Holding Fast
The Rev’d Devin McLachlan
The 18th Sunday after Trinity: Genesis 32.22-31, Luke 18.1-8
St Bene’t’s, Cambridge
Jesus told the disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.
I immigrated to the United Kingdom eleven years ago, and I have something to confess: I’ve still never been to a panto.
I mention this not just to see if anyone is tempted to shout out: “Oh yes you have!” and for me to reply “Oh no I haven’t…” but because the Judge in this parable is such a panto villain:
What kind of person would actually say, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone…”?
You can imagine the unjust judge twirling his moustache and wickedly rubbing his hands together.
Jesus told the disciples a silly story about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.
Jesus is clearly using humour to soften up his hearers, before laying down some very serious points.
I’d like to imagine Jesus hamming up this parable, a sinister voice for the unjust judge, a wheedling creaking voice for the persistent widow.
There’s even a bit of panto slapstick: the judge doesn’t say “I will grant her justice, lest she wear me out”
The verb Luke uses in his gospel is hypōpiazē ὑπωπιάζῃ, literally, “I will grant her justice, lest she punch me in the eye”
So first of all, let’s make clear: The panto character of the unjust judge is not a model for God.
When Jesus tells this story, it’s obvious. It’s one of the points of the whole setup — if even the unjust judge can grant requests for justice, how much more will God respond to our prayers and grant justice?
Yet we can fall into this trap — Strangely, not by being persistent like the widow, but by being timid in our prayers — worried that our prayers are not orderly, properly filed, and above all, restrained; nervously placing our prayers before a God whom we expect to be a bullying judge.
But pray always, and do not lose heart!
The panto character of the unjust judge is not a model for the Church either, though sometimes we appear to get that deeply wrong.
This week’s episcopal decision on the prayers of Living in Love and Faith mean that stand-alone services blessing same-sex unions, and permission for clergy to enter civil same-sex marriages will not happen without a ⅔ majority vote by General Synod, a process that will likely take years.
From a legalistic view, the House of Bishops has a clear line on process and doctrine.
But…cui bono, jurists sometimes ask: Who benefits?
Yet there’s no common latin phrase for who gets hurt. cui malo, I suppose,
Our failure to ask that question is …telling. cui malo, who gets hurt?
Who in our churches, in the pews and on the church porch, in our families, amongst our colleagues,
Who in the great cloud of witnesses, has had the doors of the church shut to them this week, even as they, like the widow, cry out for justice?
For a fundamental point of Jesus’ parable today is about justice: Justice to God’s people who cry to him day and night
And justice is uncomfortable. Justice can be actively discomforting, upsetting to the systems which — although oppressive — are the systems that through long use we have learned to live with unquestioningly.
And then along comes the widow, threatening to poke us in the eye. reminding us: We are not called to be the unjust judge. We are called to emulate the persistent widow.
Rage and rail, wrestle with God as Jacob did, persist, persist, and pray without ceasing.
It’s dynamic, this prayer of ours. Straining towards God, as the epistle says[1]
God is no unjust judge, and God hears your prayers already, even the faint uncertain ones, even the prayers for the justice you are sure you do not deserve, even those sighs too deep for words.
God hears our prayers and responds, is responding right now.
But as we heard yesterday, in Fr Kevin’s talk on mysticism, just as any relationship, 90% of prayer is just showing up — showing up day in, day out.
As we show up for our beloved, for a child, for a friend: even when we really don’t want to spend the afternoon at the garden centre or watching that show again.
But we do want to be present to that relationship, to nurture it, to find new depths of love, to understand them more truly.
Prayer is the work of love, actively showing up. And when we show up, not passively but striving towards God, when we pray without ceasing, when we really wrestle with God, it changes us, transforms us — just as Jacob was transformed, changed forever, in body and in heart.
It’s not easy work, this prayer that Jesus calls us to. God transforms us in uncomfortable, wounding ways. There will absolutely be long dark nights, as there were for Jacob, and there will be long silences, and desert-dry years where prayer tastes like dust.
Yet even then, Jesus tells us, pray always and do not lose heart.
For the sign of grace in our prayer is the sign of justice. And justice is nothing less than the expression of love. And love is only possible because of the transforming presence of God in our lives, made known to us in prayer. [2]
When we look at our own life of prayer. When we look at the state of the church — locally or nationally. When we look at our body politic. : have our actions, our prayers, our persistent cries for justice, increased our love of God and our love of neighbour?
For if our laws and canons do not arc towards justice, do not arc towards love, and if our intention in prayer, alone on our knees and when we come together God’s altar, if our intention is not love, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”[3]
Yet here at the altar, we find God’s love. And with all our heart, our soul, our mind, our strength, we will not let go.
[1] Philippians 3.13
[2] cf ‘Lived from the heart: An interview with Bernard McGinn” Kenneth L. Woodward, January 19, 2022, Commonweal Magazine. https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/lived-heart
[3] Luke 18.8