Rev. Cn. Richard Hogue Jr.
May the words of my lips on the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, my Lord, my rock. Please be seated. So, I felt compelled to talk about the gospel through the lens of prayer this morning.
“Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” I love the opening for this passage because it tells me that Jesus understands our humanity. That Jesus has compassion for our finitude and our fear. That Jesus gives us grace in the midst of our doubts and hope in the face of our fears. and he knows that we need prayer. I’ll get back to that in a little bit.
But Jesus gives us the example of the widow and the unjust judge. The unjust judge has no fear of God nor respect or people. He’s a secular judge, a municipal minister, if you will, and he clearly impedes justice rather than executing it, may even delight in that. And much like the rich man in Lazarus and the rich man’s parable, this judge is the opposite of all of Luke’s values. Remember the rich man in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. What’d we say? He did not share. He did not care. And he did not want to be fair. This judge is exactly the same way. And he couldn’t be bothered. Or could he?
Enter the widow. The Lukan symbol for the church. Poor but exceedingly charitable, persistent in her prayers and petitions. Injuriously aggrieved and yet unafraid to speak the truth, she not only advocates but participates in changing the world around her. The unjust judge knows his problems. And you can fill in your own contemporary parallels here, folks. “I fear no God. I fear no man. But man, this woman’s annoying. And if I don’t relent, if I don’t give restitution, she’s going to wear me out.” What a symbol for the church to be in grief and yet continually pushing for a better world. What a symbol for each of us in times like we live in now. You can think of your own unjust judges. I don’t need to tell you who they are. Wake up, America. But if you are persistent, widow, church, things can change. Because at the end of the day, I think Jesus knew what he was saying about this, the woman annoying, pestering, prayerfully petitioning the unjust judge. She’s looking for, yes, peace for herself, but she knows deep down he needs peace, too. And she denies him that. Not not, not, in some aggressive, retaliatory way. No, she agitates. She agitates for the change that she knows needs to happen. And ultimately, he wants peace, too. He doesn’t want to be worn down. And he will grant her restitution just so she will cease her petitioning.
“And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him night and day?” Jesus is speaking to us, church. Jesus is speaking to that widow. I love this gospel passage. “And will not God grant to his chosen ones who cry to him night and day.” I think about when Luke the writer is putting this together somewhere between 70 and 90 CE. And if it was as early as 70 CE, the writer of Luke just saw the temple in Jerusalem get destroyed, demolished, soaked in blood by Romans who have no care for holy places for the Jewish people. The center of the faith of Jesus had just been wiped out by a foreign power.
Luke knows that it doesn’t always feel like justice is propelling forward. Luke knows, in fact, sometimes it feels like it’s going backward. Do you know anything about that, America? And Luke knows that we need persistence. Jesus knows that we need persistence in prayer. It’s been a while since Jesus died and rose again for the writer of Luke. Ain’t nothing quick about it, he’s found out. No final judgment, no angels descending from on high, no second coming. But Luke knows what it is to hold faith. Luke and Jesus want us to know that justice may be slow in appearing, but it will nevertheless come, and it will be swift and decisive when it does come. And Luke knows that we can grow weary because of the world in the face of that weight. But Jesus through the example of the widow invites us to keep at it, to not grow weary.
And then even challenges us at the end of this passage asks the church directly asks his disciples directly, “When the son of man comes will he find faith on earth?” Widow, church, you are the keeper of that faith so I’m going to take you to confirmation class for a couple minutes, okay. If we’re told to pray continually, if we are told to remain in prayer, to be vigilant in prayer. Oh, I like this. If we are going to be a group who does care, who does share, who is fair, we need to remain in prayer. Let’s go ahead and say that together. Share, care, be fair, remain in prayer. All right, that’s my summary of Luke, the entire gospel. All right.
So, I’m going to read to you from page 856 of the Book of Common Prayer. Page 856. This is from the section, if you were to pick it up, a Book of Common Prayer, might be the least flipped through section of the entire prayer book, but it’s super helpful. Little Thomas Aquinus here. It gives questions and it gives answers. So, this section is from prayer and worship in the catechism. And I’m going to read to you 11 questions and 11 answers about prayer and worship. This is your church speaking.
