Clinging on with persistence!

Genesis 32:22-31

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Luke 18:1-8

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the sixteenth century the Spanish poet and mystic, Saint John of the Cross wrote a poem that would still be remembered and studied over four centuries later. That poem became known as “The Dark Night of the Soul”! The poem narrates the journey of the soul from its bodily home to its union with God. That journey is called "The Dark Night", because darkness represents the hardships and difficulties which the soul meets in its detachment from the world and reaching the light of the union with the Creator. There are several steps in this night, which are related in successive verses. The main idea of the poem can be seen as being symbolic of the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God.

Perhaps you are sitting here now thinking…….”well, this is all a bit too heavy for a Sunday morning”, and maybe it is! Maybe you came here this morning expecting to meet with God, worshipping Him as part of our community here at St George’s. Maybe on the other hand your’e not quite sure why you are here. Whether you are here for the first time or you have been coming for years, somehow it all feels as though you are banging your head against a brick wall. All the prayers we pray and all the hymns we sing never really seem to do anything except bounce off the ceiling! Sound familiar? I suspect that most of us have felt like that during at least some point in our Christian journey!

The gospel reading this morning begins with Jesus telling his disciples to pray always and not to lose heart. It goes on to speak of a woman who was absolutely determined to get justice and be treated fairly. And since Jesus told a parable about the need to pray always and to not lose heart, it seems that the disciples, despite their commitment to following Jesus, did, at times, lose heart, and that they also, at times, gave up  or were tempted to give up on prayer. They’re not alone!

Sometimes it seems that a lot of people have given up on prayer. They’ve given up, because they prayed for a loved one’s healing, but death came anyway. They’ve given up, because they prayed for an end to their struggles, but the struggles just kept on coming. They’ve given up, because they prayed for an end to the sadness within them, but the sadness remains. They’ve given up, because it seems that God has forsaken them. Like the psalmist, they say to God: “Why are you so far from helping me? Why are you so far from the words of my groaning? O God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; by night, but find no rest. Why, God, have you forsaken me?”

They’ve given up, very often simply because they don’t see the point of prayer. What’s the use? Too often, it feels like talking to a  brick wall.

You may remember a number of years after the death of Mother Theresa, this woman who was almost revered as a saint within her own lifetime, a woman who lived a life of obedience and poverty as she sought to bring something of the love and compassion of God to those who literally had nothing. What a saintly woman, how close to God she must have been herself to be able to do that!

And yet we know from her own writings that were not discovered until after her death, that for virtually all of her very public ministry she felt completely and utterly isolated from God! At times she not only doubted the love and compassion of God, but she doubted also the very existence of God, yet there was still something within her which caused her to persist for decades with reaching out to others in the name of a God who to her very often felt very far away!

 Although feelings can be useful, there can be times when we simply don’t feel as though anyone is listening…..not even God! Even Jesus himself as he hung upon the cross echoed the words of the Psalmist that I mentioned earlier, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”. Even he felt at that moment something of what it is to feel abandoned by God! Not that he was abandoned; far from it……..God was still in control. Yet at that moment everything within his body cried out to God……..”God, where are you?”

We are called to persist whether or not we feel as though it is worth bothering with. I’m sure that many of us have prayed and not received the answer that we wanted or expected…..or seemingly not received an answer at all! What is the point? Rather like the woman seeking justice, we may feel as though we are wasting our time just shouting into the void! But she persisted, she kept clinging on to the hope that she would be heard and listened to.

 We read of this strange encounter by Jacob as he crosses a ford in the river. The story goes that he somehow found himself in an all-night wrestling bout with a mysterious stranger. As they wrestle together the stranger ends up dislocating Jacobs’s hip and still they struggle on. “Let me go”, says the stranger, “it’s almost daybreak”. Jacob’s reply is very telling, because somehow he recognises that this is no ordinary man he is wrestling with.  “I will not let you go, unless you bless me”. I imagine that with his hip out of place, Jacob was probably not feeling too great at this point, yet there was no way he was going to let go, he was going to keep hold of this man no matter what the cost!

As we read on it turns out that the true identity of this stranger was actually God. Jacob had been wrestling all night in the darkness with God himself. His persistence had paid off and he received his blessing!

The widow who Jesus described in his parable keeps on persisting. She is determined somehow eventually to have her voice heard. It would be understandable for her to simply give up the fight. No one is listening…..why carry on? Yet something with her urges her on!

 When we cry out to God, sometimes in anger, sometimes in sorrow, sometimes out of sheer desperation, like Jesus on the cross we don’t always get an immediate answer. Like Jacob during his mammoth wrestling match there are times when we can do nothing else but simply cling on, but cling on we do! But, our cry has been heard, however loudly or quietly we make it!

Jesus said to pray constantly and to not lose heart. Even if that prayer is “God, where are you?” our voice is heard, and eventually, maybe not at a time of our choosing, but eventually, we will receive a reply!

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.