Sermon - Rev. Judith Perry

It’s all about prayer. In the Hebrew scripture reading we have Jacob, not the most honourable of characters. Aided and abetted by his mother, Rebecca, he had cheated his twin brother, the elder, out of his birthright.  

Then he got out of town fast. 

After years away he is now making his way back, He has accumulated wives, servants and flocks. He is a rich man.  

But after all these years he is about to encounter his twin brother, Esau, the one he cheated and stole from years ago. Jacob was scared. So, it is no wonder that the night before he is more than restless. 

It reads that all night it was like a man wrestled with Jacob, but it is ambiguous, was the strange man really God? Whatever, it was certainly anguished prayer. 

So, it is all about prayer. As an aside note how the ancient Hebrews, unlike the other ancients, presented all their heroes warts and all. They are always flawed. 

So now this reading from Luke: Luke is not Jewish, and he is writing to the early Gentile, non-Jewish fledgling churches.  

Jewish rabbis taught using stories, however the stories seldom came with an explanation. But Luke often puts in an explanation, and sometimes he uses Jesus to voice it. 

He does this for his readers who were not accustomed to the rabbinical mode of teaching.  

So, today’s passage begins with: Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. Or  … Jesus told a story to encourage people to be persistent in prayer and never lose heart. 

It’s all about prayer,  … or not. 

This parable story is not a favourite. Something about it is off. Well, we have this municipal magistrate. 

So, from a paraphrase by Nettleton, it could read: He said, “Once upon a time there was a town magistrate who took no notice of God and had no respect for anyone. There was a widowed woman in the town who had very little in the way of resources or influence, but who kept contacting the magistrate and demanding that he take action to protect her rights in a dispute with a powerful opponent. For a while he just kept brushing her off, but eventually he said to himself, ‘I couldn’t care less what happens to this woman, and all her talk of God’s justice means nothing to me; but I’m going to give her what she wants because I’m sick to death of her nagging and I just want to get her off my back.’” 

And then he goes on to say: And the Lord commented on his story, saying, “Do you get the point of what the callous magistrate is saying? If he can be pressured into acting for justice, can’t you see how much more certain it is that God will bring about justice for those who have dedicated themselves to God and cry out for help night and day. Will God brush them off and ignore their pleas? You can take it from me: God will waste no time in bringing about justice for them.  

Generally speaking, a sermon would go like this. It would be about the power of persistence in prayer.  

In this sermon Jesus contrasts the unjust judge with God: if even a corrupt man responds to persistence, how much more will a loving Father respond to His children? 

So, then persistence in prayer isn’t about nagging God—it’s about faith that refuses to quit, even when answers seem delayed. So, it’s all about prayer, or is it? 

Just a sec here, is this Luke trying to make sense of this parable that he had heard that Jesus had taught? 

But it seems a bit off to liken God to a MAGA judge. He is not an exemplary character. But how else would old Luke think coming out of his patriarchal world? In the parable God had to be the magistrate, the alpha male.   

I have problems imaging God as this entitled, but despicable character. 

He could not possibly be the nagging widow. He just had to be … or not. 

Well suppose we did reverse the analogy. Suppose that privileged entitled judge is you, or me.  

I mean, I want to live the easy life, just enough to get along comfortably. I don’t want any intrusions that will upset my equilibrium.  I am retired. I can do what I want, when I want. 

I  am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. 

Or so I think until there is a divine niggling telling me to change course and sail into uncharted waters. 

Like that niggling that I should go on a pilgrimage, walk to Rome, alone. No matter that I was well into my seventies and knew no Italian and had to carry everything on my back.  

Still there was that niggling, you gotta go. And the longer you put it off, the older, you’ll be. 

I began to research the Via Francigena, the old route that begins in Canterbury and ends in the Vatican. Only a theorical exercise. you understand. The niggling was not satisfied. 

I contacted the pilgrimage office in Lucerne. The director suggested that I start in Milan and work my way south. She thought that it was doable. 

I got a backpack from a friend who had walked the Camino. I weighted it down and walked around Halifax. That should have satisfied or discouraged that divine urge. It didn’t. 

I sent away for a pilgrim passport and booked a flight through Brussels to Milano. And alone I walked the pilgrim route through the rainiest April in recent history. 

I didn’t have earphones or music, just my thoughts. The divine niggle abated and was replaced by a divine companion presence.  

I began at an abbey outside Milano and walked to Gambassi Terme near Siena. I stopped at the churches and went in and just sat with God. 

Five weeks and then I went lame. I was tired.I told myself that I would come back the next spring and reach Roma. But then Covid struck.  

I know now that I shouldn’t have quit. I should have done what I needed to deal with what was in the end a pulled muscle. That knowledge still bothers me. 

But the walk had changed me, and now when the niggling Divine urge begins, I pay attention. 

So now what if you are the one that judges and refuses to listen to the nagging widow God?  

Isn‘t it really much more about a deepening relationship with God, given that we have free will and can ignore the Divine presence, for a while? 

Even so we work out our salvation in fear and trembling in a real world. Our spiritual walk is through a real and solid world.   

The pilgrim walk through Italy is real. Rain and mud were real. Pilgrim hostels were basic, but the four course pilgrim meals were fabulous after a long day of slogging along. 

Likewise receiving an email from youse guyz in the middle of an idyllic cottage summer, I had a good laugh, because I enjoy retirement freedom.  

But somehow I am here because that Divine widow always seems to have something else up her sleeve, and she can really pester, even, especially the most stubborn of us. And so can those folks she put on the search committee. 

For me, the parable is about the spiritual life, which is, of course, a life of prayer. Perhaps, it is all about prayer.