Persisting in Prayer
NOTE: Pastor Doug wasn’t able to be with us on Sunday, so Pastor Patti delivered his sermon.
A happy memory I have from when Greg was four-years-old was that he loved it when I would pick him up and spin him around. He’d smile and laugh and say, “Again, again, again.” I’d pick him up and spin him around and put him back on the couch and he’d say, “Again, again, again.” After a while, I’d start to tire of doing this and I’d want to stop before he would, but Greg would keep putting his arms up, reaching for me and pleading, “Again, again, again.”
When Jesus tells his disciples about the need to persevere in unceasing prayer and not to lose heart, he wants us to be as persistent as a four-year-old child who knows what he wants and will not quit until he gets it. Listen to what Jesus has to say about prayer through two parables in Luke 18:
October 20, 2013
Luke 18:1-14, Persisting in Prayer
Doug Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
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1 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4 For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
The first rule of effective prayer is that we need to pray always and not to lose heart. Jesus knew his disciples would need an intimacy with God rivaling his own to cope with the future that lay ahead. Jesus knew there are times in all of our lives when we face the temptation to give up or to give in or to quit. By the time Luke wrote his gospel, several decades had passed since Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Enthusiasm, commitment, and faithfulness can fade over time, especially when we face challenges or suffering. Sometimes absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, it makes the heart look elsewhere and a flame goes out. That’s why Jesus encourages us to pray without ceasing and without giving in to despair. We are to pray and plead unrelentingly like a four-year-old child. Yet I know I don’t pray nearly as much as I feel I need to or should and I suspect I have a lot of company. We may feel we’re too busy to pray, even though we know we should be making the time and we feel guilty about it, but we still don’t pray.
However, we all make time for what we feel is essential like eating and sleeping. So if we’re not making the time to pray, we need to own up to the truth that we don’t think it is essential. Jesus closes the parable about persisting in prayer with a question, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” The first rule of effective prayer is that we need to pray always and not to lose heart.
Luke immediately follows the first parable about prayer with a second. It’s hard for us to grasp how shocking this parable was to those who first heard it. How can Jesus say that a tax collector – who was viewed as a traitor to his nation, a cheater of his neighbors, and dead wood on the temple membership rolls – how can Jesus say this guy went home justified rather than the Pharisee? The Pharisee religiously engaged in a host of spiritual disciplines. He prayed regularly, sought to live a holy and virtuous life, fasted twice a week, and tithed his income. What is going on? What is Jesus teaching us here?
Luke tells us that Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded other with contempt. Even though on the surface the Pharisee appeared to be a great church member – he was tithing, active in a leadership role, and attended worship regularly – he had two major flaws that caused him to pray ineffectively. He trusted in himself rather in God. In his arrogance and pride, he viewed others with contempt. Effective prayers come from the hearts of people who trust not in themselves, but in God. The Pharisee’s so-called prayer is simply a declaration of how good he thinks he is and how glad he is that he’s not somebody else! This is not the peak of prayer or spiritual maturity.
Effective prayers come from the hearts of people who have a humble view of themselves and compassion and mercy for others. The Pharisee should not have been thanking God that he was not like the tax collector. He should have been praying and weeping for the tax collector. If we take an honest, searching look of our own heart and soul, those of us who consider ourselves spiritual or religious or good make this mistake all the time. We thank God we’re not like those people who have babies when they shouldn’t. We thank God we’re not dying of AIDS. We thank God we don’t live in an inner city with terrible schools and the constant threat of violence. We thank God we don’t live in abject poverty with virtually no hope of anything better. We thank God we’re not like those brainless liberals or those heartless conservatives. We thank God we’re not like those pathetic addicts who can’t break their addictions and throw their lives away. Now let me ask you a simple, direct question, Would Jesus thank God for these things? No, he wouldn’t.
Jesus would weep for lives changed forever by a mistake of immaturity or judgment that makes a child a parent. Jesus would weep for those who are not only dying, but dying as outcasts. Jesus would weep for our cities: for the seniors who can’t go to the store without fear, for children who are scared to go to school or the playground, for parents trying to keep gang members and drug dealers off their corners and away from their kids. Jesus would weep. Jesus would minister and serve. Jesus would work for justice and healing. Jesus doesn’t want us thanking God we’re not like other people. Jesus wants us praying for them with tears, asking the Lord what we can do to help, and then doing what God shows us to do.
The tragedy and scandal of this parable is that the Pharisee see this man praying and beating himself over the sin in his life, yet he doesn’t go to him, he doesn’t seek to console him, he doesn’t close the distance between them, he doesn’t even pray with him or for him! What in God’s name is he thinking about? What is his problem? He is thinking only about himself and his problem is he doesn’t love his neighbor. This is the Pharisee’s fault, as good a man as his outward behavior seemed to make him, his heart is lacking in love. Instead of weeping over his own sins (which he apparently can’t even see) and over the sins of others, he is congratulating himself that he isn’t as bad a sinner as this loser crying in the corner.
Make no mistake; this tax collector is a reprehensible character. He’s working for an occupying foreign government and is a participant in a cruel, corrupt system. His prayer is an emotional outburst of utter despair, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ Unlike the Pharisee, he is well aware of the great distance separating him from God. He and his family are in a hopeless position because repentance involves not only abandonment of his sinful way of life, but also restitution of his fraudulent gains, plus an added 20%. How can he even know or remember everyone he has cheated? He is up the creek without a paddle, he doesn’t even have a boat; he doesn’t even have a creek. Not only his situation, but even his cry for mercy seems totally hopeless. All he can do is beat his breast and weep, begging God for mercy.
