Prayer, Persistence, and Grace

Luke 11:1-4
Luke 11:5-13


Rockville United Church
Rev. Dr. Duncan D. Newcomer

July 29 2007

First, just to note how good it is to hear again in scripture the Lord’s Prayer in its original stark terms: “Father, hallowed be your name.” “Your kingdom come.” “Give us each our daily bread.” These few words of Jesus, his spiritual austerity, are a shock, refreshing. Short, but not sweet.

Now, Jesus has just been praying. That intensity is still in the air. Obviously he has been praying longer and with more words than these he offers. It’s almost as if he’s tired, or angry, or just has worked himself so deep into the heart of God that words are few and truth is heavy. We know these certain places in life where only a few words say the right thing at the right time. Words we struggle to find when we need to say something true: “I do love you.” “He hasn’t long to live.” “I am so grateful.” “I’m sorry.” To hear Jesus’ original words after centuries of filigree and orchestration is refreshing to the spirit. I helped Lucy Harkins get some ice water Friday at the hospital. After she sipped, she said “so good.” We can go along way on a few good words.

Spiritual people know this. Buddhist Monks who speak Zen Koans. American Indians who speak seldom. Presidents Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt who let suffering shorten their prose. And Jesus who says in 38 words, once, what we say in 71 words, again and again.

I was shocked to once again read Jesus’ version of his Lord’s Prayer. I wanted to lift it up for us as a possible vocabulary for our over loaded lives and language. We who are so snarled in communication traffic. Now preachers may bemoan the shortened sermon time in contemporary worship. And when Beethoven shockingly introduced the human voice and poetry to the symphony, its 9th, he choose that 132 word (in English) poem “Ode to Joy.” But, when John Coltrane introduced the human voice in one of his jazz master pieces, by its name, he chooses three words without a verb, “A Love Supreme.” And that he had chanted 19 times. I believe such Jesus-like brevity speaks to us and we need to speak from it. So, first, that note on how good it is to hear Jesus’ prayer in his own short words.

Now, again, Jesus had been praying. Praying, scripture says mysteriously, in a certain place. Our sense is that ‘tho his words might be short his praying is not a pit stop. If I recall Walter Wink at Union correctly, Jesus spent up to a third of those last three years of his life away from people and into prayer. That data gives introverts like me hopes that we can be ministers and pastors even in extraverted towns like Washington, DC!

And so, given the hang-time of his private praying, the parable is as important as is his prayer vocabulary. He answers their request: teach us to pray, with two answers. Answer one is what to pray. Pray these words. Answer two, is how to pray. Pray this way. Pray persistently. Pray as in this parable, with perseverance. What such guidance comes to mean for us is: pray with hope.

The story he tells is not a motivational locker room speech saying “practice! ..practice! ..practice!” “Practice makes perfect.” “No pain, no gain.” To Jesus persistence in prayer is “do-able” and only “do-able” because of the goodness of God, the availability of the Holy Spirit of God.

My friends, the Christian gospel is good news, and good news is not “try harder.” Nor is the Christian community, the beloved community, a place only for a try harder life. Life is hard enough as it is without piling on church work. In church life excellence is not achievement; excellence is faith, hope, and love.

If Christ’s call to persistence is not an injunction for all to become the Eveready battery bunny who just keeps on keeping on, then the lesson for this church is clear.

I told the staff my first day that since I had grown up in the church I knew for a fact that church work was, is, endless. It has no end because the devil never rests, for one thing. And so with no discernable end insight we must decide, each day, when that day has ended. And it will always be an arbitrary cut off point and always will leave some holy work undone. Margo looked at me with a stunned stare and said “good luck preaching that.” It reminded me of when I asserted at the Council Leadership Retreat that if there was no joy in church work there was no point in doing it. Dan Larson, with a slight smile said, “so you’re new to Washington then, aren’t you?”

Well, yes I am. And one reason, I would hope and dream to have us here at RUC hook up into partnerships with faith communities in South India, Arizona Indians, Scotland, Central America and others, is to learn from others ways to be Christian that is counter to our culture.

