10/13/57

Scripture: Luke 18: 1-8.

Text: Luke 18: 1; “And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not faint.”

“And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not faint.” Jesus was busy -- very busy -- with his teaching ---- not too busy to be interrupted in order to receive and bless little children -- but nonetheless busy, pointing out one lesson after another to the crowd gathered around him. He was teaching by parables, or pointed stories. And the one which was read as our morning Scripture lesson had to do with prayer. People then, as now, had questions as to how to pray, whether to pray, when to pray. Some of those questions were answered by the master in the short, swift strokes of this little story of an importunate widow and an unjust judge.

In a sense, this story represents our Lord’s teaching about prayer in its most extreme form. It is one of the strongest statements in his vigorous teaching about the power and efficacy of prayer. Jesus is here telling us what to do when we have prayed, and prayed, and our prayer appears not to have made the slightest difference in anything that is happening. He does not offer any alternative method of obtaining our desire; but simply says: “Go on praying all the harder, all the more importunately.” And he uses one of the most unlikely analogies one could think of -- the case of a poor woman with no standing or influence appealing to an unjust judge for redress. Could anything be more hopeless? She has already appealed to the judge repeatedly, and without success. He has not moved a finger to help her. What more can she do?

Says Jesus - she can not do anything but go right on appealing again, and again, until at last she tires him out; and the judge says to himself, “I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.” (One likely translation says: “.. lest she end by scratching my eyes out.”) Where could you find a stronger statement as to the efficacy of importunate, persistent prayer?

It shall be quite clear, I think, that Jesus was not comparing God to an unjust judge. His whole life and teaching belies any such idea. But he was teaching people to let no faint-heartedness, or any other consideration, deter them from praying. The story was told “to the end that men ought always to pray.” The point of the story is that people should pray and not faint.

The word “faint” may come as a surprise. We are apt to interpret the meaning of prayer as if Jesus had said that men ought to pray and not work. And that is precisely the mistake that many of us make in much of our praying: we think of it as an alternative to effort. We sometimes speak as if there were two ways of facing the evils of our mortal lot: (1) fold our hands and close our eyes and pray about them; or (2) pull ourselves together and do what we can to mend them. And perhaps we westerners are apt to emphasize the latter as the nobler and more manly way.

But it is quite clear that Jesus’ way of looking at prayer is vastly different from this. What he said is that men ought always to pray and not to faint, or as modern versions have it, not to lose heart. Here he is saying that prayer is not an alternative to work, but an accompaniment of effort. And the two together (work and prayer) are the alternative to despairing acquiescence and inaction. In his language, the opposite of praying about a thing is to do nothing about it at all, and the opposite of working for a cause is to stop praying for it.

Prayer, unaccompanied by hard work, and work, unaccompanied by urgent prayer, are two things that Jesus never practiced nor even contemplated. This teaching of Jesus is one of reforming zeal. It differs sharply from the philosophies of quietistic resignation. Buddha founded a religion of acquiescence in the east. The Stoics did the same in the west. To keep asking for things, as Jesus teaches, would have shocked them. The full force of their teaching was to accept whatever is with complete acquiescence --- none of this importunate “asking!”

Jesus had little enough hesitation about asking, begging, importuning God to grant one’s desires. “Ask -- seek -- knock;” [Luke 11: 9]; these are among his imperatives. True, he taught all of his disciples to pray, “Thy will be done.” [Matthew 6: 10]. And he himself prayed this in his Gethsemane. [Matthew 26: 39]. But that did not deter him from beseeching the Father to let the cup of impending suffering pass from his lips. Nor does it hinder us from asking each day for daily bread. Prayer, for Jesus, is more nearly connected with rebellion from things as they often are, than with acquiescence in “what will be will be.”

A British writer has written a book with the arresting title, The Faith That Rebels, in which he points out that practically all that is said in the New Testament about prayer is said not in the interest of being reconciled to things as they are, but in the interest of getting wrong things changed. So let us consider two or three remarks that one hears currently about prayer. And let us see how they stand in the light of Jesus’ saying that “men ought always to pray.”

1) Sometimes we say, or at least think, “I am working so hard these days that I have no time to say my prayers.” Sounds like an excellent excuse. God can hardly blame us for not seeking His presence when we are so busy in His own service that we have no more time to draw nigh unto Him. But is this excuse very sincere? Is it really God’s service that deprives us of any time for prayer? Would more prayer really mean less work? Quite probably it is not the quantity of work that makes us too tired to pray, but the amount of worry we expend on our work. We moderns think of ourselves as terribly busy -- that is part of our activism. Certainly we have the appearance of being busy enough. Probably our forefathers would gape with astonishment to see the crowds pour through the railroad terminals of New York, or the people in our terminals at O’Hare field, or Honolulu International Airport, or the typewriters and business machines clacking in modern office space. But are we as busy as we look?

Reinhold Niebuhr has suggested that “the modern urban man, shuttling between his office and his apartment, is hardly as significant a person as a traditional peasant in village community.” And the peasant was not so busy that he had not the time to pray! Could it be that the life of a recluse nun in a cell is, as a Spanish writer says, more intense and active than the life of a New York business executive? The nun’s life is not my idea of the highest type of life to be lived. But the question we come to is this: is not a person who is too busy to pray, also too busy to think? And what is the good of labor that is not guided by constant thought about its meaning and its aim?

After all, prayer is thinking toward God. And would not Jesus have said that all deep and proper thought about our work must be directed toward God, and so be of the nature of prayer? He would have said that all the good we do is done by God in us and through us. Even of himself he said; “I can of mine own self do nothing.”

But here, again, Jesus was not thinking of prayer as an alternative to work, but as an alternative to fainting -- an alternative to losing heart in our labors.

