19th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 24C

19th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 24C October 20, 2019 I was a brand-new, baby priest, and I was sitting in my annual appointment with the bishop, a time that I later began calling my “well-baby check-up.” We had dispensed with the small talk, and he sat there with his blank yellow legal pad, and his face kindly, he asked me, “So, how’s your prayer life?” I remember thinking, “Wait, I didn’t know this question would be on the test!” Every year I would go back and I would squirm uncomfortably, knowing the inevitable question was coming, and not knowing how to answer it. “So, how’s you prayer life?” “Fine?” “It could be better?” “I have two small children and scarcely the opportunity to go to the bathroom by myself, so I think it’s safe to say it’s almost non-existent.” Year after year, I would sit in his office, and he would persistently ask me that same question, “so, how’s your prayer life?” And I found that over the years, my understanding of prayer shifted, and I began to look forward to that question, to see what surprises my answer might reveal to myself in any given year. Our passage from Luke’s gospel today is yet another parable. In this reading, the writer of Luke sets the stage saying, “Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” Starts off good enough. But then the actual parable is a very short story about two people with very ambiguous motives. There is a widow who continues to nag a judge to “grant [her] justice against her opponent.” (We learned in our study of this parable this past week that the word translated for justice can also be translated as “vengeance.” It kind of changes how you look at this poor, helpless widow who is demanding of the judge that he grant her vengeance against her opponent.) And then there is the judge himself, who is a strange mix of self-interested and self-aware. He continues to refuse the widow’s request until finally he says to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" (The Greek word that is translated here as “wear me out” is actually a boxing term which literally means “give me a black eye,” perhaps showing some quirky humor on Jesus’ part.) Then the passage picks back up again with Luke’s commentary, which further complicates this short, quirky and morally ambiguous parable by bringing in issues not just of prayer but of justice and of faith. Are we supposed to understand that a part of faith includes tenacious, almost nagging prayer? That through our persistence we can affect God, change God’s mind, and that this is what we are to aspire to? So, how’s your prayer life? Years ago, I got to hear the newly retired Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold speak, and his words did more for me and my understanding of prayer than anything else I have ever encountered. He quoted Paul in Romans 8:26-27: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” And then Bishop Griswold went on to say of this that the Spirit is always at work, praying within us, below our consciousness. He said our very urge to pray comes when this ongoing prayer of the Spirit within us bubbles up, like a well-spring of life-giving water, into our consciousness, encouraging us, then to pray, to be in relationship with God.i So, how’s your prayer life? What I found was that the bishop’s annual question invited me to pay more attention to the ways that prayer was already bubbling up in me, to pay attention to the times when I actually paid attention to the Spirit’s prayers at work within me. Another way of considering this in light of this gospel passage is to ask myself, “am I giving as much attention to the Holy Spirit’s prayer that is already at work within me as I would to a grievance I wanted righted or vengeance that I sought?” Prayer is about creating time and space for listening. It is already happening, already at work deep within you. You do not have to do anything but pay attention and to be aware that this ongoing prayer often reveals itself in unexpected ways. In that same season of my life, I read a book titled Natural Spirituality by a woman named Joyce Rockwood Hudson. (She’s an Episcopalian who founded the Natural Spirituality Center in Athens, GA.) In this book, she writes about the different ways that the Holy Spirit tries to get our attention in this work of her ongoing prayer within us. Hudson writes about how sometimes when a song is stuck in our head, that can actually be a way the Spirit is trying to get our attention. Right after I read this, I was working in the church office and in a horrible mood, and suddenly I realized that I had the song, “The itsy-bitsy spider” stuck in my head. I became curious as to what on earth the Holy Spirit might be trying to get me to pay attention to with that particular song, and as I reviewed my morning, I remembered that MM and I had been singing that song with new and creative lyrics and motions as I had been driving her to pre-school that day. That memory transported me back to an earlier part of my day where I was fully present and taking pure delight in what I was doing in that moment, and it helped me get out of my funk and get back on the track of being attentive to the workings of God in my life and in the world around me. So, how’s your prayer life? Your invitation this week is to consider this question; to examine the ways that you make space in your life to listen to the prayer that is already being prayed in your soul by the Holy Spirit. Pay attention to what songs are stuck in your head this week, both literally and figuratively, and follow the path to return your attention to the workings of God in your life and in the world around you. i. From my sermon preached at Mediator-Redeemer, McComb-Magnolia on the 21st Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24C) on October 21, 2007