Proper 12C, July 28, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of everyone, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

In our Hebrew Scripture lesson for this morning, Hosea – a prophet of Israel – is crying out against the people of Israel for breaking the covenant by not listening to God alone – a covenant that requires full-bodied attentiveness to the Holy One of Israel. Idolatry and whoredom, in ancient Hebrew, are the same word – the same thing. Fidelity to the Holy One of Israel is expected, and the people have been seeing other gods. They have been engaged in lewd living, moral defection, improper intercourse with other deities. The lesson begins with, “When the Lord first spoke within Hosea, Hosea heard, ‘find a wife who is seeing other gods – because you’ll not be able to find one who is not seeing other gods – everyone in the land is doing it.’”

What we miss by ending at verse ten, is that the Holy One restores the people, to be called Ruhamah (compassionate) and Ammi (my people). The part in v. 9 that says I am not your God actually says “I am not your becoming” or “I am not your being” or “I am not your will be.” But in the next verses, all of that is restored, and indeed the covenant goes further and deeper than ever before. The covenant is no longer “You will be my people and I will be your god”;” it is now that with compassion. Hosea’s is a story about a forgiving, patient, and tender God. Regrettably, indeed, dangerously, to Christian ears, our lectionary (our Bible-lesson delivery system) makes it sound as if God has forsaken and rejected God’s people in the 8th century BCE, not to be restored until Jesus came along. What we Christians do not hear is that the whole of Hosea is a treatise on God’s redeeming love for God’s people in the 8th century BCE. On the other hand, what God has not yet redeemed is the fact that our sacred texts, including Hosea, are shot through with misogynistic imagery and metaphors. It was the case in ancient times as it is now, that when men call each other names, the names they choose often denigrate women.

In our reading from Colossians today, the writer is reminding those gathered in Jesus’ name not to let anyone convince them that they are not One with the Holy. Listen Emmanuelites! Colossians says don’t let anyone convince you that you are somehow inadequately faithful. Continue to live your lives in the redeeming love shown to you in Christ Jesus, rooted and built up in him and established in that faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Don’t let others steal your dignity. Don’t give away your joy. Listen, Emmanuelites! Return to this text when your own internalized oppression is telling you that your own spiritual instincts or sensibilities are lacking. Listen deeply, Emmanuelites!

So on to the Gospel of Luke for a lesson on prayer. I thought about how often our attempts at prayer are something like: “O God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul, so I can go to heaven, if there is a heaven.” But in light of this tight sequence of stories in Luke – the stories of the Good Samaritan, of Martha and Mary, and now of the Lord’s prayer, I think that what the disciples were really asking was, “Lord, teach us to listen.”¹ For if we are in the midst of the realm of God or Love or the Holy Spirit, to really hear what the Spirit is saying, we must attend to our neighbors – including aliens and enemies, tune our ears to listen to love, and to forgive as we have been forgiven. It’s not about what we say – it’s about how we listen.

This is the only time in all of the Gospels that the disciples ask to be taught. They don’t ask to be taught how to behave better. They don’t ask to be taught to think more clearly or more accurately about God. They’re not asking to believe something. They’re not asking for a systematic theology. They’re not seeking better strategic plans or stronger managerial skills, or more effective organizing tactics. “Teach us to pray,” they say. Now my strong hunch is that they already knew prayers – my strong hunch is that they were looking for something deeper, something better, maybe something more satisfying and effective. My hunch is that they saw Jesus and they saw him praying (and praying often, according to Luke), and they wanted some of what he had.

What Jesus taught them is simple and direct. It’s essentially Jewish – with lines similar to the Kaddish, ideas found in Hebrew Scripture and in teachings of other first century Jews. None of the words or ideas is elaborate or innovative. I think Jesus is saying, there’s nothing magic about the words of prayer and there’s nothing new under the sun. Praying is and has always been about listening for the people of the Holy One. Sh’ma Israel. Listen deeply, God wrestler.