The tax collector’s desperate prayer is virtually a word for word quotation of the opening words of Psalm 51. The first verse of that Psalm is, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” We’re told that Psalm 51 was written by King David after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of a loyal and trusted officer, Uriah, who David then had killed to cover his own sin. David wrote in Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Jesus says God accepts the despairing, hopeless sinner, and rejects the self-righteous. David and the tax collector knew the prayer of tears which is intimately and ultimately aware that sin cuts us off from the fullness of God’s presence. So they wept.
Some of us have known the desperation of the tax collector; we’ve realized that our only hope lies not in our own goodness, but in the mercy of God. Tears and prayer are good. The pages of the Bible are dripping with the tears of men and women weeping over their sins, the sins of the world, or their own heartache. Hannah (1 Samuel) prays persistently and unceasingly through her tears that God will end her barrenness and give her a son. Job (Job 16:20) cries out, “My eye pours out tears to God.” The Psalms are full of tears. Psalm 6:6, “Every night I flood my bed with tears: I drench my couch with weeping.” Psalm 42:3, “My tears have been my food day and night.” Psalm 119:136, “My eyes shed tears because your law is not kept.” If the Pharisee had prayed that prayer, he also would’ve gone home justified. The prophet Jeremiah (9:1) prayed, “O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!” Hebrews 5:7 tells us, “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” In the very next chapter of Luke’s Gospel (19:41), we’re told that Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem, he didn’t thank God he wasn’t like the people living there. In Acts 20:19, 31, Paul says he was serving the Lord with all humility and tears. He said, “for three years I did not cease night or day to warn everyone with tears.” When was the last time you wept and prayed? For some of us it may have been this morning or this past week because of our heartache or grief for a family member. But when was the last time you wept and prayed for someone other than a family member; for people who are hurting, broken, sinful, hungry, addicted, or far from God?
Do you find all these verses about tears and weeping in the Bible depressing? Perhaps the Biblical characters would tell us the people most to be pitied are those who go through life with dry eyes and cold hearts. However, the people in the Bible I’ve mentioned didn’t just cry and cry about something, they all responded in obedience to God and they acted. Too many Christians end up acting like the Pharisee whose heart wasn’t touched by his brother’s need. An attitude of, “At least I’m not as bad as a lot of other people,” isn’t good enough for God or heaven. Richard Foster defines prayer as, “An enduring, continuing, growing love relationship with the great God of the Universe. Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.”
The Tax Collector had broken his lover’s heart (God’s) because of his sin. He was humble enough to recognize he needed to make a radical change in his life. The first rule of effective prayer is that we need to pray always and not to lose heart. Effective prayers come from the hearts of people who trust not in themselves, but in God. Effective prayers come from the hearts of people who have a humble view of themselves and compassion and mercy for others.
The great church reformer Martin Luther said the life of the Christian should be one of daily repentance. How do we experience a repentant, broken, and contrite heart?
First we ask God for a broken heart. We ask the Lord to shatter our pride, our delusions and illusions about our own goodness. We pray like the tax collector, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ You think that sounds too easy, but there are many people like the Pharisee, who engage in all kinds of religious activity, but who can never bring themselves to say the words, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
Second, since we are sinners, we confess our sins. We acknowledge before our loving and merciful God our hardheartedness, stubbornness, pride, lack of faith, bitterness, arrogance, and many other sins too personal and too numerous to mention.
Third, we receive the forgiveness and blessing of God. Like the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), God rushes to welcome us at the first sign of turning toward home. Having received the forgiveness of God which is made possible through Jesus’ death on the cross, we become people of forgiveness and mercy. Jesus concludes the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector with these words, “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
When it comes to prayer, ideally, we want to be a hybrid of the widow, the Pharisee, and the tax collector.
Like the widow, we’re to pray persistently and unceasingly, crying out to God day and night. We’re to pray for ourselves and for the world until the Lord returns so that when he comes he will find faith on earth.
Like the Pharisee, we are to determinedly practice virtue so we begin to eliminate sin in our life. Like the Pharisee, we are to engage in spiritual habits of worship, prayer, tithing, and fasting, but we do so knowing that the practice of these disciplines doesn’t make us holy, they simply help to open us to the presence of God who wants us to reach out to others with love rather than looking down our noses at them with contempt.
Like the tax collector, we are to pray humbly with an awareness of how our sin separates us from our Holy God, from our best self, and it harms other people.
What both the Pharisee and the Tax Collector get in the parable is “in spite of” what they have done, not “because of” what they have done. One goes home justified rather than the other. How will you go home?
The choice is yours.
For Further Reflection or Discussion:
Do you have an early memories of praying (for example, at meals, before bed, in Sunday School or worship) that you can recall?
Why do you think you pray (or don’t pray) the way you do?
The first rule of effective prayer is that we need to __________________ & _______________________.
Effective prayers comes from the hearts of people who ______________________
______________________________.
Effective Prayers come from the hearts of people who __________________________
_______________________.
When was the last time you wept and prayed?
Richard Foster defines prayer as, “An enduring, continuing, growing love relationship with the great God of the Universe. Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.”
In Luke 18 we can learn something from the widow, the Pharisee, and the tax collector about how to pray.
Like the widow
Like the Pharisee
Like the tax collector