Preacher: Canon Karen
Date: 20/10/2019
One of my jobs in ministry was being Chaplain to the Bishop of Portsmouth. In fact in my time in that post I looked after three bishops – the one who was retiring, the bishop who looked after the diocese in the vacancy and then the new bishop. As soon as bishop Christopher arrived in the diocese my phone started ringing more than usual and my email box began to fill up with requests for a meeting or a visit from the newly appointed Bishop. One clergyman was particularly quick off the mark. He contacted me on the day of the announcement which was about six months before the new bishop was due to take up his post. At least he was honest – his reason for writing so promptly was so that he would be first in the queue. I wrote back saying that as it would be a while before the Bishop would be arriving in the diocese and even longer before he started looking at his diary I would get back to him in due course.
Two months before Bishop Christopher’s installation I received an e-mail from the same cleric. This time he was concerned that I might have mis-filed his request. His part of the diocese was East Wight and so, he thought, his request could have been filed either under E or W. He hoped he wasn’t languishing in W. I sent a terse reply saying that I did know my alphabet and he would be getting his visit when the Bishop was good and ready – only I did manage to use more pastoral language than that. Back came a reply by return. He hadn’t meant any discourtesy – he was just following the example of the widow in today’s gospel. I had to give him full marks for knowing his Bible and putting Jesus’ teaching into effect, although I think Jesus might have had something to say to him about his motivation.
But this parable of the widow isn’t about grinding God down until he gives in to our petitions for a quiet life – that’s the human response of the judge whose only concern was for himself. This story of the widow is about our relationship with God in prayer; the place where we engage with God, drift away from him, come back to him, struggle with him, rest in him, rejoice in him, grow in him.
Because it is where we engage with God, prayer can sometimes feel like going 10 rounds with him. Whether it’s hammering away with the same request or struggling as Jacob did, a spiritual wrestling with God, if not a physical fight.
Jacob was very worried. He was frightened. He was on his way to meet his brother Esau whom he had cheated of his father’s blessing and Jacob was fearing the worst. He was not expecting a warm reception. He had prepared the ground as best he could by sending on ahead gifts for Esau but that was no guarantee that his prayer to God would be answered, the prayer he had offered just before he set out – that God would deliver him from Esau.
Jacob did receive the answer to his prayer but probably not in the way he expected. God and Jacob wrestled with one another and Jacob had the disjointed hip to show for it. We can come away from an encounter with God feeling bruised and battered because there are no holds barred when it comes to facing God. But God is ever faithful and merciful and Jacob emerged from his one to one with God with a new name, indicating a fresh start, and with God’s blessing. A blessing which redeemed the blessing Jacob had obtained by deception and set him on the path of reconciliation with his brother.
The story of the widow speaks of a God who is faithful, always there to listen, always there to help, but Jesus, knowing human nature all too well, questions whether we are so faithful. When we’ve got what we want, do we stay in touch with God or do we let him drift into the background until the next time we need him?
Struggling with God, sometimes, like the widow, knocking and knocking on his door which seems to stay firmly shut, but persisting nevertheless and not losing heart is the sign of a living relationship. Like our human relationships, our relationship with God will have sunshine and shadows. Because no relationship can stand still. It can’t become fossilised, otherwise it will become just that – a fossil.
St Paul knew all about persistence. At times he must have felt like Jacob, struggling not with God but against all those people and situations doing their best to thwart his purpose of making known the good news of our being drawn back into relationship with God in and through Jesus. And St Paul knew that those working with him would need encouragement to stay the course. So he writes to Timothy and in his words we can hear him encouraging us also in our ministry and mission today.
As much today as in Paul’s time, the itching ears need to be released from the earplugs feeding them a bit of this and a bit of that as suits the life style of the moment and be tuned into the truth that is real and lasting; that all the hopes and longings of the people to whom those ears are attached will be satisfied in God alone. God is patient and we need to be patient in those times when it would be all too easy to give up. St Paul encourages us, but most of all we find encouragement and renewed strength if, in the words of the old song, we take it to the Lord in prayer.
Often we won’t see or know the effect of our ministry, whether it’s clergy conducting a wedding, a baptism or a funeral for families who are not churchgoers, whether it’s a conversation in the street, whether it’s getting involved in local organisations, whether it’s in our workplace, we probably won’t see changes overnight or even longer term but as witnesses to knowing our purpose in life to be rooted and grounded in Christ we can and do touch people’s lives.
Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart
Prayer is the place to work it all through, to acknowledge the struggle and sometimes our despondency. That’s where we open up to God the joys and the sorrows of our ministry and where we receive his encouragement and assurance that he is with us every step of the way as we work to bring in his kingdom. Amen.