I confess I do not like today's parable…I just don’t
because it implies that if you pray long and hard enough God is going to give
you what you want but if we look at Jesus’ way of being in the world and his
way of prayer we may be able to get at his meaning.
One clue that this was not the message Christ was
trying to get at is the simple fact that this story starts with an atheist
Judge. His listeners would know that
that isn’t likely so we cannot take this parable literally. You see in that day and age of you were a
Jewish Judge you followed Jewish law and prescribed to Jewish theology. If you were a Roman Judge you proclaimed that
the emperor was a God you could not be an atheist and well, be a judge.
enough Trivia
Richard Rohr reminds us that “Jesus’s own style of
teaching in stories, parables, and enigmatic sayings was undoubtedly learned in
his own prayer practices. He clearly
operated from a consciousness different from that of the masses and even that
of the religious leaders who largely fought him. Most seemed to misunderstand him, or even
ignore him, despite what seem to be astounding healing and miracles.”[1]
I believe this parable is an example of that…this
misunderstanding can and has led to the prosperity Gospel. Where if you pray for it, it will come and if
you don’t get it you did something wrong and/or you’re a sinner!
Jesus seemed to know that he would be misunderstood
and did not allow that to stop him nor discourage him. He even said: “For this people’s senses have
become calloused,
And
they’ve become hard of hearing,
And
they’ve shut their eyes
So
that they won’t see with their eyes
Or
hear with their ears
Or
understand with their minds,
And change their hearts and lives that I may heal them. [A]
16 “Happy are your eyes because they see. Happy are
your ears because they hear.” (MT 13:15-16)
Let us explore a little further what Richard Rohr
addresses.
Jesus
himself seemed to prefer a prayer of quiet, something more than social,
liturgical, or verbal prayer, which is mentioned only a very few times. What we do hear are frequent references such
as “In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house and went off
to a lonely place to pray.” (Mark 1:35; also in Matthew 14:23 and Mark 1:12-13)
Luke describes him as praying privately before almost all major events. There
are the forty days alone in the desert, which means he must have missed the
family-based Sabbath observances and the public temple services. And of course there is his final prayer alone
in the Garden of Gethsemane.[2]
Richard Rohr Points out that Jesus taught us “You
should go to your private room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is
in that secret place.” (Matthew 6:6)
This is again rather explicit and also intimately invitational,
especially because most homes of his people would have had no such thing as a
private room.”[3]
But some people Caught what Jesus was teaching, he
was teaching of seeking a quiet place.
This quiet private space does not need to be physical. It can be spiritual, it can be done in group
much as it is done here today.
“We need no wings to go in search of
God, but have only to find a place where we
can be alone and look upon Him present
within us.” These words were written by St.
Teresa of Avila in her book The Way of
Perfection”[4]
Jesus says we should not seek prayer in public, now
he did not condemn the concept of church or synagogue but he did emphasize a
different kind of prayer life. “What all of these teachings of Jesus seem to
say is that we probably need “unsaying prayer,” the prayer of quiet or
contemplative prayer, to balance out and ground all “saying prayer.” Many Christians seem to have little
experience of prayer of quiet, and tend to actually be afraid of it or even
condemn it.”[5]
Without this inner, secret contemplative prayer life,
a life of constant prayer, a conversation of love in God that is ongoing our external, communal prayer becomes nothing
more than a meaningless show, prayer, communal and silent are practices that
each supports the other.
St. Teresa reminds us that: “First, we must be
searching for God. If God is just a name, if God’s love for us is an abstract
truth which we believe but do not realize, we will hardly search for It. … If,
on the other hand, we are convinced that God is in Teresa’s words “a better
prize than any earthly love,” if we realize that we actually have within us something
incomparably more precious than anything we see outside, then we will desire to
enter within ourselves and to seek God. When we are convinced that God cares
for us and waits for us, we will have the security and the courage to love God
in return.”[6]
This is what that odd parable is about, it is not about
bugging God to get what we seek, but it is about what we should be seeking a relationship with God. When the stern Judge offers justice to the
woman she is getting what she sought and there is a relationship there now
between the judge and her.
“Western culture has tended to be an extroverted
culture and a “can-do” culture. Prayer
too easily became an attempt to change God and aggrandize ourselves instead of
what it was meant to be – an interior practice to change the one who is
praying, which will always happen if we stand calmly before this uncanny and
utterly safe Presence, allowing the Divine Gaze to invade and heal our
unconscious, the place where 95 percent of our motivations and reactions come
from. All we can really do is return the
gaze. Then, as Meister Eckhart so
perfectly said, “the eye with which we look back at God will be the same eye
that first looked at us.” We just
complete the circuit!”[7]
amen
[1] Richard Rohr, The
Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (New York: Crossroad Pub.,
2009).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ernest E.
Larkin, St. Theresa Speaks of Mental Prayer, accessed October 11, 2016,
http://carmelnet.org/larkin/larkin087.pdf.
[5] Rohr, The
Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See.
[6] Larkin, St.
Theresa Speaks of Mental Prayer.
[7] Rohr, The
Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See.
