To Not Lose Heart

Luke 18:1-8

How do you know when you’ve lost heart? When you’ve lost faith?

What do you do differently? Start doing/stop doing?

The most consistent thing I do when I have lost faith, or lost heart – and either don’t realize it or don’t want to admit it – is to start trying to do it all myself.

I’m fortunate that I have several good friends who will listen to me run through an ever-expanding to-do list and gently say, “But isn’t it actually the florist’s job to arrange the flowers?”

or “She’s a very capable person. She can probably do that for herself.”

or “You know, you might leave that one in God’s hands.”

Oh. Yeah. Right.

Prayer. Faith. Trust. Patience.

That’s what the gospel is about today, isn’t it?
Luke tells us that right away: Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.

In some city there was a judge who did not fear God or respect anyone. And a widow was in that city, and she kept coming to him and saying “Avenge me against my opponent.” And the judge kept not wanting to do so.

But eventually, he said to himself: “Even though I don’t fear God or respect any human being, she keeps making so much trouble and work for me that I will avenge her, so she won’t come and beat me up.”

Yep.

That’s the story about prayer.

About a judge who is too lazy or indifferent to act, and a woman demanding vengeance or vindication to the point that the judge expects her to beat him up. Literally, “hit me under the eye.”

A story about a person who gets what she wants through bullying, through implied violence; and another who gives in to that pressure for no better reason than a desire to be left alone and not have to bother.

We don’t know the particulars of the case, we don’t know where actual justice lies. Although centuries of commentators and translators have been generous to the woman, casting her as a vulnerable victim begging for justice, the raw vocabulary suggests that what she desires is not the righteous, godly judgement so often referred to in scripture, but vengeance, vindication or punishment. She wants to win, and to see her opponent lose.

Now, that still might be justice you and I would unhesitatingly support and call holy. She might be, for example, a rape victim demanding powerful punishment for her attacker. But she could just as possibly be more like a political candidate demanding an investigation and “consequences” for the “unfair” tactics of opposing politicians or indifferent third parties.

There are no good guys, no hero or heroine, in Jesus’ original story. If anything, this parable is about the opposite of the kingdom of God, about the ways our everyday world betrays our expectations and hopes.

And then there’s Luke, telling us it’s about persistent prayer, about keeping hope and faith alive.

The traditional interpretation, the one that starts cropping up as early as a generation after Jesus first told the story, is that persistence – sticking to what we ask for, even if we don’t seem likely to get it – persistence will wear down imperfect, corrupt fellow humans, so we expect persistence to work on God, too.

But do we really want to apply the lesson that you can bully or exhaust someone into compliance to our relationship with God?
Do you want to think of your prayer life as an effort to wear God down – even if we do it because we know God has already promised to act?

Or perhaps – just perhaps – is the single-minded, repetitive focus of that widow in the story actually what prayer looks like after we have given up?

Is it possible that dogged pursuit of the answer I want is a symptom of having already lost my faith or trust in what God wants?

Is it possible that to pray like that widow – focused on my own agenda, unwilling to let an issue go, repeating my demands to God even about something as obviously right as justice, healing, peace – is the prayer equivalent of my habit of trying to do everything myself because I’ve lost my fundamental hope, my trust in others, my heart’s faith in God, even while my head still insists that this repeated prayer is an act of belief?

It’s possible.

At least it’s possible for me.

And that judge might just be another model of lost heart, or faith, or hope – the model of disconnection. Because connection – respecting others, respecting God, showing up to do the work of relationship – takes ongoing, repeated, trust and hope with our actions, not just our heads.  And when we feel like relationship – with others, with God – is too much work, it’s often because the faith, heart, or hope we need for those actions is already lost.

So if, in fact, this story is a teaching from opposites, a model of the symptoms of lost faith and heart, then what it teaches us about prayer is to keep our conversation and relationship with God open-ended.

To pray, perhaps, by listening for what God might be doing for us when our petitions and intercessions seem to go unanswered.

To ask what work of the kingdom might be happening in the upheaval and distress – even while we keep praying for peace;

ask what unasked miracles might be happening in the illness itself, even while we pray for healing without giving up hope.

Perhaps this story teaches us that not knowing what to pray for – and praying uncertainly anyway – is more faithful and hopeful than knowing what we want and steadfastly praying for that.

To pray with faith, with trust, with hope, probably means letting go – over and over – of the need to work it out myself to get it right, letting go of the need to know the outcome, or the belief that there is always a right answer.

Because God treats us that way:

with faith that doesn’t force us to get it right,

hope that doesn’t need to know the end of the story,

and the trust to accept more than one answer – to our prayers, to God’s own dreams, and to Jesus’ question of whether there will be faith on earth when God comes again, and always.

-->