What happens when God says ‘No’?
Our liturgical gurus will often divide the gospel of the year into the chunks we see for very good reasons. Sometimes their logic is hidden from us. Other times like today it's a little easier to understand.
We’ve got two stories, both about prayer, nestling side by side.
The first one is about the widow who does not give up.
She wants justice against her adversary. Maybe it was a feud about the tree that overhung her fence, or maybe her husband’s will was being fiercely contested by someone who hadn’t been in touch for years.
Whatever the biff, she consistently and politely continues to go to the judge and put her case before him.
It seems the judge couldn’t really give a dingbat about the widow and her petition, but in order to make his own life more comfortable he caves in and grants her request. The moral of the story is ‘Keep at it. Don’t give up.’ Politely and persistently bother the Almighty. This is a story about doing prayer.
The second story is also about prayer. But this one is about attitude. The state of heart when we pray.
The beginning almost sounds like a joke. Two guys go into a synagogue… One has a self-aggrandising attitude and waxes loudly about what a good boy he is and how woeful other people are, especially the other guy who happens to be praying in the Lady chapel.
‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
The other guy in the Lady chapel is well aware of his shortcomings and … ‘He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
So those who organise our lectionary have given the preacher lots of material on prayer. It’s about persistence and it is about attitude. Both are necessary and vital.
And it’s very easy to give up when things don’t go our way. When God doesn’t seem to have our 64 precious things on His agenda. It’s also very easy to feel smug and gooey when we are tucked up in our own parish church and we haven’t done any self examination or if we have, we have been misguided, done our theological sums wrong and come to a false answer about how we stand in God’s eyes.
My thinking is that if we get the attitude right, then everything else falls into place.
We do believe in a merciful, compassionate and forgiving God, but we must always be honest with ourselves and honest with Him.
First, bring your contrition and integrity, and in that spirit offer everything else. I strongly suspect that our prayers are sometimes not answered, not because of what we ask, but the way we ask. Any parent is more likely to accede to a child's polite and courteous request, rather than the self righteous, self-entitled, temper tantrum of ‘It’s my right.’
So prayer is not just about ‘doing’… it is also about ‘being’.
Now, all that's fairly straightforward and tickety-boo. I’m sure you have heard it all before. But there is another harder question skulking in the background here.
What if …sometimes… God says ‘No’ or at the very least He seems to say ‘No’, or it feels like He says ‘No’. Ask any parent who is in the ICU unit of the Royal Children's Hospital today if they feel like their prayer is being answered.
What I offer is a random hotchpotch of thoughts and ponderings.
Sometimes, like the widow in the gospel, the answer is ‘not yet.’ Sometimes we have to wait a long time for healing or help or whatever it is we are asking for.
Sometimes the answer is not what we expected. The solution to our dilemma ABC may not be DEF, but actually 5.6 #! The answer is in a different dimension altogether. Something we never thought of.
Sometimes God helps those who help themselves. What if it’s not about God bestirring himself and waving a magic wand? The answer might well be that God is waiting for us to get our stuff together and do what has been blitheringly obvious for a very long time.
And sometimes God’s will is not done. It is not God’s will that people are caught up in war, or their life is ended by someone else. The gift of free will by our loving God means that folk are free to choose sin, which inevitably harms people in all sorts of ways. It’s why we pray ‘Your will be done’.
Something else I thought of while trying to cobble this interminable homily together. We all like it when God says ‘Yes’ and that’s all yummy and scrumptious. But sometimes Father should and must say a polite, but firm ‘No’. We may never know why and it might seem harsh and brutally unfair, but ‘No’ is just as valid an answer as ‘Yes’.
And if ‘No’ seems cruel, unreasonable and barbaric, then perhaps a bit of quiet reflection before a crucifix might help to put things in perspective. Or perhaps we might start again like the guy in the Lady Chapel.
‘Lord be merciful to me, a sinner.’