“Are Your Prayers in the Dead-Letter Department?”
Luke 18:1-8
Have you ever heard about the Postal Service’s “Dead Letter Department?”
That’s the place where mail goes when it’s not clearly addressed or doesn’t have enough postage and the sender’s identity can’t be figured out.
There the letter is opened and it is examined for clues as to where the letter came from.
If the return address can’t be found the letter is destroyed.
It never reaches its destination and any requests made by the writer remain unanswered!
How about you?
Do you feel like your prayers end up in some kind of dead letter department?
Do you feel like your prayers never reach God?
If so, this parable is for you.
As we take a look at the New Testament it becomes obvious that Jesus was never afraid to ask things of God the Father.
He asked for wine at a wedding party.
He asked for more bread and fish to feed a crowd.
He asked God to heal the blind, the lame, the mute, and the possessed.
Jesus asked a lot of God.
And He never felt as if He were imposing.
And here in our Scripture Lesson, Jesus is telling us to do the same.
The problem, of course, is the identity of the “judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.”
Jesus is speaking here not of God, but of a human judge—and a rather cold and heartless one at that.
No doubt, it can be hard to knock on someone’s door.
That’s something many of us learned early in life—perhaps when we were trying to sell fund-raiser candy.
There we would stand, on the doorstep, wondering who was inside, wondering what kind of reception we’d get.
If there was a barking dog, that made it much worse.
And sometimes when you ring the doorbell; you don’t hear anything.
“Did the doorbell even ring? Does it work?” we might ask ourselves.
Then we might wonder, “Should I ring it again—or should I wait?
And if I ring it again, how long is the acceptable interval?”
Most of us who have been in that situation would probably agree: “Doorknockers are superior to doorbells.”
With a doorknocker you never have a question.
“Rap, rap, rap” on the brass plate, and if anyone is lurking inside, they have to hear that noise.
Jesus tells us about a woman who stands knocking on someone’s door: knocking and waiting, knocking and waiting, wondering if the judge will ever answer.
Now, Jesus doesn’t tell us that she is literally knocking on the door—but He does tell us that she “kept coming to him” saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”
This woman is a widow, and very likely lived in poverty.
In the male-dominated culture of that day, she had no social standing of her own and no right to file a complaint in court, unless a man did it for her.
The law of Israel said that judges were to take special pains to hear the complaints of people like this widow.
The Scriptures are very compassionate when it comes to the likes of her.
The first Chapter of Isaiah upholds this high ideal of justice: “…learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
It doesn’t appear, though, that this judge has read the Book—at least, not recently.
He’s a tough customer.
Some theologians speculate that he would have been a crook, a charlatan, a thoroughly corrupt person.
He was just out to make a buck.
And this woman had no money to pay him.
“She can knock on the door forever,” as far as the judge is concerned.
More than likely, this judge is a bureaucrat.
His desk is piled high with paper work, and this paperwork requires his stamp of approval.
It can be tough to be heard through a whole lot of paperwork.
Yet, here is this widow, standing on the bureaucrat’s doorstep.
Who does she think she is?
She just keeps pounding on the judge’s door!
And as time wears on, the judge’s resistance begins to falter.
It’s hard to sleep when you’re lying in bed with a pillow over your head and when you glance out the window and see all your neighbors’ lights going on, as they look out to see who’s causing all that racket.
Finally, the judge admits that he’s beaten.
“Though I have no fear of God and nor 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 translated here as “wear me out” is an old sports term.
It comes from the world of boxing.
It means to give somebody a black eye.
Jesus is painting a bit of a comical picture: the judge is afraid this poor widow might pop him with a right hook.
And in response, he’s thrown in the towel.
That would have brought a smile to the face of Jesus’ audience.
Certainly, they had their own horror stories of the dreaded bureaucracy!
But Jesus’ point here is not, “how to succeed in government.”
He’s only using the unjust judge as an example.
“Listen,” He says, “to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?”
This parable is a good example of what could be called the “if this is so, then so much more” story.
Jesus is saying, “If the most powerless widow you could imagine, who is at the very bottom of the world’s pecking order, can get her case heard—by a crooked judge—then will not our Loving Father willingly listen to every plea and petition of ours?”
