Yearning for Change

Sometimes I wish the gospel were different to what it actually is. Sometimes I wish Jesus had said “Ask for what you want and I will make sure you get all that you think you need and know that you want in a timely way that makes your life more joyful and successful and that you and those you love will never need to suffer.” But that’s not what he said. Even though sometimes some have wanted to interpret readings such as this week’s (Luke 18:1-8) in this way. But Jesus said something much simpler and in some ways more demanding. 

You may wish to read what I wrote three years ago with a focus on Jacob wrestling with God from Genesis.

Wrestling with God

Or you may wish to read my reflections on the gospel from three years ago.

Persistence

Like a lot of Jesus’ parables this one is rather disquietening in how God is portrayed. The part of God is played by the grumpy old judge who only dishes out mercy and justice under duress. Sometimes we do treat God in this way – we think if we pray louder and more often and organise more people to pray what we want then God might hear us. As though the Creator of all-that-is is deaf or asleep. It does occasionally feel this way. When we or those we love or even the world as we see it on the evening news are suffering it does seem as though God might be asleep at the wheel or deaf to our pleas.

The two parables and the encouraging words of the prophet Jeremiah (after many chapters of very harsh and challenging words) leads me to reflect on three themes. Firstly, that God hears and responds to the people of God. A little like the earlier story in Luke about even sinful parents know how to give good things to their children, to give eggs and not serpents, so how much more does God know how to give good things to the children of God. We are invited to pray for comfort and strength and relief of our suffering. We are being reminded that God knows what we need and if a human judge grudgingly gives justice and mercy then the divine Maker and Judge will so much more grant justice and mercy.

Secondly, that the invocation to pray constantly is the invitation to pray until every level of our consciousness desires communion with God, until every cell is emptied of self will and yearns to grow toward God, until we are truly open to receive love and to be love regardless of circumstance.  Which is very much related to the words spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: “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.” We can pray like this, even if only for moments, because God is written or already indwelling in our hearts. We pray for what is already within as much as for what will come from outside!

 Thirdly, we are called to pray in a way that has us at one with the poor and vulnerable. In this we may grow in our capacity as companions and neighbours. Without easy answers, without miracle solutions, without necessarily a way of relieving their hurt or ours by anything other than loving presence to and with one another. The helpless unstoppable love of the cross and the crucified one. I often say that the most challenging thing I do as a person of faith is to pray my way through the evening news – not giving in to despair or victorious identifying with one group or another but deeply praying for each person, creature and place as beloved of God.

These are not easy or even desirable answers to the problem of suffering. In our own suffering and in our love and concern for those who are suffering we are brought to our knees and to the end of our cheerful easy “gospel” and to the presence of the real love of Christ which does not shy away from the unsuccessful, the broken, or the lost. Nothing I read in the gospel offers us exemption from ordinary garden variety suffering and struggle – that’s the lollipop theology of popularised self-help psychology and TV evangelism, not the gospel of God-become-human who walked among us and lived and died as one of us and who called us to take up our cross and follow where he had been!

Now, like most folk, I prefer joy to struggle, peace to turmoil, and healing to suffering. Joy and pleasure can open our hearts and rewire our makeup in wonderful ways. Remember when you were first in love and how the world really is a different colour, how everything is that bit brighter, more vivid, how everything makes sense and you suddenly have the key to understanding love songs and bird calls, moon rise and streets crowded with life. I think we are invited to pray with hope for peace and joy for ourselves and for one another. I think we are called to pray for healing for ourselves, for those whose ills we know of, and for our whole broken world.

We are called to constant prayer not in order to fill heaven with our demands but to empty our hearts out so that we can receive the love of God in whatever place we find ourselves and to love our neighbours as we are loved. Prayer is not so much a negotiation with heaven or a grant application as it is a letting go of any illusion that we are in control of our life or this world and a giving over, a giving up of our life, into the hands of the Maker - the Source of Life itself. I think it is that simple and I fear it is that hard.

Even so, come Lord Jesus Christ, come and pray within us for healing and for peace. Amen.

This is my work based on all that I have heard, read and experienced. I am indebted to the wisdom of others.