(Jeremiah 31:27-34; Ps. 119:97-104; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8)
I have a pretty simple message today. This sermon could be titled, Prayer For Dummies.
I’m sure most of you are familiar with the “…for Dummies” series of instructional books – yellow and black, with a blackboard-style logo, and a cartoon “dummy” figure on the cover. They’re on all kinds of topics: Music for Dummies, Personal Finance, Medicare, there’s even a Christianity for Dummies – the titles run into the hundreds. It’s a huge, international franchise.
But ironically, the original inspiration for this wildly successful moneymaker may well have come from a professional-turned-hippie in the late 1960’s. A little over a half-century ago there was an aeronautical engineer named John Muir (a distant relative of the famous naturalist) who, in the mid-1960’s, “dropped out” (in the style of the time): quit his job, moved to Taos, New Mexico, opened a garage, and spent the rest of his life as a car mechanic. The reason his name is remembered today is that, in 1969, he wrote a book which became a cult classic. It was called How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-By-Step Procedures for the Complete Idiot. This book was definitely a product of the hippie generation: it was hand-lettered; and the illustrations and diagrams were drawn by a cartoonist: not the kind you expect in a typical manual, but nonetheless, finely detailed, and perfectly comprehensible. And it was published in a spiral notebook: eminently practical, you could leave it lying open and work with both hands.
Volkswagens were very popular for a long time in this country, and the book sold millions of copies. And in the early 1970’s, my first car being a Volkswagen, I bought it; because even though I had very little aptitude for this kind of work, if you own something you should learn how to take care of it, and this book seemed not just user-friendly, but idiot-friendly (or dummy-friendly), which I certainly was. The whole presentation sent the message, Relax, folks, this is something anyone can do.
And it didn’t turn me into an expert mechanic; but I learned how to change the oil, I learned how to adjust the carburetor (I learned what a carburetor actually did); and when slightly more complicated problems came up, I learned that with application and what little common sense I possess, there were things I could get done.
It’s much the same in the life of the spirit. This is the point Jesus is making in today’s gospel reading: a point so simple, and natural to us all, that he illustrates it with a funny story (as if to say, Relax, folks, this is something anyone can do.) Luke tells us up front that this story is a parable, and that it’s about prayer (“Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart”); and it’s in the Bible; so we automatically approach it with hushed reverence. But I’m quite sure Jesus means his hearers to laugh at this story. I think he probably didn’t tell them it was about prayer until the story was over. It’s even structured like a joke: there’s a setup, and a payoff, and it happens fast.
Jesus tells us, In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. That’s a laugh in itself: he’s saying, Once upon a time, there was a judge who was the world’s worst judge. And he tells us there was a widow who kept coming to this judge and saying, Grant me justice against my opponent. Now, Jewish law, and tradition, and the Hebrew Bible, were all emphatic about the requirement to care for the helpless: especially widows and orphans. But – being the worst judge in the world – that makes no difference to this guy, and he ignores her, despite the fact that she keeps coming back to him (he’s evidently stubborn and lazy on top of everything else); until finally he says to himself, Though I have no fear of God nor respect for anyone else – even though I’m the worst judge in the world – yet because this widow keeps bothering me (whether her cause is just or not is completely irrelevant to him), I will grant her justice so that she may not wear me out. The words “wear me out”’ are a bad translation: the literal meaning is, “give me a black eye.” So the worst judge in the world gives this widow what she wants because he’s afraid she’s actually going to haul off and sock him in the kisser. This is slapstick. And (for my generation) central casting for this little sketch would give us Phyllis Diller as the widow and Rodney Dangerfield as the judge.
Luke tells us at the beginning of today’s passage that Jesus tells his disciples that this story is “about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” He makes several points about prayer in the story, but first and foremost is, however we pray, we keep at it. This is Prayer For Dummies, chapter 1. Jesus uses the clown-show story the same way John Muir used the funky lettering and cartoon illustrations to show that prayer is not reserved for holy persons. Anybody can pray; and everybody should pray. It should be as natural as breathing.
Now: “Pray always”, Jesus tells his disciples (which would include all of us.) “Pray always.” This does not mean that he wants us to spend our whole lives on our knees, or in church. So what does he mean by the word “Prayer”?
In the back of our Book of Common Prayer, beginning on p. 845, is a section called “An Outline of the Faith”, which describes itself as “a brief summary of the church’s teaching” on various subjects: God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), the Holy Scriptures, the sacraments, and a number of others. It’s in a question-and-answer format. On p. 856 there’s a section on prayer, which opens with the question, “What is prayer?” And this is the answer: “Prayer is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.” So prayer is not just about asking for things, and then crossing our fingers, hoping God is listening and in a good mood; which is unfortunately what I think a lot of people understand prayer to be., and therefore why they don’t get around to it very often.
I think the BCP definition of prayer is a good one. I would expand on it this way. When we pray, we open ourselves to the reality that God is alive; and present in our lives: always inviting us to join in the creation, every day, of God’s kingdom here in this life: the creation of a world full of all the good things we talk about here: love, joy, peace, justice, hope. All of us dummies can be part of that.
And Jesus tells us “not to lose heart” in the practice of prayer because he knows our human tendency is to expect results from any expenditure of effort; and prayer usually doesn’t yield the kind of results we’re used to looking for, in this life. These are matters of the Spirit, and the effects usually aren’t immediately apparent: which shouldn’t concern us (don’t lose heart, Jesus says.)
When we are praying in this way – when we are responding to God by thought and by deeds, with or without words – we are enabling the Holy Spirit to work through us for God’s purposes, stumbling, bumbling dummies though we be. And on this Stewardship Sunday, let us remember that we’re not just keeping the building open. We’re maintaining the Body of Christ, in the fulfillment our mission: through the Holy Spirit, trying to live into the kingdom of God. And for our call to that mission, thanks be to God.