[Readings for the day can be found here]
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to you oh God, our Rock and our Stronghold. Amen
Many mornings this past year, I’ve waked up angry. It comes in waves. The most recent wave began last Tuesday, when I woke up to find the government had shut down. The government shut down because some of our elected leaders decided that in a last ditch attempt to resist a legitimate law they didn’t like, they would hold hostage the country’s finances, vital services, public lands, and hundreds of thousands of public servants furloughed without pay. Meanwhile, they continue to receive compensation for serving their “essential” function. The injustice of this situation enraged me. Once I enter that space of rage, there is just no end to it. One injustice points to another. While Congress shuts down over health care, it does nothing to address the real problems it has ignored, or actually caused. An inexorable rise in inequality, made possible by an unaccountable Wall Street. A swiftly heating planet, whose dying ecosystems—human and non-human—daily teeter further towards collapse. A for-profit prison system—really more like a concentration camp—for the non-white people whose rights as citizens and human beings consistently prove too inconvenient to recognize.
Above all, I think, my rage is the rage of powerlessness. It is the rage that comes from seeing so much wrong, and feeling incapable of doing anything about it. I think it has grown much keener this last year, because my eyes have opened both onto the world, and onto myself. Only lately have I realized what a sign of privilege it is to come to that visceral feeling of powerlessness this late in my life. Many people have awakened day in and day out to it their whole lives, in the face of injustices far more immediate.
When I looked at today’s readings, therefore, I couldn’t help but first gravitate to the Psalm. “Blessed are they who hope in the Lord, not the wicked, not so; they are like chaff which the wind drives away. For the Lord watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes.” A Psalm, like so many, that promises justice. A promise that may well have been a comfort to the children of Israel when they lived, powerless, under Babylon. Yet how long can one rest satisfied with an unsatisfied promise? How long can those who hunger and thirst for justice go hungry and thirsty?
Is it not easy, instead, to identify with those Malachi speaks of at the beginning of today’s prophetic reading? The ones who say “It is vain to serve God, for what do we profit. Rather, we must call the proud blessed, for indeed evildoers prosper.” What is God’s answer to them? Another promise of justice, Old Testament style justice, justice that comes in the form of FIRE. The consuming fire that will burn away injustice, leaving neither root nor branch, and the healing fire of the sun of justice that will shine upon the righteous. But the fire is another unfulfilled promise.
“Ask and it shall be given unto you/seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Jesus promises us again. The last time I preached here, I had these same words, though in Matthew then, not Luke. Though then I spoke of disappointment, rather than rage, the basic question I found in these words was the same: What do we do with unanswered prayers, with perennially closed doors? Which so many of our prayers seem to be? Particularly the big ones that carry our hearts—the prayers not just for passed tests or small joys but for the healing of dying loved ones, or the coming of justice? So many of our prayers seem to leave us only powerless. Both times, Jesus makes this promise after teaching the Our Father, where we learn to pray Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done! But when will that Kingdom come?
“The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed.” So says the man in the parable Jesus tells before making his promise, refusing to give his friend the bread he needs to fulfill his own urgent obligation of hospitality. You would expect the parable, wouldn’t you, to condemn the man in bed for his uncharity, or to compare him unfavorably to God. But the conclusion seems to point to the man standing for God. And the advice Jesus gives is surprising: “if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship,he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” Persistence, it seems, is a virtue. Persistence! Jesus commands. Even persistence is too weak a word. The Greek, anaideinan, literally means shamelessness. Persistence, without shame. And only then, the command, “Ask.”
Ask shamelessly. Too often, we may be ashamed to pray what is on our hearts. Or we are ashamed of our anger, or our disappointment, when our prayers go unanswered. Too often that shame can tempt us to stop asking, because we are trying to save face for God, or forget ourselves. Beloved, we must never be ashamed to ask. For even if what we ask for is wrong—and as broken creatures we can never be sure it isn’t, however righteous we may feel—it is by asking that we keep relationship with God, and keep it honest. If we are angry or disappointed, we must pray without ceasing from that place, lest we be dishonest with the One to whom all hearts are open. In the very vulnerability of voicing our desires to God, of letting our hearts fly out in words held by Holy silence, we open ourselves to God’s transformation. We allow God’s Holy Spirit to fashion anew our sorrow, and our rage, into hope, and resolve, and power, and the freedom to be true to our grief without being bound by it. By asking relentlessly, and shamelessly, we don’t give up on God. God, whose coming Kingdom transforms our hearts even as they grieve and rage, will never give up on us.
Ask Shamelessly.
