This is a typed sermon with some highlighting and underlining in yellow. It is a sermon from 22 Pentecost and was preached in October of 1986. Technically, Luke 18 is now a part of 19 Pent C in the RCL.
There are three stories in this sermon: one about Yogi Berra and the World Series, one about a soldier in WWII, and another about a Sunday School teacher and one of the students, named Joey.
THERE WILL BE AN ANSWER: - 22 Pent - 10/19/1986 - Luke 18
Here is the text of the sermon, obtained via OCR from Google Docs
“THERE WILL BE AN ANSWER” 22 Pentecost (10/19/86) Luke 18:1 (v.1)
And Jesus told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.
MAY THE WORDS OF MY MOUTH….
During World Series time, I can’t help but tell a baseball story. It was the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs–the score was tied. The catcher was Yogi Berra. In the middle of all of this tension, up comes the next batter, pauses and makes the sign of the cross on home plate with his bat. Yogi (also a Roman Catholic) leaned forward, dusted off the plate once more and said to the batter, “Why don’t we let God just watch this game?” I guess that may be good theology when we think how involved God would be in the outcome of a baseball game…but it is terrible when applied to the way we live our lives. If God is merely a spectator in our lives, and our prayers just empty words, then we are in real trouble. We are so busyoften we feel we just have no time to pray. And when we do pray, our minds wander, and we seem to just go through the motions.
Jesus knows our problem with prayer…our desire for quick answers and for our will to be done….so, HE TOLD A STORY. It was a story that is hard for us to understand–about a widow and a crooked judge. One of our problems with this story is that we try to ride this parable too far, and it takes us places that Jesus did’nt intend for us to go. If I can compare parables to horses–there are some that can be ridden all day and continue to carry us faithfully on (Prodigal Son, Seeds & Soils); then again, there are some that are only intended to take us to a close designation, and all sorts of problems crop up if we don’t know when to get off. This is one of those parables, and Luke even gives us a clue to our destination: ‘a story to the effect that we ought always to pray and not lose heart.’ PERIOD. If we ride any further, we get into all sorts of dry gulches, like “Is God like a crooked judge?, or “Can I get what I want from God if I just pester God enough. The story takes us as far as we need to go–by showing us someone who does not lose heart, who is persistent in her pleas, who asks with a sense of urgency, and whose pleas are answered.
God wants us to be people of prayer. Jesus gladly helped the disciples when they asked, “Lord, teach us to pray’. God doesn’t want prayer to be something we resort to only in times of crisis. It is more like the shoes of a Christian than a parachute. Prayer can carry us through each walk of life rather than to be our emergency pack, Otherwise we might end up like the young soldier in Italy in World War II. He jumped into a foxhole just as bullets passed overhead. He dug himself deeper into the hole and his hands felt sometihing metal. As he rubbed the dirt off, he recognized a small silver crucifix left by a previous occupant. Just then someone else dived into the foxhole with him. It was a chaplain, and the young soldier held out the crucifix and said, l’Boy, am I glad to see you! How do you work this thing?’ Like that crucifix, prayer is not to be saved just for some emergency.
Prayer grows out of faith–faith that God is in control, faith that God will keep his promises. We pray “Thy Kingdom Come” in confidence that this will happen. We pray “Thy Will be Done” and work so that we will be part of the answer to that prayer. When things become difficult, we do not shrug our shoulders and give up, but (like Jacob wrestling with God) we continue to persevere in our prayers. A few verses before our text today, Jesus says, ‘the Kingdom of God is within you” it is not easily seen so that others can say, “Look! Here it is!” or “LookI! There it is!” Faith involves much more than a valiant prayer in time of trouble. It means praying for our children every day, praying for peace every day (not just when there is a super-power summit meeting). Faith involves a daily prayer for health and food and all that we need, not just when we are threatened with a shortage of these good things.
Prayer is also an expression of hope In Christ we have a hope which will not fail us, and prayer is our way of letting God know the things which we look forward to by God’s grace. We pray for the things that are going to come and seek to grow in our understanding of what is coming. ONE LAST STORY… A S.s. teacher asked one of the five year olds to pray before, their snack time, which was animal crackers. His prayer began..?Lord, thank you for mommy, and daddy, and brothers and sisters and grandpas and grandmas, and thanks for these animal crackers, and….(silence). Soon everybody was getting edgy, and the teacher finally said, ‘Joey, is there anything wrong?’ He asked, “Are we going to have anything to drink?” The teacher said “No”. and Joey bowed his head again and said “Amen.” Once he knew what was coming he knew what to pray about. In the closing verses of the Gospel text, Jesus tells us that he is coming again and asks the question: ‘When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?'. That is a reminder for us to be like that persistent woman…daily pouring out our hearts to God, in season and out of season…hopefully looking to the future when God will vindicate the elect…waiting for the answer to our prayers which will surely come.
THERE WILL BE AN ANSWER…as we approach the end of another church year we are reminded that the question is not whether God) will be faithful, but whether we will be faithful as we await Christ’s return and serve in the Kingdom of God (invisible as it is at times). At times our prayers will seem to fall on deaf ears, and it is precisely at those times that we are to to be like the widow in the story…to keep on praying and hoping, not giving up hope. God will bring in the kingdom he has promised, and in the meantime, we are not to lose heart. Believing God’s promises, persisting in faith and in prayer, we are God’s gift to a world of widows and searchers and poor and powerless people. KEEP ON PRAYING…. THERE WILL BE AN ANSWER…DO NOT LOSE HEART.
MAY THE PEACE OF GOD WHICH PASSES ALL UNDERSTANDING KEEP YOUR HEARTS AND MINDS IN CHRIST JESUS. AMEN.