William H. Willimon - "On Not Losing Heart" (October 18, 1998)

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Preacher	And the Gospel lesson appointed for this Sunday	0:06
	is from the 18th chapter of the Gospel of Luke.	0:09
	Jesus told them a parable about their need	0:17
	to pray always and not lose heart.	0:20
	He said, "In a certain city there was a judge	0:24
	"who neither feared God nor had respect for people.	0:27
	"In that city was a widow, who kept coming to him	0:31
	"and saying, 'Judge, grant me justice against my opponent.'	0:35
	"For a while, the Judge refused,	0:40
	"but later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God	0:41
	"nor respect for anybody, yet because this widow	0:45
	"keeps bothering me I will grant her justice,	0:48
	"so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'"	0:50
	The Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says.	0:54
	"And will not God grant justice	1:00
	"to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?	1:02
	"Will he delay long in helping them?	1:05
	"I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.	1:07
	"And yet, when the Son of Man comes,	1:11
	"will he find faith on the Earth?"	1:14
	This is the word of the Lord.	1:19
Congregation	Praise the Lord.	1:22
Preacher	The parable begins with Jesus--	1:27
	With Luke's comment that Jesus told them a parable,	1:33
	so that they might always pray and not lose heart.	1:37
	And yet, the parable ends with a question.	1:45
	"And when the Son of Man comes,	1:48
	"will he not find faith on the Earth?"	1:50
	What is the parable about?	1:54
	It's about prayer, it seems.	1:58
	And we listen, because prayer is a problem for many of us.	2:02
	Is anybody listening to my prayer?	2:08
	Am I talking to God or am I only speaking to myself?	2:11
	Some form of autosuggestion?	2:15
	And the problem is not only that we are uncertain	2:18
	about prayer, but I think we have the good sense to know	2:23
	that when we pray, as in few other activities of faith,	2:27
	we are really putting our faith on the line when we pray.	2:33
	Is there a God?	2:41
	And if there is a God, is it a God	2:43
	who listens, who hears, who responds?	2:46
	These are frightening questions.	2:51
	Luke says Jesus told this parable of the unjust judge	2:55
	and the persistent widow in order that	3:01
	we might pray always and not lose heart.	3:04
	And throughout Luke, there's a lot of talk	3:08
	about prayer, which suggests prayer	3:10
	is not just a problem for modern people.	3:13
	Maybe prayer is always a problem for anybody	3:17
	who claims to believe in a God who hears and who acts.	3:24
	Prayer raises difficult, threatening questions.	3:29
	Is there a God who hears? Is there a God who cares?	3:34
	And maybe the problem beneath our problems	3:41
	with prayer is the one Jesus addresses.	3:45
	We just lose heart.	3:49
	If we really believed in the power	3:53
	of prayer, I suppose we would be--	3:54
	If we were truly convinced that prayer changes things,	3:57
	we would be praying all the time;	4:01
	you couldn't stop us from praying.	4:03
	But maybe the problem is we just lose heart.	4:07
	And so Jesus tells a funny story about a disgusting judge.	4:12
	He is a sleazy jurist, probably put into his position	4:18
	through some political shenanigans.	4:22
	And this poor widow, she is without protection;	4:25
	she is without any power.	4:28
	What hope does she have before this judge's bench?	4:31
	She has one thing; she has the ability to pester.	4:36
	Leaving messages on his answering machine,	4:40
	constantly banging on his door,	4:43
	giving him no peace, she is persistent.	4:44
	Finally this judge says to himself,	4:47
	"Look, I don't fear God and I could care less	4:49
	"about the voters, but I will give this woman	4:53
	"what she wants just to get her out of my hair."	4:56
	How does this story keep us praying without losing heart?	5:02
	Maybe Jesus tells us this story because he wants us	5:08
	to understand that even though the world may look broken	5:12
	and unjust and unresponsive, if you just keep at it,	5:18
	things will work out, you know?	5:23
	If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.	5:25
	But if that were the parable's point,	5:32
	this wouldn't be, "Pray always and don't lose heart,"	5:34
	but merely, "Keep at it, be persistent,	5:39
	"and things will eventually work out for the best."	5:42
	Go ahead, harass God until you get what you want.	5:45
	No, Luke says Jesus told us this parable in order that	5:50
	we might pray always without ceasing and not lose heart.	5:55
	Maybe it's not a story about	6:02
	the potential rewards of persistent prayer.	6:05
	Maybe it's not even a parable about prayer.	6:09
	Tom Long says he thinks this is a parable	6:13
	about the nature of God, about the character of God.	6:18
	In this parable, we meet a judge	6:24
	and we're told something about his character.	6:27
	He doesn't fear God and he cares nothing for other people.	6:31
	But he is a judge who, it is revealed through his actions,	6:36
	he does seem to care about getting a good night's sleep.	6:39
	He does care about being left alone.	6:43
	And so he responds on the basis of who he is.	6:47
	You might not particularly care for who he is,	6:51
	but at least he acts consistently with who he is.	6:53
	If this sleazy judge will open up his hand	6:59
	to those who seek justice, if he opens up to this widow	7:03
