, Lord have mercy.  The practice of repeating this prayer dates back to the fifth century or before.  Monks were trying to find a way to pray always as the Bible taught, and found that by repeating this prayer it became a “prayer of the heart.”  The idea of this repetition is that when a person prays this prayer continually through the day, eventually the prayer moves from being only in the head to residing in the heart.  A nineteenth century Russian peasant went on a spiritual quest, going from one monk to the next, to discover how one was to pray always.  He eventually met a monk who taught him the Jesus Prayer, and told him to pray it thousands of times each day.  The prayer became as much a part of his life as his very breath.  His very life became prayer.

              Celtic Spirituality is an example of how some have lived prayerfully.  Christians in the British Isles, particularly from the fifth to ninth centuries, practiced a unique way of living the Christian life.  They considered all the world around them as containing the presence of God.  In Celtic Christianity, all of life is sacred, all of life is prayer.  Celtic Christianity recognizes God with us both in our crises and in our everyday work.  They sang, Christ with me sleeping, Christ with me waking, Christ with me watching, Every day and night.  It is hard to lose heart when we have a prayerful heart. 

              According to Nouwen, unceasing prayer includes a crying out to God.  As the widow cried out to the judge, we cry out to God.  In this story the widow did not hold back, but at times we may be holding back from God.  Nouwen called this “spiritual censorship—editing out all the fantasies, worries, resentments, and disturbing thoughts we do not wish to share with anyone, including God, who sees and knows all.”   God hears us, hears everything, so why not bring it all before God , the cacophony of troubles that bind us, the losses that sting us and the joys that free us.  Why not?  God hears us, and wants us to cry out.  God does not want us to keep ourselves bound up. God wants us  to be free.  Prayfulness is also conversation and meditation.  It is presenting our thoughts to God, intentionally living in God's presence, and listening for how God might be responding.  In the prayerful life, we try to minimize all that distracts us from connecting with the Holy.  Father Gerry Pierse wrote, “To pray continually then and to never lose heart is just to be in an attitude of openness. It is having no predetermined demands to make on God but to be continually ready, alert, and listening to the demands that God may be making on us. Christian meditation is this kind of prayer.”   .

              What does it mean to take heart and pray always?  Perhaps it is best explained by a story. “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.  In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 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.’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.

              Theologian Mark Harris wrote, “We lose heart when we believe that no one cares for us, that no one is on our side taking our needs to heart or loving us for who we are and what we have experienced. We lose heart when we feel like we are alone. What we expect from God, which we do not expect from the judge, is a passion with us. We expect compassion.” In this life, we at times find our spirits flagging.  We experience a lot of loss, and at times even a loss of heart.  However, in the midst of loss, we are given grace and faith.  We take heart, and keep on praying. 

              Harris wrote, “The incarnation (not the doctrine but the fact) is precisely about how the Judge became the Friend; how God took our side, stood with us and finally for us. The incarnation is about how God moved . . . from distant thunderer to compassionate companion.”

              Let your life be prayer.  Trust that God is at your side.  God is not weary of our cry, but waiting expectantly for it.  Trust God to be God: loving and compassionate.  God hears you.  Take heart, and keep on praying. 

      p. 20.

      Page 22.

      Dean William Willimon, Duke University Chapel Sermon Archive, 1998.

      The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey (1988), p. 50.

      Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith, 2006, p. 59.

              Sundays into Silence: A Pathway to Life, 1998.

      “Do Not Lose Heart,” Christian Century, September 26, 2001.