“What is prayer? Prayer is responding to God by thought and by deeds with or without words.” With or without words. Notice the intentionality of action there. What is Christian prayer?
“Christian prayer is response to God the Father through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.” We are in in the dance in the parousia with the holy trinity. “What prayer did Christ teach us? Our Lord gave us the example of prayer known as the Lord’s prayer which we will be saying right before our Eucharist. What are the principal kinds of prayer?” Now this is this is one confirmation class folks that that we should know. “The principal kinds of prayer are adoration, praise, thanksgiving, patience, oblation, intercession, and petition.”
“What is adoration? Adoration is the lifting up of the heart and mind to God, asking nothing but to enjoy God’s presence. Why do we praise God? We praise God not to obtain anything but because God’s Being,” and that’s a capital B, “God’s Being draws praise from us. For what do we offer thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is offered to God for all the blessings of this life, for our redemption, and whatever draws us closer to God. What is penitence? In penitence, we confess our sins and make restitution where possible with the intention to amend ourselves,” to change ourselves, and to change the world around us is my editorial comment there.
“What is a prayer of oblation? Oblation is an offering of ourselves, our lives, and labors in union with Christ for the purposes of God.” You all know it’s pledge campaign kickoff day. I’ll be returning to that one momentarily. “What are intercession and petition? Intercession brings before God the needs of others. In petition, we present our own needs that God’s will may be done.”
“What is corporate worship? In corporate worship, we unite ourselves with others to acknowledge the holiness of God, to hear God’s word, to offer prayer, and to celebrate sacraments.” I want to start with that corporate worship, please before getting back to oblations. You’re doing it. You’re doing it right now. You are praying together. You are in corporate worship. You are embodying not just the physical presence of Christ, but the spirit of God as God planted it here in San Diego this morning, right now, right here today. You are checking the box, church, on that one. Good job.
But because it is pledge season and this is the kickoff, I’m going to talk about oblation for a moment here. Okay, the prayers of oblation. So oblation, an offering of ourselves, our lives, our labors in union with Christ for the purposes of God. We often talk about time, talent, and treasure in the church. What we have to give of ourselves, of our lives, of our livelihood. These are sacrificial gifts in as much as we can make them. I just got a mortgage. I know how that goes. But this is our opportunity to pray in a way that supports the community, that combines our resources in a way that we could never accomplish on our own. And look at what our forebears did for us by putting together this space where we can feel all the other prayers that are mentioned. Adoration, worship, penitence.
Think about the ministries that you might be involved in or that might have touched your lives. Whether it’s a Eucharistic visitor, whether you were here for either of the funerals yesterday, by the way, calendar situation. We’re never doing that again. I hope. Um, two, two funerals in one day was a lot, folks. Weddings happen here. We’re about to have a couple of baptisms. The touch points in the life of the community, your lives, my life are a result of our collective prayers of oblation offered to God and each other.
And I want to add that oblation is an act of defiance in an age when so many of us are told that Christianity is for the wealthy and the powerful, that salvation is not about the opening of the world but the closing of it. It’s an act of defiance to those who would twist the cross to control a country because widow because church you are persistent. You offer your prayers. You offer your oblations. You offer your time, talent, and treasure to give others a peak into the reality that Jesus died and rose again so that the world never had to be the same again.
And so here we are in defiance of the world, but more appropriately in oblation to the God who gives us life and breath. Giving to each other here at St. Paul’s doesn’t just end here at St. Paul’s, though, because those prayers of oblation spill over into the rest of San Diego. From Ocean Beach to El Centro, from Chula Vista to Oceanside to New York to places in Liberia, Taiwan, and that’s to say nothing beyond the wider Episcopal Church, all of our other siblings in faith, people of faith across the world, who may worship differently than us, who may look differently than us, but who nonetheless also offer prayers of oblation to open up the world for others so that the widow might be heard. I’ll end by saying just a couple of things, in the shadow of Jesus and the gospel, and the cross and the persistent widow. Pray continually, give generously, and we will see the world change. Amen.
