In our Scripture lessons for today we have two examples of persistence. In Genesis we hear the story of Jacob who wrestled with a “man” all night long, not being willing to stop until he got the blessing he asked for. As the night ended he realized that the “man” was God and that he had come face to face with God and lived. I wonder if any of you can relate to this lesson: struggling with God, with your belief and unbelief, with your faith or lack of it. Most of you have heard me talk about the long dark night of the soul when I was struggling with questions about God and my faith, feeling abandoned, and just not knowing what to believe. I think most of us have times of struggle, times when we want God to reassure us, to bless us. Sometimes this long dark night seems to go on forever. Some of us may be so discouraged that we want to give up; some of us actually do give up. There’s probably a lot of people not here today that have given up.

There’s a true story about the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn who spent many years in the prison camps in Siberia. It was a hard life of backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The suffering was so great that it reduced him and many others to a state of despair. Finally one day the hopelessness just got too great and he decided to give up. There was no reason to continue living. So he put down his shovel and went over and sat down on a bench. He knew a guard would tell him to get back to work and if he didn’t he would be beat to death. He had seen it many times with other prisoners. But he didn’t care anymore. So he sat with his head down, waiting. Suddenly he felt a presence. He looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squatting down beside him, using a stick to draw a cross in the dirt. Without saying anything, this skinny old man got up and went back to work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross, his entire perspective changed. He knew that there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by this simple cross, that with the power of the cross anything was possible. So he slowly got up and picked up his shovel and returned to work. Nothing had changed on the outside, but on the inside he had received hope.*

I believe what the skinny old prisoner did for Solzhenitsyn that day, Jesus does for us in his parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow. There are so many possibilities, different directions I could preach on this scripture. I have decided to focus on the first and last verses. In the first verse we are told the purpose Jesus gives for telling the parable: “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart”. In the last sentence in the verse 8, he asks “And yet when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

First let’s look at perseverance. There are so many examples in the Bible. We heard the story of Jacob’s perseverance; we have many examples of Paul’s perseverance in preaching the Gospel: he was imprisoned, flogged, beaten, shipwrecked, rejected, stripped naked, endured hunger and thirst all so he could continue sharing the good news of Jesus. In our more recent past we have the examples of Sojourner Truth and the Underground railway for slaves to escape, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Cesar Chavez, whom nonviolently persevered to win rights for their people. When thinking of the hardships such people suffered, we can see how important hope and prayer was to them.

In our NT lesson it is the widow that is persistent. Let’s look at the role widows play in the Bible. Widows were deprived of the support of a husband and could not inherit the husband’s estate as it went to the husband’s sons or brothers. The OT is clearly grounded in caring for those in need just as God cared for the Israelites when they were in bondage. The widows and orphans are probably those in need that are most frequently referred to. In the NT James states, “religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress . . . (James 1:27a). It’s very clear to me that God cares about what happens to those that are often regarded as unimportant to the privileged and the powerful. Our God is a God of compassion. Many of the reflections on this passage focus on contrasting the unjust judge with the loving and compassionate God, with the conclusion being if even this uncompassionate judge turns out to grant the widow what she wants from her persistent asking, how much more will our God give us what we persistently ask for. Jesus goes on to stress that God will bring about justice quickly for those who are crying out to him.

So why do we pray? We are told that God knows what we need even before we open our mouths. Some people decide to give up on prayer as why bother to tell God what God already knows? I believe it is true that God is aware of our needs before we are. The primary effect of prayer is not on God, but on us. God’s love is already unconditional. We are told in the NT that we are saved not by works but by faith and grace. Some folks take this parable to mean that if we pray hard enough, persevere long enough, we will be granted what we want from God. How does this effect people that are praying to be saved from their cancer? Do you want to tell them it’s because they did not pray hard enough or long enough? What does this do to those families that are praying for the safety of their loved one fighting in Iraq? Do any of us believe that their loved one was killed because they didn’t pray enough? Let me repeat, the primary effect of prayer is on us, not on God. In the opening sentence of this parable, Jesus connects “praying always” to not losing heart, not losing hope. It’s not God who needs to be changed from our prayer but us. On Samuel, the UCC worship website, we are told that the parable is as much—or more—about the nature of God than it is a “nice” little instruction on prayer. These prayer instructions seem to me to ultimately take a turn and focus on justice and faith. I believe part of the reason to pray is to let God speak to us, to learn how God wants us to set priorities to be in sync with God’s priorities. Prayer is a means to help us understand and set these priorities. One way we could think about prayer is not so much asking God to do this or that for us but rather letting God be God, let God’s love and strength be infused into our very being so that we than will have that faith that Jesus asks about at the end of this parable. In prayer we can recognize that we are not alone, that when we have lost hope there is a higher power that will restore that hope. Do you remember my decision to silently sit in centering prayer at the time I was so discouraged and lost about the direction of my life? I actually felt a presence; it was like God’s arms enfolded me and assured me of God’s love and that there was a plan for me. Within a few months I was enrolled in seminary.

There are so many things that can keep us from praying, keep God out of our lives. It doesn’t have to be anything bad that we are doing, it can be just an attitude or belief, such as thinking that God has better things to do than listen to us; that we are unworthy, or that we are just too angry with God. We don’t have to say just nice words. I believe God wants us to be real. We can express our anger and our disappointment. The Bible is filled with laments to God. I have no doubt that God is able to take whatever we dish out.

Prayer is our way to be open to God. It is a way for us to discover that mustard seed sized faith and realize what tremendous things it can do. It is a vehicle for transformation, not only for us as individuals but also for our world. It’s not an easy instruction to pray always, or to live your life as a prayer, yet if you give it a try you will be answering Jesus’ call to be faithful and to not lose heart. What better way to receive that blessing that Jacob wrestled so long and hard for. It may be a struggle at times and if you persevere in prayer and faith, you will receive God’s blessing. Amen and amen.