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Sermon - Persistence in Prayer - 21st October 2007
St Alban's Epping 7:00 am, 8.00 am and 10:00 am
Readings: Luke 18:1-14
I like movies that are predictable. I like movies where the hero wins in the end. As a child I liked westerns where the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats. And the good guy was usually the sheriff and the bad guy was usually in gaol by the end of the show and everything was as it should be. Even with Jane Austen, there is the sense of satisfaction at the end that eventually the right people have met and married by the end of the book. Even Harry Potter is a success though it took so many thousands of words to get there. So because of our ideas of good and bad, it becomes difficult when Jesus confuses the picture.
Now, we've learnt from experience that the Pharisees were viewed by Jesus as quite flawed people though there are the exceptions like Nicodemus who formed a lasting friendship with him. But we must remember that in Jesus' day, the Pharisees were well respected and they had quite a reputation for living godly living. So when Jesus began telling stories about a Pharisee and a tax collector the average person would reasonably assume that the Pharisee was the good guy and the tax collector was the bad guy. And that was a reasonable assumption.
Though we read of the story of Zacchaeus who decided to give back four times all he had cheated, he is an exception in that he had changed his ways. But he was typical in that like any other tax collector, he had cheated the people for years before he met Jesus. So long as the tax collectors could raise the money to hand over to the Roman government, they didn't worry how the tax collectors did their job. And because they had such a free hand, you can imagine the type of people who would be attracted to that kind of work. They were the type of people who would be prepared to sell their own mothers - quite literally. So as Jesus begins to tell the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, stand in the shoes of Jesus' audience. Remember how they would have heard the story. Remember their expectations of the typical Pharisee and the typical tax collector of Jesus day.
Put aside for a moment what we know of Jesus prejudice against the Pharisees. Try to see it through their eyes. First, we have a description of the Pharisee. He stood up to pray which was the usual position. And then he prayed his prayer of thanksgiving. But the prayer might shock us. It seems so arrogant to us but that would be a harsh judgment. It is a style of praying that we are unfamiliar with, but it was common in those days. The essence of the prayer was a prayer of thanksgiving. When we pray like that we think of all the good things that God has done for us. That's one way to do it.
But the Pharisees' method was just the reverse. He is thanking God that bad things hadn't happened to him. It was common for Jews to thank God for being his people. But they would express it by thanking God that they had not been created as a foreigner or an alien. Instead of thanking God for their good health, they would thank God for not making them crippled or blind or infirm. So it was a prayer of thanks that God had not visited some evil upon them. You can see the Pharisee doing it here. Instead of thanking God that he was able to remain honest, he thanked God that he wasn't a robber. He lists all the things he might have been, lifestyles that were rejected by God and he is thanking God that he hasn't gone down those paths. So he thanks God he is not like some men - robbers, evildoers, adulterers.
You can easily imagine people in the crowd with Jesus approving of this sort of prayer. It is only right that he should pray like this. And then the Pharisee sets his gaze on the tax-collector and he thanks God that he had never become one of those. So when you consider that the tax collectors were notorious, its not surprising that the Pharisee prayed like that. And then we learn that the Pharisee fasted twice a week, and gave a tenth of all that he received. Jews were required to fast several times a year, not twice a week, and there was no requirement to give a tenth of everything. This Pharisee was very careful to live a life acceptable to God. No doubt he would be well regarded in the community. And then in contrast, we have the tax collector. These people were complete social outcasts. They represented organised corruption on a grand scale. Notice how he stands some distance away. Perhaps he has only ventured just inside the Temple precinct and no further. He didn't adopt the normal posture of prayer. Rather, he hung his head and beat his breast, a sign of mourning. And his prayer is simple. It seems to be based on Psalm 51 - "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
No doubt the crowd thought the prayer summed up what he really was. Now the question is, which prayer did God hear? Which prayer would God accept and approve? We can be sure the crowd would have approved of the Pharisee's prayer. As for the tax collector - what hope could he have, particularly if he remained a tax collector? His own career would have condemned him. Yet Jesus shocked the crowd with the announcement that it was the tax collector's and not the Pharisee's prayer that was accepted by God. And that would have disturbed them. When Jesus began telling a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector their minds might have raced ahead anticipating how the story would end. And they would have been wrong.
And the catch for us is that we could be wrong too. Notice how Jesus introduces this parable. "To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable." I once assumed that this introduction was talking about the Pharisees. But it probably isn't. This introduction is a description of the crowd standing before Jesus. Jesus wasn't criticising Pharisees, he was criticising them. If it isn't, then what we have is Jesus telling the crowds about a parable but saying in fact, "This is not about you. I don't mean you." No - it was all about them. You may know the story about the Sunday school teacher who taught this parable to their class and then concluding with the remark "Lets thank God we're not like that Pharisee." She had made the same mistake. She was confident of her own righteousness. And now we are in danger of making the same mistake - thanking God we are not like that Sunday School teacher.
But it is a trap we need to avoid, the danger of becoming too confident, too arrogant that we think we know it all when it comes to knowing God, the danger of thinking, "I have arrived - I have all the answers." Jesus used the Pharisee and the tax collector to trap the crowd, to show them you cannot just make assumptions when it comes to understanding God. I am fascinated by the book of Job. He has some understanding of the nature of God but he cannot make sense of it in the face of his suffering. He comforters attempt to come to some conclusions about God but none of it fits. Job himself delivers speeches about what he knows of God, of the world, of evil people, of his own life. But how does any of it fit together. There are no simple solutions. The other thing I find intimidating about Job is the sophistication of the literature. A far greater mind than mine was the author of this book and yet whoever they are, they are not able to come to any simple solution about the nature of God, his work in our world, or what sense we can make of the suffering in our world. We get the same picture from the Psalms. I'm intrigued by the number of argumentative psalms, where the authors complain about the world, complain about their neighbours, complain about their situation and complain that God isn't doing what they want him to do.
So many Psalms are a struggle as people attempt to come to some understanding of the nature of God and the implications for their situation. But what really surprised me is that the Bible is the only sacred text in the world where people argue with God and question his wisdom. You certainly don't get that in the Koran. And that is the point of the parable. When it comes to understanding God, there are no simple answers. It's a warning not to become puffed up and impressed with our own thinking about God - believing we have it all worked out. Because the time will come when we are brought to the end of ourselves and in a loud voice we demand to know from God "Why?" - and the answer doesn't come. And we realise what we don't really know.
And that is the reason I think why Jesus gave us the first parable in our reading. Here was a woman who kept coming to an unjust judge and begged him time and time again for justice. The judge appears to have no morality. He declares he neither fears God nor cares about men. His one desire is for a quiet life. And because of that he gives the woman what she asks for. Jesus' point is that if an unjust Judge can act rightly, then our persistence in prayer will certainly be rewarded. Job, in the end, doesn't get answers to his question, but his prayers are answered. Jesus' promise is that persistence in prayer is never futile.
Though they may sound reckless, the behaviour of the psalm writers are examples of their persistence in prayer. Persistence is never a problem for God. But the question Jesus asks is "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" If he looked into the heart of Job he would find it there. If he looked into the hearts of the Psalm writers, no doubt he would find it there. And what about us? The pressures of life are great. Suffering can consume us. Often its hard to know the right way. We lack the wisdom we need for the decisions we have to make. There are no easy answers, and if we think we know them we are probably wrong. But Jesus words encourage us not to give us. Job, and the Psalmists and this persistent widow are examples to us not to give up. We need to exercise our faith, continually turning back to God, continually calling on him in prayer, continually trusting he hears us and loves us.