Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119:97-104; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
There is a MASH episode in which Hawkeye gets a pass for some R and R. After putting on a yellow silk shirt under his olive green kaki army jacket, he wrangles a jeep and begins his journey. Not too far from camp, his jeep breaks down and he gets captured by an enemy soldier. In his typical fashion, Hawkeye puts up a humorous resistance cracking jokes and trying to laugh his way out of trouble. But the enemy soldier, who doesn’t speak English and cannot understand him, doesn’t relent. He persistently gestures at Hawkeye with his gun and forces him into the wilderness. Hawkeye assumes the worst as they move further and further into the wild. And then they come upon a soldier who has been shot. It is obvious that the wounded soldier is important to the one who has captured Hawkeye. It is also obvious that this is the sole reason Hawkeye has been captured—so that he might save the wounded man.
As Hawkeye does a preliminary exam, he protests that the wounded man needs the hospital. He points in the direction of the MASH unit and tries to tell the enemy that this is where they need to go if they have any chance of saving him. But the enemy soldier persistently points his gun at Hawkeye and gesture toward the wounded man. Hawkeye goes to work though he continues to protest the inadequacy of the setting and resources available to perform even this rudimentary field surgery.
At one point the wounded man stops breathing and Hawkeye, aware that his fate is inextricably tied to the fate of the wounded man, moves into hero mood wresting the gun from his captor and forcing him to assist in opening an air way. It is to no avail; the wounded man dies and Hawkeye—who has now become invested in saving his life—sits back on his heels in despair gazing down upon the dead man and wrestling with his skill and ability as a healer and a doctor. In that moment, Hawkeye overcome by his own inadequacies and the frustrations of death, seems to have forgotten the war and his current predicament. He looks up and notices the soldier who captured him. It is as if he had briefly forgotten him and the precariousness of his situation, and his face changes as he realizes that he will be the next one to die.
Instead of killing him, the enemy soldier waves him away—setting him free. His intention had never been to kill or even capture the doctor. His intention had been for the care and healing of his friend. Now he has no use for this American doctor and sends him away. As Hawkeye grabs his helmet and starts to walk away, the enemy soldier stands, walks a few paces in the other direction and, taking his gun, starts to dig a grave. Hawkeye, hearing him, stops, turns around, and then returns to the man’s side where he drops to his knees and using his helmet begins to dig with him.
We read the story of the unjust judge and persistent widow and because Jesus has contextualized this story to his disciples about the need to pray always and not to lose heart, we assume that we are the widow and God is the judge. But what if we are not the widow and instead, we are the judge? What if God is the widow who does not give up on us but continually persists in calling us to him?
Instead of understanding prayer as the telling to God what we want, maybe Jesus is asking us to understand prayer as something a little different. Maybe Jesus is trying to tell us that prayer is about listening to God and what God desires and releasing our tendency to resistance. Maybe the story of the persistent widow and the unjust judge is about being called into relationship with God on God’s terms instead of our own. And the perceived delay in God’s answer to our prayers is not so much God not answering as it is our not listening—even our resisting.
We are not enemies with God—or at least he is not enemies with us—but how often do we resist God not understanding his purposes and even feeling threatened by them? We think of prayer as a conversation with our default position being us doing the talking and God doing the listening. We assume the stance of the widow in this parable because we think that is what it takes for our prayers to be answered—if we just pester and nag God enough, he will give us what we want. But what about those times when we come to God on our knees, tears in our eyes, sorrow in our hearts, begging God to cure us or someone we love from disease and the disease grows worse, the cure more elusive. Or when we pray that the hurricane will go the other way or that we might get that promotion, or our finances will improve, or our marriage be miraculously fixed. What about all those prayers that never seem to pan out? How do we account for our persistence then?
I do believe in persistent prayer. When we are in need and even when we are not, God tells us to ask boldly. There are many a scripture that say just that. In I John, “When our hearts are aligned with God in faith, he tells us to pray with boldness…” James 1 says, “Ask boldly, believing without a second thought.” In Matthew we are told, “Ask and it will be given unto you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.” There is a plethora of scripture that commends us to prayer. And for the most part, we are good about the asking especially in times of doubt and fear. But how good are we at listening when God is the one being persistent.
Whenever my Golden Retriever, Cutty, comes to work with me at some point he will start pawing at me to pay attention to him and give him affection—usually this happens when I am typing on my computer. His persistence is annoying and when I do finally pay attention to him, he moves in closer snuggling his head into my knee. But I know that if I were to stop petting him, he would immediately put his paw back on my arm, pulling me toward him yet again and keeping me from finishing my work.
When I am cooking in the kitchen or cleaning up the house, invariably one of the Bassett Hound puppies will come and nip at me kneecaps until I stop what I am doing and give them a little affection. It is not that I am being unjust by ignoring their needs for affection in those times, but there is so much to be done and so little time to do it, that I am often too busy to pay attention to my pups and maybe that is what Jesus is speaking too. We don’t have to be an unjust judge or an enemy soldier to be resistant to God, often it is simply that we are distracted, too busy, focused on our purposes instead of God’s.
Most of us live to do good and love one another. The challenge is when our definition of good and love becomes about us and not about God much less the world. It is the unfortunate aspect of the doing of those things, that sometimes we forget about God. Our love and good deeds become a resistance to the ways in which God is trying to break us open into even deeper love. Yet, when we can move through our fears and anxieties into the places of the unknown and embrace them with curiosity and joy or even with trepidation or frustration—then we move into the place in which we grant our persistent God’s petition for affection and relationship. We move to the place of compassion—even if our motivations and intentions are less than pure. And Jesus seems to say that is ok—as long as we are acting with compassion we are growing in our relationship with God.
Once there was a persistent widow and her name was God. And she kept pestering us to love her and act justly until we finally did. Amen.