What’s the Point of Prayer? Luke 18:1-8 Rev. Jenny M. McDevitt October 20, 2019

This story is at the heart of one of the clarity waking up one day in February, 2017, to most honest questions I am asked —“What’s hear the news that a hate crime had been the point of prayer?” And in an age where the committed just down the street in Olathe, phrase “thoughts and prayers” has become Kansas, where many of my church members common currency, the question has gotten lived. Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani louder and louder. And now, what often worked for Garmin, developing aviation happens is that when someone speaks of technology. thoughts and prayers, a response comes back Both of them considered it the job of that goes something like this: “Never mind their dreams. They stopped to get a drink after thoughts and prayers. We want action and work one day, when a gunman entered the bar, change.” looked around the room, yelled “Get out of my I wish we did not so often see those country!” and opened fire. Both Kuchibhotla things as mutually exclusive. Because when evil and Madasani were shot. Ian Grillot, a stranger in this world crops up, I want us to be people to the two men, was shot when he rushed in to who respond, who do everything in our power help. All three were taken to the hospital. to make sure whatever it is doesn’t happen Kuchibhotla died later that evening. again. And at the very same time, when evil in Kuchibhotla’s wife — Sunayana Dumala this world crops us, I want us to be people who — when she was interviewed, she said she had do not hesitate to bring it to God and say, asked her husband not that long ago if they “Help. Please.” should move to another country where they Jesus told the disciples a parable about might be safer. He assured her they would be their need to pray always and not to lose heart. okay. In the midst of her grief, Dumala made a He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who demand of the government: she wants a neither feared God nor had respect for people. response to this crime and others like it. “I need In that city there was a widow who kept coming an answer,” she said. “I need an answer for to him…” everyone out there. Not just for my husband, As many of you know, I used to live in but for everyone, all those people of any race.” Kansas City, and I remember with remarkable Page 1 of 4

“I need an answer,” she said. Does that every door doesn’t open for you, you aren’t sound familiar? In that city there was a widow faithful enough. I suppose some might think who kept coming and saying, “Grant me that’s what it says, but that’s not what it means. justice…” Because here’s the thing — the widow in this Here’s some of what we know about the story is lauded for her persistence. But Gospel of Luke. While some of the other persistence comes only when it’s needed; when gospels were written to Jewish communities, despite your best efforts it isn’t working out yet. Luke seems to be written primarily to Gentiles And you only need encouragement to keep … non-Jews. It is a gospel that wants its readers going, when someone else understands that to understand that God offers life and love, you might be ready to give up. hope and salvation, to Jews and Gentiles alike. I think that widow was met with an awful It is a gospel written to include those who are lot of silence for an awful long time. I suspect thinking they might be left out — and as far as this champion pray-er said a whole lot of Luke is concerned, that includes not just the prayers that got a whole lot of nothing in Gentiles, but everyone else at the fringes, too: response. So hear this word: if you are praying women and children, the poor and the broken with all your might, and it feels like little more and the stranger. than talking into the wind? You’re not doing it It starts all the way back in the first wrong. I promise. chapter, with the Magnificat, Mary’s prayer to We aren’t told specifics of the widow’s God celebrating that the hungry will be filled, words because her words are not the important the poor will not go wanting, the weak will be part of her prayer. Her persistence is the made strong. That theme continues throughout important part. She insists on justice, which the rest of the gospel, and it is throughout the means, she insists that what is wrong, be made rest of the gospel that Jesus follows his mama’s right. And that what is broken, be made whole lead: he prays to God. In fact, by Luke’s again. That kind of prayer? That kind of account, Jesus spends more time praying than determined, honest, faithful prayer? It can he does anything else. He who is justice change anything. It can even change us. incarnate? His most predominant action is It was only a week before the shooting in prayer. Olathe that I said goodbye to my friend, Scott. This is instructive to me. And helpful. It was only five weeks before that that Scott was Because I have to confess to you, that even diagnosed with angiosarcoma. It’s a cancer that while a significant portion of my job is to be with is as aggressive as it is rare, and it was a you and pray with you, there are moments when situation that seemed as unfair as they come. not being able to do … more … makes me feel Scott was a Presbyterian pastor, the same age incredibly powerless. Not something more like as me. He was married to Lara, his wife, who he grab a scalpel and scrub in on the surgery; I just first asked out when they were 15 years old. often find myself wishing that my prayers could Four small children completed their family. If yield predictable (and positive) results. you want evidence that sometimes our prayers That’s why I need this parable. There are receive only silence in response, this is it. some unhelpful ways to read it, interpretations Despite the prayers of many, including that suggest if you don’t get what you want, if