	for all the wrong reasons, how much more so will God	7:08
	be open to you, for all the right reasons?	7:12
	Today I want you to think about prayer,	7:18
	but not as asking God for things,	7:20
	but rather prayer as asking God to be God.	7:23
	Prayer is the persistent day-in day-out attempt	7:31
	to let God go ahead and be God.	7:38
	When you were a little child and you suffered some injustice	7:45
	or you received some pain, what did your mother say?	7:48
	She attempted to comfort you.	7:53
	And she would say something like,	7:54
	"There there now, it's all right."	7:56
	What did she mean when she said that?	8:00
	She surely did not mean that your pain was inconsequential.	8:03
	That wouldn't have made sense; obviously your pain was real.	8:06
	That was why she was attempting to comfort you.	8:11
	She did not mean that everything was going to	8:15
	immediately be all right in that moment.	8:17
	She surely knows enough about life to know	8:21
	that things don't always work out right.	8:23
	Maybe what she was saying was that finally,	8:29
	ultimately, though you had only lived in the world,	8:33
	say, four or five years, she had learned from her life	8:36
	that finally, ultimately, in the larger picture,	8:41
	the world really is structured in such a way	8:45
	that all shall be well; pain doesn't last forever.	8:48
	Even the worse setbacks of life	8:56
	are integrated into life and you go on.	8:58
	In other words, when she said, "There there now,	9:00
	"everything is going to be all right,"	9:02
	she was making a kind of statement of faith	9:04
	about the ultimate character of the world.	9:09
	This parable is a story.	9:13
	And it's not so much a story about the useful technique	9:16
	of using prayer to get what you want.	9:20
	I think it's a story about the character of God,	9:22
	the trustworthiness of God.	9:26
	The judge cares neither for God nor the widow, but God cares	9:29
	And I love those wonderful moments in scripture,	9:39
	often in the Old Testament,	9:41
	where people dare to call God to be God.	9:44
	I think of a lot of the prayers of Moses,	9:50
	where Moses is out on the Exodus and things are bad	9:52
	and he says to the people of Israel,	9:55
	"Let me go up on the mountain; I'll talk to him."	9:57
	And Moses gets up there and he says to God,	9:59
	"Didn't you say when you brought us out of slavery,	10:01
	"don't you remember that earlier you had said, remember?"	10:05
	These prayers are not just pestering God,	10:11
	but they are in a way defending God's good name.	10:13
	They are saying in their speeches to God,	10:18
	"I believe you are a righteous God,	10:21
	"whose will is ever for the good of your children."	10:24
	A few Sundays ago, we prayed a prayer.	10:29
	It was a Psalm, actually; many of the Psalms are prayers.	10:34
	And it was Psalm 137, which John Wesley said,	10:38
	upon reading it, "There are some Psalms	10:43
	"that just aren't fit for Christian ears."	10:45
	But it's that Psalm which begins well enough	10:48
	about by the waters of Babylon we hung up our harps	10:50
	and they said, "Sing us one of those songs out of Zion,"	10:53
	and we said, "We're not gonna sing,	10:55
	"because we're Jews in exile," and then it says,	10:57
	"Babylon, you avenger, happy are those who would take	11:00
	"your little ones and dash their heads against rocks."	11:04
	And sure enough, just as I predicted, some attentive person	11:07
	came out and said, "I don't think that was appropriate	11:11
	"to pray in a service of Christian worship."	11:14
	I noted to the person, "You notice it doesn't say	11:17
	"we ought to go out and bash somebody's head against a rock.	11:22
	"The Psalm is sort of saying,	11:26
	"'God, if you are just and you believed	11:28
	"in setting things right, you would go out	11:31
	"and do to their children what they did to our children.'	11:33
	"It's saying, 'God, go ahead and be just,	11:36
	"the way we would like you to be just.'"	11:39
	That response didn't seem to help	11:41
	the person who was raising the question, but--	11:43
	The main function of prayer is to let God be God.	11:47
	Later in this service, we're gonna pray the Lord's Prayer.	11:52
	How does it begin?	11:55
	"Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name,	11:56
	"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done."	11:59
	See, the Lord's Prayer spends most of the Lord's Prayer	12:01
	saying things about God, before it ever gets around	12:05
	to asking for anything like bread	12:09
	or forgiveness of our trespasses.	12:11
	We wouldn't bother God about bread, or about our sin,	12:14
	if it were not for our prior abiding conviction	12:20
	that we are God's creatures and that our creator cares.	12:23
	In praying, we show risky, courageous confidence	12:28
	that God does care and hear and act.	12:34
	When you pray for something as mundane as daily bread,	12:38
	you're making a rather amazing statement	12:42
	about faith in the goodness of God.	12:45
	Each year, on the first Sunday of Lent,	12:49
	it has been our custom to pray	12:53
	something called The Great Litany.	12:55
	And it's chanted between the choir and the congregation.	12:57
	And it's a long prayer, comes out of the Anglican tradition.	13:00
	It's one of the longest prayers in the church.	13:04
	It takes about 15 minutes to pray it.	13:06
	And by the time we've finished praying it,	13:09
	we have prayed for sailors and we've prayed	13:10