I once heard a craftsman, working on construction of a house, who had lost his temper, storm at his immediate boss: “I wish you’d take time to think out how this work is to be done and where and how it fits in with the work of the other fellows before you set us at it.” I don’t know why he said it -- or whether he continued to be employed thereafter. But the complaint was pointed.

If only we gave more time to inward recollection, to thoughtful and prayerful contemplation of our tasks, maybe the planning of our work would make it more effective. And if only, while we are at work, we are more conscious of God’s presence, we may by His grace get more accomplished -- and get it done with less expense of spirit, less weariness, less worry, less anxiety. “Men ought always to pray and not faint.”

2) Now take another remark that has been made about praying. A man said: “If prayer is reasonable at all, it should be confined to the great spiritual issues of life. We should not pray about little things. We should not trouble God about our trifling earthly affairs.” What do you suppose Jesus would have to say to that? It seems sure that he would say that if anything is sufficiently important to worry about, it is not too small to pray about.

Of course if you are sufficiently high-minded never to worry about little things, there is no reason to ask God to worry over them. That is why the Stoics refused to pray. They had persuaded themselves that they could be, and were, indifferent to all outward goods and evils. They tried to believe that nothing worried them save the inward state of their own souls. Usually they bluffed themselves on this matter.

But perhaps you are really the kind of man or woman they tried to be. Possibly the little things of life never bother you at all -- or the big things either. If you really possess this state of mind, that is an enviable estate! Did not Jesus himself bid us to take no thought for such things as food and drink and clothing and to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness? Yes, he did. But he also went on to say something else. He said, “Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.” He said, “All these things shall be added unto you.” [Matthew 6: 32, 33]. And there is a world of difference between this confidence that God will supply our needs, and the Stoics’ pretension that is does not matter whether the needs are supplied or not.

If you never worry over the lesser things, the earthly things, then you are very exceptional indeed, and quite different from the rest of us. It is most probably the common case with those who do not pray over the little things of life that they worry about them all the more. It is hardly a question whether we ought to worry over these things; it is a question whether we do worry over them. We let them spoil our sleep, disturb our peace of soul, and we grow old before our time.

Well, then, says Jesus, tell your worries to God. “Your heavenly Father knoweth” -- but he wants you to tell him, just the same. He is just as eager that you should pour it out, without reserve or holding back, as any parent is to have his child’s wants and worries expressed to father and mother.

It is a false pride that keeps us from praying about things which no true pride prevents us from worrying over. It is futile to enter God’s presence pretending to be more high-minded than one really is. “Ye people, pour out your hearts before Him” -- that is what the Scripture says. [Psalm 62: 8]. And can anything be more futile and useless than praying to God with the lips, for inward salvation of soul, while at heart worrying all the time over something quite earthly --- health of body, or condition of property, or how to make ends meet in the feeding of family? No wonder Jesus spoke a parable unto the multitude to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not faint. Paul put it another way in a letter to the people at Philippi: “In nothing be anxious; but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.” [Philippians 4: 6].

3) Take yet another remark. “Surely,” someone observes, “it is absurd to try to change the will of God. Who are we that we should tell God what to do? If we believe in God at all, we must believe that He is already ordering all things for the best.” Well, let us recognize first that Christian prayer is not telling God what to do; it is rather telling Him what we think we need. It is “making our requests known unto Him.” In the last resort, Christian prayer has always left it to God’s own wisdom to decide what He is to do about our need. With all our importunity and the earnestness and repetition of our asking, the Christian never presumes to dictate to the Almighty what is to be done. We yet add to our own requests, “If it be Thy will,” or “Thy will be done.”

Most of us would soon hardly dare to pray for anything if it were certain that we were to have our own answer without any gracious review by the Almighty. Once burned, we would get cautious. You recall the fairy story of King Midas who was granted the wish that everything he touched would turn to gold. It took painful experience, with food turning to gold, family and friends turning to gold statues and so on and on, before he realized that he did not really want everything turned to gold, and would really prefer that people remained flesh and blood folk; that food could be tasted, eaten and digested; and that flowers nodded living in the breeze. The “boldness that we have toward God” is not that if we ask anything He will cause it to happen, but that “if we ask anything according to His will He heareth us.”

4) And, of course, there is something else to be said to those who protest that they do not pray since they believe that God must know best, and that therefore he is already ordering all things for the best. Well, if any of us believes that we have really attained a very lofty Stoicism. But do we really believe it? If we really believed that God were ordering all things for the best then should we not only stop praying for things we do not have, but also stop wanting them? Is there any logic in continuing to want what we have ceased praying for? Ought we to stop praying for the recovery of a sick loved one on the grounds that God knows best? We do not consider that grounds for stopping from work that he or she may recover by every means of medicine and hospital we can find and use. If it is right to work for the end that one recover, is it wrong to pray for that end?

Of course we must not pray for any end for which it is wrong to labor. But likewise it is not right to labor for the end for which it is wrong to pray! Let not the soul be destroyed by anxious hankerings that are kept back from God. At the root of untold tragedies in human life lie worries that have never been resolved into prayer. “Men ought always to pray and not faint.”

Are you near to fainting or losing heart? Are you overborne with labor, longings, anxiety? Then will you take your Lord’s advice? Do not try to keep it pent up in your heart. Share it with God. Tell Him about it --- even to the smallest, most absurd and annoying detail! “In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”

“And Jesus spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not faint.”

(end)

---------------------------

Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, October 13, 1957.

Vesper, WI, Congregational Church, November 10, 1957.

Wisconsin Rapids, July 14, 1968.

Kalahikiola Church, March 12, 1969. (Wednesday).

Waioli Hiu’ia Church, April 28, 1974.