Page 2 of 4 hundreds of other Presbyterian pastors, which something of our own reflection, which calls is to say, a whole bunch of professional forth our best self — because if we see our own pray-ers, his condition worsened, rapidly and beloved reflection in God’s face … we cannot painfully. help but recognize the beloved reflection of During one of my less eloquent others, too. moments of prayer for my friend, I told God, In that way, when pray, even our most “Sometimes you make really bad choices,” individual, personal prayers … we are pushed, even though not one fiber of my being believes inevitably and irrevocably, toward one another. God chose for Scott or anyone else for that To see ourselves in God’s image is to see matter to get sick and suffer. Lara admitted her everyone else that way, too. Of course it is. prayers started in that same place. But over “Our Father,” we pray, and those words alone time, she said, as she continued to pray for her bind us to one another, siblings every one of us. beloved, her prayers began to shift. “We need So maybe what we need to remember is that a miracle” became “We need pain rather than prayer yielding a desired answer, management.” “Please, no intubation” became prayer yields a divine connection. It is the way “Please, make it possible for just a few last we connect to God. I have no earthly idea what words.” “Give us as much time as possible” the mechanics of it look like, but maybe that is became “Grant him a quick conclusion.” “Let as it should be, for prayer is the very stuff of us keep him here with us” became “Let him go heaven, bright, shining, threads that hold us home to you.” together, connect us to God, and bind us to On February 13, death reared its ugly one another. head. Already confused and intermittently I don’t know about you, but if that is all unconscious, Scott still knew what mattered that could be said for prayer, I’d still find it well most. In their last exchange, Lara asked him, worth our while. I no longer remember who it “Who do you belong to?” And despite was, but someone said a prayer is simply words everything happening in his body and in his uttered by someone who has realized that life mind, Scott replied, “I belong to God.” Finding can be overwhelmingly hard. herself in that moment was not the answer Lara This story today — it isn’t about one had wanted; but it was the answer she needed. persistent widow. It’s about three. We don’t Knowing that Scott knew he was going to be hear her name in the scripture reading, but okay. sometimes her name is Lara, and sometimes her Prayer has a way of changing us. Prayer name is Sunayana Dumala. And I don’t know can change our hearts and our hopes, because what her name will be tomorrow or next week interacting with God in these most vulnerable or the week after that, but she — or he — or moments? Whether you are saying “Thank you” they — will be there. I do know that. T.S. Eliot or “I hate you,” prayer is the way we interact once wrote, “we are only undefeated because with God. It is one of the ways we look right into we go on trying.” And the entirety of scripture, the very face of God, and appeal to the very from Genesis to Revelation, bears witness to heart of God. Because to encounter the face the same, through the grace of God and the and heart of God … is to see that we are love of Jesus Christ. beloved, and made in God’s image. We see

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So friends, keep trying. Keep knocking on the door, until your hand is sore and your knuckles bleed. Keep demanding that what is broken, be made whole, and what is wrong, be made right. Pray without ceasing. Pray without ceasing, because “connection with God is our first concern, our worthiest art, our best resource, and our [deepest] joy.”1 It is our first defense and our last resort. Pray without ceasing, because maybe, just maybe, “prayer will brood over our modern disorder as the Spirit once brooded over the void,” and maybe, just maybe, it will change us enough — it will stitch us together with enough shimmering, golden thread — that “[we] will, [indeed], summon forth a new world.”2

11 From Prayer, by George Buttrick, Abingdon Press, 1977. For those who may not know: George Buttrick was the second Senior Pastor of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. 2 Buttrick. Page 4 of 4