	for people on journeys, for pregnant women,	13:14
	for women who would like to be pregnant;	13:16
	we have prayed for bread, young children,	13:19
	people with various kinds of illnesses.	13:22
	And a student said one year, after we had prayed	13:28
	this prayer, at the end of the service,	13:31
	and I said, "How'd you like that long prayer	13:34
	"we prayed, The Great Litany?"	13:37
	And he said, "I just kept standing there, thinking,	13:40
	"'It's amazing that God cares about all this, isn't it?'"	13:45
	And that's a good--	13:50
	I mean, what kind of God have we got	13:51
	that would get involved in stuff like pregnancy	13:53
	and pain and people alone and traveling?	13:57
	Prayer is not primarily asking God	14:05
	to do things, even things so basic as bread.	14:08
	Rather, prayer is a courageous determination	14:13
	to let God be who God is.	14:17
	People say, "I always get answers to my prayer."	14:21
	But if you've done much praying, you know that	14:24
	a lot of the answers you get to prayer are, "No."	14:27
	And in those times, we're left with a mystery	14:33
	of why doesn't God want for us what we want for us?	14:35
	And why is God different	14:39
	from the way we would want God to be?	14:41
	Reynolds Price, Duke writer, in his book,	14:46
	A Whole New Life, tells of when he was	14:50
	in the very depths of his illness with cancer.	14:52
	He one night, in a tortured night, encountered Christ	14:56
	in a vision, in a dream, and in this dream	15:02
	he says he is there in the Holy Land and Christ is there	15:07
	and Christ turns around and addresses him.	15:12
	And he looks at him and he says,	15:15
	"My son, your sin is forgiven."	15:16
	Ever typical of Reynolds, he replies to Jesus,	15:21
	"Wait a minute, who said I was worried about my sin?	15:25
	"The main thing is, am I going to be healed?"	15:29
	And he said the Christ looks aggravated at that point	15:32
	and said, "Yeah, and that too," and walks off.	15:36
	(laughter)	15:39
	And so we say in daily speech, we'll say things like,	15:40
	"Take heart," and we mean by that take courage.	15:45
	Go ahead and take courage.	15:49
	Sometimes it's tough to pray because we lack the guts	15:52
	to risk an encounter with the true God	15:55
	and all of God's free, stunning, untamed-ness.	15:59
	And yet, that's prayer; that's why you're here this morning.	16:07
	And you might think of every act of worship	16:11
	we do this morning as just an attempt	16:13
	to be with God and to let God be God.	16:17
	How is it possible to pray always,	16:24
	I mean to pray constantly?	16:28
	I think that's only possible because of	16:31
	the nature of God and our relationship.	16:33
	I know someone, for instance,	16:36
	who calls her mom nearly every night.	16:38
	Now, you're saying to yourself,	16:42
	"She must really be dependent on her old lady,"	16:44
	or, "That mother ought to get out of her daughter's life,"	16:46
	or, "That girl needs to learn to call her parents	16:50
	"only when she's low on cash or for important things."	16:53
	But, when I asked this sophomore,	16:57
	"Why do you call your mother every night?"	17:00
	She replied, "Well, my mom is the only person I know	17:04
	"who actually cares about what kind of day I've had.	17:11
	"And it's really wonderful to know throughout the day	17:18
	"that there's someone, somewhere, who actually cares."	17:23
	And that is why we keep praying.	17:31
	And that is why we don't lose heart.	17:35
	We persist, not to get things out of God.	17:40
	But we keep at it, and you keep coming back,	17:45
	Sunday after Sunday, and we keep singing,	17:49
	and we keep praying, and we keep praising,	17:51
	out of a determination to be	17:53
	with the true and the living God.	17:59
	As we move in the service of worship, we reach a crescendo	18:05
	this Sunday, called the Prayer of Thanksgiving.	18:08
	And you may note in that Prayer of Thanksgiving, we start	18:12
	with Genesis and work our way through the whole Bible.	18:15
	And we say that God created the world	18:18
	and we say that God sent the Prophets	18:20
	and we say that in the fullness of time,	18:22
	Jesus was sent, and then God gave us bread, and you know,	18:24
	we spend the whole prayer, before we get around	18:28
	toward the end, to ask God for anything.	18:31
	And then when we ask God for something,	18:33
	we ask God for something like The Holy Spirit.	18:35
	We ask God to go ahead and be God.	18:39
	And that is why we keep at prayer.	18:46
	And that is why we never lose heart.	18:53
	Amen.	19:00

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "On Not Losing Heart" (October 18, 1998)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 1:28. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 19:03.

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4qf8k09g

Date:

October 18, 1998

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 CS-0928
ref10005_gzv
uachapelsermaud
duke:320329
dcrau001572
ark:/87924/r4qf8k09g
d84e2526-5f30-44e7-93d2-13e51576b158

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William H. Willimon - "On Not Losing Heart" (October 18, 1998)

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1. William H. Willimon - "On Not Losing Heart" (October 18, 1998)

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William H. Willimon - "On Not Losing Heart" (October 18, 1998)

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