Bishop Anthony B. Taylor
Bishop Anthony B. Taylor delivered this homily Oct. 20.
I have often observed that pregnancy is a tremendous growth experience for a family, both literally and figuratively. The mother’s body is stretched literally and the entire family is stretched with expectation and preparation.
Although the nine-month wait can be in a lot of ways burdensome, this period of waiting is also very necessary because the delay stretches us to receive whatever God really wants for us, even if it is not what we would initially have preferred. During these nine months, the parents of many unplanned conceptions get stretched enough that by the time the baby arrives they are excited and grateful for God’s unexpected and even untimely gift. And once stretched, you never really go back to where you were before.
In today’s Gospel Jesus tells a story about the need for persistence in prayer. The woman in the parable is pursuing a lawsuit and is having a hard time getting a judge to give her justice — one delay after another — and so she makes a pest of herself. She keeps nagging him day after day until finally he gives her what she wants just to get her off his back. He may not care much about God or justice, but this woman just won’t let up.
And then Jesus makes the point that if through persistence you can get justice even if delayed, how much more will God answer our prayers, even if his response seems slow in coming. Have faith; God hears and he will respond.
Today I would like to draw your attention to what this delay did for the woman in our story. It stretched her. Each time she confronted the judge it changed her a little bit, and especially when it seemed not to be having much effect on him. She just got her back up all the more, dug her heels and went at him again. And isn’t it true that the very act of confronting life’s challenges has a way of stretching us, making us bigger?
Some of the people who have the most to offer us are those who have had to face and overcome many challenges, in the course of which they developed inner persistence, a source of inner strength that continues to stretch them and enables them to accept whatever God has for them, even difficult things. That’s the secret of Alcoholics Anonymous. Being stretched, persistence, trust, delays and obstacles and brokenness, one day at a time.
Jesus applies this story to the need for persistence in prayer. Usually we think of prayer as our effort to get God to give us what we want. And like with the woman in our story, the idea is that if the results are slow in coming, we should just kind of redouble our efforts and keep storming heaven, almost even pestering God until our prayer finally gets heard. But there is a lot more to the story than just that.
On a deeper level the story points out that sometimes God delays his response in order to stretch us to receive what God really wants for us, even if it is not what we would initially have preferred. During times when we feel burdened by problems and by God’s lack of response to our prayers, we start stretching ourselves in prayer. We think things through again and again. We begin to notice how other people are dealing with their difficulties, and this stretches us a little bit more as we consider what that might say to us. And when we’ve been stretched enough to be grateful to God even for the difficult answers to our prayers, at that point we see how necessary the delay was, because without it we would never have recognized the gift.
In today’s Gospel Jesus assures us, “Will not God secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Persistence in prayer stretches us; apparent delays in God’s response stretches our faith, with the result that we become more flexible and eventually reach the point where we are finally ready to receive with gratitude and delight the good gifts God wants to give us and especially those good gifts that are different from what we would initially have known to ask for.
