I.                   Introduction

A.    American Idol

1.                  Only three months until the next season kicks off!

2.                  May’s finale – 74 million callers

3.                  Jordin Sparks became the youngest American Idol

B.     The logic of the parable, what if 74 million prayers made their way

heavenward?  The end of world hunger, enough to keep our lawns green throughout the summer, no more mosquitoes…the sky’s the limit!

 

II.                Context

A.    See two very different contrasting characters

                                 1.            A judge – Representative of complete and total power in the community, whose word at least in the worldly realm was final.  And no ordinary one, but who has no respect for God or his fellow human beings.

                                  2.           A widow – A woman who was basically powerless in the community, one of the most poor and vulnerable. 

B.       A strange, unsettling parable

                                 1.           What are we to make of the judge, of the woman?

                                 2.            According to Luke, Jesus told this parable about a pushy       widow and a sleazy judge “in order that we might pray always and not lose heart.”

 

III.             Interpretation

A     Most interpretations

1.            Quick to reject any connection between the judge  and God. 

2.            That this is another case of “how much more”. 

3.            If someone is this way, then how much more must be the

               case with God. 

B.         Truth of the matter was that those Jesus was talking very likely experienced God in that way.

       1.            People who had prayed and prayed to God and only heard silence, who had only known heartbreak.

         2.            People tempted to give up on prayer altogether

3.               People who may well have come to the same conclusion as one survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, “that God is a madman and a betrayer.” 

 

IV.             Our Situation

A.    Are there not times when we too witness confusing and even maddening variations in God’s response to prayer, when what God does or doesn’t do seems arbitrary and even ruthless? 

B.     Where was God in killing fields of Cambodia during the late 1970’s, in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994, in offices throughout the World Trade Center on 9/11 were there not sincere, decent people praying for their lives and the lives of loved ones?

1.                  Why did God not only delay, but fail in helping them?

a.       Not enough faith?

b.      Is the “all powerful” God not everything he’s cracked up to be?

                                  2.          Wonder if at the end of the day, GOD really is like the

judge in the parable righteous and just.

C.     And what about us?

1.                  Times when we’ve prayed and prayed

a.       for a prodigal child to come home, but who doesn’t.

b.      for healing and reconciliation in a relationship that only grows more distant.  

c.       for the end of illness and suffering for loved ones, for ourselves, only to have an increase in sickness and suffering.

D.    Times when we’re tempted to wonder if it is, as someone once suggested, “more bearable to believe that God helps no one than to suppose that God helps some, but not others.” 

E.     Doing what Jesus commands in fact brings about the opposite effect.  We can (and perhaps do) lose heart.

 

V.                Yet, Jesus expressing a sense of uncompromising confidence in the power of prayer

A.    We see him at prayer throughout his ministry

1.                  His forty days in the wilderness

2.                  Going off to quiet place to pray

3.                  Taking Peter, James and John to the top of the Mount of  Transfiguration

4.                  In the Garden of Gethsemene

5.                  On the cross—acknowledged his own agony and sense of complete abandonment, by the fact that God the Father could have chosen to spare him this horrible suffering, but didn’t

B.     A real darkness here, one that we must acknowledge, but finally not one that leads to condemnation, but to new life.  St. Paul, “God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” 

 

VI.             Good news

A.    God IS in charge of the world

1.                  Not as the unjust judge

2.                  But as one who desires a relationship, seeks to consult with those whom He has created, with those who cry to him to help. 

3.                  God isn’t bound by our pleas, by what we want or need, but what God decides is never unaffected by our pleas and petitions.

a.       Moses

b.      The mother who prayed to Jesus on behalf of her demon possessed daughter.  At first Jesus refused to hear her, but for her pleadings, for even the crumbs from the table, he commended her faith and sent her on the way with news that her daughter was healed.

B.     We’re called to pray too, constantly, to participate with God in the

Unfolding of God’s kingdom. 

“Nothing is so necessary as to call upon God incessantly and drum into his ears our prayers that he may give, preserve and increase in us faith and obedience.”

                

VII.          A congregation at prayer

A.    Sunday morning prayer group

B.     Through the prayer connections that we begin today. 

C.     Luther “God therefore wishes you to lament and express your needs and wants, not because He is unaware of them, but in order that you may your heart to stronger and greater desires and spread your cloak wide to receive many things.”

 

Pastor Brian Peterson