Prayer as Holy Nagging?

22  Pentecost, Cp24, October 20, 2013

Jeremiah 31:27-34 Psalm 119:97-104

 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5   Luke 18:1-8a

Lectionary Link

   Welcome to our weekly session of dealing with puzzles from the Bible.  Perhaps one might regard the Bible to be too out of date to be the regular choice for reading pleasure.  However, we have inherited this book as the inspired textbook of our tradition and so it is “required” reading on Sundays and is recommended for our daily reading as well.

  How do we regard this requirement to read the Bible when it now exists in the midst of an ocean of other literature?  The Bible has come into disfavor because of the ways in which Christians have used the Bible.  Why cannot we regard the Bible to be an inventory of human situations that bear universal patterns for us to look to for insights for our lives?  Too many Bible preachers regard the Bible to be a museum of final human products that we go to revere as having final inspiration.  I would say that the Bible is inspired, but not yet.  Why, because the future of Bible reading is still open.  The Bible includes the inspired principles of love and justice which need to find future occasions of application.  Remember too that the Bible as an inventory of human situations means that all of the inventory is not applicable in all places at all time.  Just because we have a wardrobe full of clothes does not mean we try to wear them all at one; we chose the apparel for the current occasion of our lives.

  Jesus was a wisdom teacher and he used parables as an indirect method of teaching.  In the parable that we have read for today, Jesus encodes within a human scenario a common human condition of need.

  A widow needs justice; the judge who can provide justice does not adjudicate justice but the widow just keeps nagging the judge until the judge is worn down and finally rules for justice even when he is not otherwise inclined to do so.

  Herein is a situation universal to humanity.   It is a fact that there is an uneven distribution of injustice throughout the world.  And when we are on the receiving side of injustice it hurts.  Injustice can be so prolonged that it begins to gain power to unseat justice as the normal condition of life.   From the situation of injustice we can easily give up and begin to think that since injustice is so common that injustice becomes what is regarded to be what is normal about life.

  And this is the petitionary situation for the practice of prayer.  Jesus provided the punchline of the parable before he told the parable:  We should always pray and not lose heart.

  But Jesus what is the use of prayer?  Why should we not take up armed resistance?   Why should we not become terrorists to strike out against injustice?   Do we not have the right to oppose with our lives the practice of injustice?  Is not prayer just rolling over and accepting injustice?

  Do you see how the parable of Jesus anthropomorphizes the situation of injustice?  When we experience things that do not seem to fair to the normalcy of justice, health and goodness we can feel powerless to do anything.  The situation of injustice seems to have a personality to it.  We take all of the events in our lives personally.  It seems as though all of the free agents in life account for the situations of uneven justice and injustice to occur in life.  It is very hard not to take life personally but in situation of oppression by other human beings, we take life doubly personally.

  And what is our personal response to the uneven situations of injustice that occur in life and in our lives in particular?  Jesus said that we should pray always and not lose heart.  It seems as though prayer is the continual expression of nagging.

  Is this really what prayer is, a perpetual holy nagging to get what we want?  Holy nagging?  Is that what the prayer life is all about?  From the Gospel parable aftermath it does not seem that such holy nagging necessarily has timely outcomes from the point of view of the petitioner.   God, we need help and justice now!  Well, just keep nagging and it may or may not come but you are obligated to keep asking for justice.  And the future Son of Man stands to us as one who guarantees justice.

  What do we think about this holy nagging theory of prayer?

  First of all, what this parable acknowledges is the conditions of freedom in this world which accounts for the uneven spread of justice and injustice.  Judges have power and authority over helpless widows.  But just because there is freedom in this world for injustice to occur, that does not mean that we have to accept injustice as the recommendable condition of life.  And this is where the significance of holy nagging comes in; we must protest injustice continuously and not let it be asserted as the normal condition of life.

  Where slavery and discrimination were once regarded to be the norm in our country, voices of justice arose to challenge the status quo of injustice.  Nagging prayers actually became a very great Civil War to challenge injustice.  In more recent times the nagging prayer of peaceful and non-violent resistance became the practice of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who kept up nagging against injustice.

  Prayer as perpetual nagging against the practice of injustice is a worthy occupation.  With such nagging we do not let ourselves accept injustice as normal.  With nagging prayer we create energy of resistance against the practice of injustice.  With nagging prayer we hope to wear out the opponents who themselves are enslaved by their very oppressive practice of injustice because ignorance has often become the accepted status quo of those who practice injustice.  “What’s   the fuss about, haven’t we always done it this way?   Women voting?  People of color riding wherever they want in the bus?  Gay and lesbian people full human rights?   Holy nagging for justice hopefully will eventually bring a fuller experience of justice.

  Prayer as holy nagging in situations where goodness, health, love and justice are not experienced is a witness both within the one who prays and within their settings that health, goodness, love and justice are what is humanly normal; and we are going to protest everything to the contrary with our nagging prayers.

  My friends, let us not be ashamed of our prayers as holy nagging today, especially if we are asking that this world experience the meanings of health, goodness, love and justice today.  With holy nagging we will never accept illness, evil, hatred and injustice as the normal conditions of life.  With holy nagging we will rally ourselves to practice justice and demand justice for all in our world.

  So, let us go forth and do some holy nagging today.  Amen.