Is the Earth praying to us at the moment?

Is the Earth praying to us at the moment?

Pentecost + 21 21/10/07 (Lk 18:1-8; Jer 31:27-34, Ps 119:97-104)

Jesus told a parable about a very persistent widow, and Luke tells us it illustrates our need to keep praying and not to lose heart. What was there in this widow’s life that might have caused her to lose heart? Plenty. First, she’d lost her husband. That meant, in a traditional society, she had no real place in society—being neither daughter nor wife. She had no money, and if she couldn’t remarry, no future. The parable tells us that she’d been abused in some way. And to add insult to injury, her access to justice was blocked by a judge who didn’t fear God, and who couldn’t care less about his public image. The widow had no money to bribe him with, no advocate to plead her cause for her, and that shameful judge didn’t look like he’d ever listen to her.

Yet she persisted. Again and again, she confronted the judge’s shamelessness with the shame of her social position. Her shame was a powerful bargaining chip because she knew it was caused by an injustice, and so justice was owing to her. She would complain until the judge went blue in the face. She acted on an inner conviction of justice. Can we guess where she got that inner conviction and empowerment from?

My guess would be that as a Jewish woman, she participated in the corporate prayer life of her community. There, she’d have heard in the Scriptures of God’s commitment to justice—of God’s particular care for her as a widow. (Ex 22.22-24, Dt 10.17-18) She acted on her trust in the God whom she’d heard in readings from the Torah—passages that were about her; she acted on her certainty in the God she came to know in those readings. It’s as if, when she had the unjust judge in front of her, she addressed God over the judge’s shoulder so she could keep on demanding her justice. It was the turn of the judge to learn God’s ways.

But I believe there’s another way that she had this conviction, and we heard Jeremiah describe it today in chapter 31.

33 this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord.

Jesus called his followers to persistent prayer: and that’s what I want us to think about this morning. What that means in terms of this morning’s parable is that we struggle on with it in spite of our doubts and setbacks, believe that it’s right to do so, because it is written in our hearts that we belong to God.

Prayer is a marvellous, liberating gift from God. It’s a place in our lives where God meets us, embraces us, talks with us, and takes us seriously no matter what our circumstances. God is astonishingly broad-minded, and that’s the lovely thing we discover in the conversation of prayer.

When I say that prayer is a gift, I mean by that a spiritual gift which comes to us because of the Holy Spirit living in us. At baptism, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. In terms of the conversation of prayer, we become permanently invited eavesdroppers; eavesdroppers listening in on a dialogue between our mother, the Spirit, our Father and our Brother.

That dialogue—that intimate conversation—is one which could go on whether we were there or not. But from our baptism on, we should grow in understanding that this dialogue is meant to include us; that we need it—this conversation is the true source of our life. St Paul describes that conversation in a part of his letter to the church in Rome:

“… the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Romans 8:26-27

So the Holy Spirit speaks to God from deep within us. And God searches our depths, and there, finds the mind of the Spirit. Through the Scriptures, through the Church, through friends, through creation, God speaks to us. Yet how do we hear God speaking with us?

It’s a lifelong skill, learning to hear God’s voice. But by giving us the gift of the Holy Spirit at our baptism, God ensures that there is within us, from our very birth, the faculty to hear God speak—like any little child, the faculty to learn the language, and to join in the conversation.

God the Holy Spirit dwells within us. She is the mother and teacher of our hearts. Because of her dwelling within us, our hearts gradually learn the life-giving nature of conversation with the divine. There is something within us—it is written on our hearts, says Jeremiah—something within us that feels empty and alone until we know we’re engaged in this conversation. We don’t feel fully ourselves until we can express what is the very deepest part of who we are—until we can participate fully in the most wonderful and profound relationship there is. That’s called being in love. St Augustine prayed it this way; Everlasting God, in whom we live and move and have our being: you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

And Jesus? Jesus stands before us alive in the gospel, and beckons us by his love for us and by his own example to join in that conversation—more easily as he is one of us too. Choosing to join in this conversation just once can change us utterly. Once invited, God persists. And if I’m talking about persistence in prayer today, there’s the source of the persistence; God.

Let me illustrate this briefly.

I spent several years absorbed by Buddhism. Unfortunately for the integrity of my Buddhism—which was atheistic—I’d learnt to pray beforehand as a Christian.

So, and to my intense irritation, I—a Buddhist—would often catch myself in conversation with a God whom I’d rejected. This was particularly the case on the golf course, where it seems that walking around muttering incantations seems to pass for normal behaviour. So I tried to give up golf. But the conversation continued anyway. … Prayer has a persistence of its own. People’s lives are dramatically changed by its persistence; witness an ex-Buddhist Anglican Priest.

So prayer persists. But then what? What comes of eavesdropping on our divine parents? This morning’s gospel sheds an interesting light on this aspect of prayer. It shapes the way you live, and it shapes the way you see yourself.

Remember that widow—most onlookers would probably have viewed her as deluded, stubborn and hopeless—and we might be tempted to see her that way too. But frankly, I see her example as inspiring. She subverted everyone else’s illusion of her powerlessness through her own illusion—if you like—one of her own dignity and worth in the sight of God.

That’s something that hangs around in the life of every prayerful person—a persistent illusion that’s finally more real than anything else.

My prayer is that we may all be as graciously deluded.

Amen