Prayers for justice will always be answered (eventually)

Luke 18:1-8

1Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ 4For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” 6And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Let’s talk about prayer, again.  Last night concluded the Prayer Week for Luxembourg in which several churches joined together to pray from morning until night.  I have to confess my ambivalence about such efforts.  On the one hand, I did participate - though probably more out of sense that it’s something I ought to do than because it’s something I really wanted to do.  I can talk a big game about the importance of Christian unity, but when it comes to actual efforts in that direction, I’m usually less enthusiastic.  But there’s also the matter of just what we think we’re doing when we gather to pray; why are we doing this, what is the purpose?  

When I was in university I was heavily involved (probably too involved) in Christian groups on campus, and at one point our leader convinced us that, if we want to see things change - if we wanted to see “God move” - then it was essential that we were united in prayer, and so decide to pray together at 7am every weekday morning - but there was one among us who had swim practice early, so for a time we met once a week at 4am so we could all pray together.  Initially this was kind of exciting; we anticipated that our extraordinary efforts might produce extraordinary results.  But then nothing really happened aside from people like me starting to feel guilty about their lack of enthusiasm.  If I were really a faithful person then surely I would happily persist in prayer rather than feeling conflicted then falling asleep.  

Prior to the parable that Jesus told, Luke made the editorial comment that,  “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”  That Jesus would tell a parable for this reason implicitly acknowledges that it’s difficult to persevere in prayer, that it’s easy to lose heart.  And the reason for this is fairly obvious, though we’re reluctant to say it: God so rarely seems to answer our prayers - and especially when the need is greatest. While there might be times when we feel God’s presence, more of the time we feel like we’re speaking into a void, that our prayers makes no difference.  It’s easy to lose heart in prayer, to wonder just why we’re doing it.  How many of us have prayed that a friend with cancer would be healed, for instance, only to for death to come.  Much of what gets labeled “answered prayer” is stuff that could very well have happened anyway.  We can and should, of course, give thanks to God for all good things, but we’re often eager to convince ourselves that there was some kind of cause and effect.   

I feel compelled to pray not because of my own experience with prayer but because the Bible and the Christian tradition consistently emphasizes the central place of prayer in life with God. The passage we read from 2 Timothy tells us that, “All scripture is inspired by God”, which applies of course to those many passages about prayer.  If we take Scripture seriously then it seems you have to take prayer seriously.

The passage goes on to declare, “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but, having their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”  That time most definitely did arrive, and it’s never ended.  There’s no shortage of people out there pushing teachings about prayer which, though grounded in the Bible, are just bad theology.  But the bigger problem is not so much bad teachers but our shared culture which forms us as consumers, who assume that pursuing our felt needs and desires - whatever they may be - is the means to a good life, and who thus understand prayer as a kind of spiritual means to getting the stuff what we want.  Confirmation bias is a powerful thing.  This is no less true for me, though I do take comfort in the thought that my teachers were better than most - but others might disagree.  

It’s easy to misread this parable - as I have done - as a kind of general counsel to persist in prayer in the confidence that God will eventually give you what you want.  But Jesus doesn’t promise we’ll get whatever we ask for; he promises that justice will be done.  

The widow repeatedly comes to the unjust judge demanding specifically justice, but he doesn’t grant her request because he doesn’t really care, and it’s just easier to do nothing.  But she keeps coming, so finally he decides to grant her request just so she’ll stop bothering him.  The moral of the story is that if even an unjust judge grants justice then how much more will a just a God do that and more - so keep asking.  Although Jesus is drawing a contrast between a good judge and a bad one, it’s easy to infer that there’s a kind of comparison as well, that just as the widow wore down the unjust judge, so too, if we pray enough, God will finally do something.  It almost makes it sound as if we need to wear down God, as if we must pray sufficiently long and hard to get results - that God is different from the unjust only in degree, not in kind.  There are many theologies of prayer that more or less follow this logic.  

But this parable tells a very different story about prayer.  We skipped over the end of chapter 17 which speaks about the coming of the Son of Man, and indeed this parable ends with the same language.  The entire frame here is eschatological - it’s about the last things, the end of time, when the kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven.  In fact, the promises that justice will be done and that the kingdom will come are more or less one and the same.  The widow’s desire for justice will not go unheeded, God will eventually make things right when the Son of Man descends (again), when the kingdom comes.  It might seem dissatisfying, but the horizon for God answering the prayer for justice extends to the end of history itself, and almost certainly beyond our lives.  

But then why pray if it’s going to happen anyway, and if it’s going to happen long after we’re gone?  In a way Jesus is telling us that our prayers don’t make a difference to what God will eventually do; the kingdom is coming whether we want it to or not.  And this is as it should be: God should bring about the ends God desires regardless of whether we also desire them.  The whole point of prayer, ultimately, is not that we get God to do what we want, but that we learn to desire what God desires, that we learn to long for the promised future God intend to realize.  To pray is not a means of influencing God but of coming under God’s influence.  It is to reorient ourselves away from our selfish desires and onto the only one who can satisfy.  

The persistent widow serves as model not because we, like her, might succeed is badgering God into granting our wishes, but rather because she continued to demand, to desire, to long for justice even when there was scant reason to believe justice with forthcoming.     

Each Sunday we pray the prayer that Jesus taught us, that the “kingdom come on earth as (it is) in heaven”.  In a sense all good prayers are essentially a form of this prayer.  We pray this not because it will persuade God but so that we might become people who desire God’s kingdom to come, that we will take heart that, though injustice endures, God’s justice will come.   And in praying this way, in having our desires transformed, our lives reoriented, we become people who are, in some small way, an answer to that very prayer.  In longing for the kingdom, we become those who establish the kingdom.

The most important question for us to ask ourselves with respect to prayer - with respect to our faith in God - is not what do we believe? or what do feel?  It is, What do we want?  What do we desire, what do we long for?  This is what determines our lives, and it is this that must change for anything to change.  Faith is not about believing content about God or even feeling God’s presence - it is about desiring the things that God desires.  And then our prayers will always be answered.  In the meantime we should ask ourselves, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  Will he find people who long for the kingdom to come?