“Is this what prayer is like?” Jesus is asking.
“No it isn’t,” is His reply, “though it may seem that way, sometimes.”
God is not like the unjust judge.
God listens.
God cares.
God responds.
Our prayers to God do not end up in the dead letter department.
But this is no reason to think we should expect to get whatever we pray for.
For example, often a father has to refuse the request of a child, because he knows that what the child asks for would hurt rather than help.
God is like that.
We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next hour, let alone the next week, or month, or year.
Only God sees time as a whole, and, therefore, only God knows what is good for us in the long run.
That is why Jesus says that we must never be discouraged in prayer.
And that is why He asked if human faith will stand the long delays before the Son of Man comes.
We will never grow weary in prayer and our faith will never falter if, after we have offered to God our prayers and requests, we add the perfect prayer, “Nevertheless, Your will be done.”
For prayer is not about changing the mind of God, but about opening our hearts to the will of God!!!
Prayer is not getting God to see it our way, but getting us to see it God’s way.
But what does that mean?
Again, Jesus taught us to pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.”
It’s about surrendering to God’s good and perfect will and trusting that God loves us and has our best interests in mind…no matter how bad the circumstances or how against our nature or will it might be.
Augustine asked, “Do we pray, ‘O God, make me pure—but not now?’”
It has been said that “our failures in prayer are most often due to the fact that our aspirations are halfhearted; we haven’t really made up our minds to ‘will with God one will’; we are instead ‘double-minded.’”
It’s like we pray, “Lead me, O God, except in the direction I don’t want to go.”
Or, “save me, O God, from the consequences of evil, but not from its pleasures.”
If we pray this way, instead of praying “in Jesus name” which means in the mind of Christ or “not my will but thine be done,” we are praying outside Jesus’ name.
In Philippians Paul tells us that we are to seek to have the mind of Christ.
So, when we pray, we should ask God to reveal God’s mind to us.
“Lord, there is a need. Teach me Your mind. Teach me how to pray about this.”
Suppose you are in a rowboat which is 15 feet from shore.
You throw your anchor ashore and pull yourself to the dock.
Now, what have you done?
Did you pull the land to you or did you pull yourself to the land?
Prayer works like that as well.
It brings us closer to God.
It is a means of grace, whereby we are brought closer to the mind of God.
Paul learned how to pray.
In 2 Corinthians Chapter 12 he prayed, “God, I have a thorn in my flesh.”
Three times Paul went to God and asked to be healed.
And there in God’s presence Paul began to seek the mind of Christ!
He quit asking to be healed, and he started asking for strength to bear the affliction for the glory of God!
God answered Paul’s prayer.
“To keep me from becoming conceited…there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me,” writes Paul.
“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.
But he said, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’… ‘For when I am weak, then I am strong’”
That is freedom.
That is answered prayer.
That is how to become stronger through prayer.
A little boy knelt down to say his bedtime prayers.
His parents heard him reciting the alphabet in very reverent tones.
When asked what he was doing, he replied, “I’m saying my prayers, but I can’t think of the exact words tonight.
So, I’m just saying all the letters.
God knows what I need, and He’ll put all the words together for me.”
In prayer, are we seeking Christ’s will?
Are we asking God to take our minds and make them more like God’s mind?
Are we asking the Holy Spirit to pray through us and for us?
Are we trusting that God has our best interests in mind?
It’s not easy.
Life is hard and God’s will is often not our will.
We get confused, lost, pulled in different directions.
We don’t know what to pray for or we pray for the wrong things—often with good intentions.
And so, we are to trust in the goodness and love of God.
That’s why Jesus told this parable, right?
He told the parable about our need to pray “always and not to lose heart.”
If we follow Jesus’ direction He assures us that God will grant us justice.
It may not be exactly the kind of justice we expect or exactly what we are asking for and it may not come as quickly as we would like, but it will be what is best.
Let us pray with the Prophet Amos: “let justice roll on like a river,” Lord, “righteousness like a never-failing stream!”
In Jesus’ name.
Amen.