I hope also not to be misunderstood here about hard work. As a person one year away from retirement I could have chosen leisure over hard work here. And my first two professional mentors died at 65 in the year of their retirement. So, one of my own persistent prayers is that an introverted type B minister can continue to succeed in ministry. And I know that the hard work “burn” that some of you came back with from the Habitat Mission was truly a source of joy and spirit. Good work, well done, for others, is a source of spiritual joy, even physical joy, and I would add: is a true form of self love. It is when God-love and self-love become one: “A Love Supreme.”

One of the heroes of Christian faith is Dwight L. Moody who, among other things, founded Mount Herman Boys School in Western Massachusetts. Two graduates of that school worship here and do yeoman’s work for God everyday. Another and similar hero of faith is James Naismith, a Canadian Christian Doctor, who invented basketball at the Springfield, Massachusetts, YMCA. And then took it out to the University of Kansas where I started college. These men believed in, preached, and practiced, hard work! What was then called “Muscular Christianity.” So if we limit our own “burn-out” in church life, we need, I believe, also the good burn of muscles well used. That’s a joy. Such as weeding the church garden. Two weeks ago one of you was having a terrific joyride on the church lawn mower. It sure looked like he was having fun whoever that masked rider was! The joys and disciplines of a muscular Christianity were once so mistakenly associated with masculinity.

It need no more be so! Why 19th Century American Christianity assumed that women didn’t have muscles is beyond me! Couldn’t they, for one, count contractions?! We can safely assume that in the church, now, muscular Christianity is an equal opportunity employer! But then so is “try-harder burn-out!

What could Jesus mean for us in his parable about persistent prayer, persistence in prayer?

Spend a minute with me inside this parable about prayer. This story about asking, knocking, seeking. Persistence is the watch word of this story. You drop out that word, “persistence,” and the story makes no sense. It never had made any sense to me; and like Warren Buffett, I offer a million dollar reward to anyone who can prove to me that they understood this parable without “getting” the word “persistence.”

There are 3 men in the story. One goes and wakes up a friend asking for bread. The friend is generous. We think that is the point. Christians are always to be generous, true, but not the point of the story, not the good news.

This is not a social action, social gospel, story. The generous man, short on bread, goes to man number three. Asks, knocks, seeks. Man three is grumpy and has home security. His door is locked. We can not trust this man to give man number two the bread needed by man number one. Now I think in the hands of Charles Dickens that this grumpy locked-in man would, like scrooge, have an epiphany, a conversion experience, and come down and open his doors and heart to a “Babette’s feast” for man number one.

But no, and Jesus stays focused on the man knocking at the door. Man number two. We can assume that his knocking at the door is Jesus’ metaphor for praying. And why should he keep on keeping on with his requests for his hungry friend, man number one?
Because, God is not like the man in the locked house. But even if he were, he would eventually come down and open up and give just because of persistence, person number two’s persistence. Our possible persistence.

It is possible for us to persist in asking for what is good for those who have asked us. It is possible because we can hope that God is as good as Jesus says he is. Generous even as we would be, are, with our children.

But you’ll notice not only is the parable not really about getting number “three’s” to change, the story itself does not even get any bread
delivered. It’s not a story illustrating the equal distribution of food as much as that is, of course, implied. It is a story about the always available Holy Spirit. Persistent prayer for the presence of God’s Spirit is the point.

I knew some one once who really felt lonely in life and wanted a person to love and be loved by. Her prayers were almost miraculously answered. It reminded me of one of my favorite songs by Janis Joplin, “Oh Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz!” So Mr. Mercedes Benz showed up. Pray answered: Yes! But when Mr. Mercedes Benz drove away she found God in the empty air left behind.

It would please those existentialists who say life is absurd, but it is also the Gospel Good News: we can, and even should, keep praying for bread for others, maybe even for ourselves, and by being so persistent in our prayers we will never lose hope, bread, or no bread.
Our hope is in God being the bread of life.

The French existentialist, Albert Camus, once said we must imagine Sisyphus happy. We must imagine that persistent rock roller-up the hill and then up again after it rolls down - to be happy. Well, if I’m going to bet my life’s mood on an imaginative leap like that, I’d rather choose the Christian Gospel and imagine that God is always on the other side of the door I’m knocking on and to hope in that for happiness! Amen.