Listen for the hallowing of, the holiness of, God’s name. Listen for the manifestation of the realm of God, of Love. The kingdom, Jesus says again and again, is very near; it is at hand; it is within. Listen to know that it is so. Listen for the justice and mercy and compassion that are so close. Listen for a world where the most basic needs of all are met. There are centuries of debate about whether daily bread means actual food or spiritual sustenance. I don’t know why it cannot be both, but I do think it’s morally dangerous for people like us to focus on an interpretation of spiritual sustenance when we are among the third of the world’s population that is overfed and wasting food, and when 2/3 of the world’s population is underfed or starving to death. One quarter of children in Massachusetts don’t get enough to eat. Furthermore, the parable that comes next seems to emphasize a need for physical bread for someone who is physically hungry. So if we err, we should err on the side of ensuring that all have actual food.

Listen for forgiveness. Now I imagine that the starkness of the wording, “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us,” might bring you up a little short. It does me. I’m always hoping that God (if there is a God) will do a better job of forgiving me and my sins than the job I do of forgiving others who owe me one (or who owe me a lot). But that is a quid pro quo way of hearing these words. What I think Jesus was getting at, is an idea already established in Jewish teaching that linked giving and receiving of forgiveness. Forgiveness requires an open circuit. Mercy flows through the same channel, and one who will not forgive, cannot receive forgiveness, because it is all part of the same gift.² And finally, listen for deliverance. Pray that we will be saved from ourselves and from others. Pray that we might be spared from that which is too great to bear.

And then Jesus told them a parable. Like all parables, this one is subversive and funny. But we’ve lost the humor in the translation of time, and culture, and in this one in particular, by a weird translation into English of a word that means with no shame (in other words, honor) into the word persistence.³ The story Jesus tells about a grumpy man who won’t open the door to give his neighbor bread is absurd. It would make his disciples laugh. It’s as funny as someone ringing a doorbell who then hears a voice from inside yell, “Go away, there’s nobody here.” In Jesus’ time, no one in their right mind would deny bread to a nighttime traveler or the friend of a nighttime traveler, and they all knew it. It had to do with life and death, and it had to do with honor — the honor of the individual, the honor of the family, and the honor of the whole village. It’s not the persistence of the person knocking that results in the gift of bread, it’s the without shame or the honor of the person who has been awakened, which will cause him to rise to give his friend what is needed.

The peculiar theology that results from this parable seeming like a lesson about persistence in prayer, makes God seem like a reluctant grouch who answers our requests to get some relief from our constant nagging. And it makes anyone who hasn’t received what he or she has been asking for into someone who must not have been asking often enough or crying out loudly enough. And that makes me so mad (crazy and angry both). That kind of theology oppresses the very ones Jesus sought to liberate. David Buttrick, in his book about parables, writes: “The notion that, repeatedly, we must bang on the doors of heaven if we are to catch God’s attention is hardly an appropriate theology of prayer.”⁴ Surely Jesus is not teaching his disciples about how to badger the Divine.

So what is an appropriate theology of prayerful listening? And what do we make of the directives to ask and to search and to knock? What do we make of the promise of giving, finding, and opening that will happen when we ask, seek, and knock? What might we know about the efficacy of prayer? I’ve always loved the line from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Perhaps you know it: “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” And I think it’s true. Do I believe in prayer? Yes, I do. Do I believe in listening deeply? Yes, in my heart of hearts, I believe strongly in listening deeply. Do I know how it works? Not at all. (But I believe in all kinds of things without having the foggiest idea about how they work. I’m fond of quoting the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland who says, “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”)

It seems to me that listening deeply is practice that reminds us just who and Whose we are. This kind of prayer reminds us that the realm of God is in us and among us. Ask and you will have it. Seek and you will find it. Knock and it will open. It’s in you. It’s among you. Listening prayer, according to Jesus, is to be liberative, just, loving, compassionate, and redemptive (because God knows we all need liberation, justice, love, compassion and redemption). According to Jesus, this is how we are when we are God’s people. This is how we act. This is our stance. Listening prayer is not a transaction, it is a posture.⁵ Listening prayer is an open posture of humility and vulnerability and the kind of bravery that comes from acknowledging our weakness. As Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes [the one] who prays.”

I’m going to close by reading you a poem from the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi. Perhaps you know it. It’s called “Love Dogs.”

One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So, I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green, foliage.
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I never heard anything back.”

“This longing
you express is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.

Give your life
to be one of them.

← Back to sermons page