When Answers Don’t Come

May 17, 1987

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Scripture: Job 20:30; Luke 18:1-8 “I cried unto thee, and thou didst not hear me.” Job 20:30

What a strange little story, this parable from Luke. It really is a strange story.... vivid, graphic, but somehow disconcerting. Only Luke tells it, and there’s something about it almost bizarre..... The characters who populate the parable are not idealistic, they don’t follow a neat pattern, THEY’RE DIFFERENT.

In fact, the way they act gives the whole thing a touch of abrasiveness, that rubs you funny, and brings you up short. Jesus was good at telling stories like that, but this one seems to do it more than most.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN? What’s the point of it? What’s Jesus getting at here? When you look it up in a Commentary, you usually find this parable identified as the Parable of the Importunate Widow.

I’m going to confess that though I’ve heard this story all my life, from early Sunday School days, and heard that title “the importunate widow” nearly all my life, I was in college at least before I knew what importunate meant. I bet you were, too. I thought it meant the same thing essentially as misfortunate, or unfortunate. Chalk it up to a deficient theological upbringing, or a fundamental intellectual ineptness.... I’m not going to pursue it too deeply.

I assumed, after hearing the word... assumed it was just a story about a poor, unfortunate woman who was having a hard time. Nobody ever told me that to importune meant to beg, to plead, to implore, to seek tenaciously and persistently. When I got a teenage daughter, of course, I understood perfectly, but for a long time I missed the whole thrust of the parable.

This is not a story about a judge.... don’t turn it into an allegory. It’s a parable, and a parable, by definition, is a story that has one and only one major point to make. You have to see it from the right perspective for it to make sense. The judge here is deliberately portrayed as corrupt and venal. Jesus did that on purpose. He’s not supposed to represent God.

It’s not even really a story about a widow.... except incidentally as she represents the helpless, the powerless in life, the people who precisely are not able to control their destiny.... which, maybe, come to think of it, sooner or later, includes us all.

Who has not been in the fix she was in? Who has not... with the exception of the very young...Who has not, somewhere along the line, stood in the face of the big questions of life.... death, pain, suffering, tragedy, separation, and not felt the limitation of your finiteness?

Who has not been pushed to the wall with respect to what you can cope with, and not known you’re GONE if you don’t get help from somewhere?

Who has not been virtually overwhelmed at some time by what life throws at you as you try to hang on to your composure and even your sanity in the face of it all? Who has not figuratively, if not literally, gotten down on your knees to plead with God for some answer, some solution for a situation that was more than you could handle?

AND MAYBE MORE PAINFUL AND PERPLEXING OF ALL, who has not wondered why the answer was so long in coming? Somebody here may even be asking it about some situation in your life right now. WHY DOESN’T GOD DO SOMETHING? That’s what this parable is all about.

What do you do in a time like that? Where do you turn when there’s nowhere to turn? PRAYER, Jesus is saying.... PRAYER. Keep at it. Keep importuning. Don’t give up. The answer when it comes may not be the answer you want, or think you want.... It may not come when you think it should come.... BUT KEEP AT IT. There may be a blessing for you even in the delay, and whatever happens, there lies behind the process, and finally controlling it, a heart of unbelievable goodness and love.

That speaks to me. I hope it does to you.... the incredible, continuing pertinence of Jesus Christ. But I don’t want to claim too much too fast. Let’s dig into it a little deeper. I propose this story as an admirable forum for considering the whole painful question of UNANSWERED PRAYER.

Can you picture the setting? Jesus etches it in just a few words... not many details, but fill in the gaps with your imagination....

There she comes, approaching the judge, this poor widow woman..... long, flowing skirt, made from inexpensive, worn material, shawl around her shoulders, gray hair drawn up in a bun, hands, hard and calloused from years of cooking and scrubbing, eyes, dark and sparkling, tinted with fire as she nears the bench to plead her case.....

The Judge, by contrast, urbane and sophisticated.... the incarnation of authority, conservatively attired in sartorial splendor, probably wearing a Brooks Brothers robe.... He may be up for re-election this year, and terribly conscious of his public image. The worst thing that could happen to him, he thinks, is to demean himself by getting into a verbal slugfest with this commoner....

He’s not going to be guilty of a Gary Hart-like lapse of judgement.[1] WHAT WOULD PEOPLE SAY?

So he does what image consciousness always does when it wants to avoid embarrassment---it hides.... He ignores her, he snubs her, he sidesteps her, he puts her off, he makes her fill out a form, he reschedules her, he goes to the dentist, he makes excuses, he does everything he can think of to free himself from her importuning.... Maybe she’ll go away.

NO SUCH LUCK. Not with this lady. She keeps boring in.... She has no money to bribe him, she has no influence to persuade him, she has no power to bully him..... BUT SHE CAN PESTER HIM, She can hang in there doggedly, She can just be in the way, until, finally she wears him down... “MY Lord, there she is again.”

Exasperated and provoked, fed up and worn out, he sighs resignedly and grants her plea---THE RIGHTNESS OR WRONGNESS OF WHICH WE DON’T EVEN KNOW, INCIDENTALLY.

But she’s beaten him....and with patience exhausted, and irritability level barely below the boiling point, HE SIGNS THE PAPER, whatever it is, NOT FOR JUSTICE’ SAKE, BUT SIMPLY AND PURELY TO GET RID OF HER.

What a story! Once you’ve heard it, how can you forget it? Persistence vs. Complacency... tenacity vs acquiescence, continuity vs concession, the desire to see it through vs. the desire to be comfortable.... determination vs. detachment, perseverance vs. permissiveness, desperation vs. smugness, importunity vs. self-satisfaction.....

It’s not the virtues or lack of them that is the issue here. It’s the contrast! When we see the contrast we see what Jesus is telling us. If even a heathen judge like this one, a man who confesses that he neither fears God nor regards anyone..... IF EVEN A CORRUPT, SELF-SERVING POLITICIAN LIKE THIS WILL AT LAST GRANT A POOR WOMAN’S PLEA, HOW MUCH MORE can we be sure that God’s heart of boundless love will not refuse her.... or, for that matter, US, in our fervent pleading.

That’s the glorious message of this strange parable.....

AND YET, WE STILL HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT. Even though we know that, and even though we accept that.... Even against that marvelous backdrop, we still have the question, WHY DOES HE TAKE SO LONG SOMETIMES TO ANSWER US? That’s the hard part. Why does God so often delay, or seem to delay?

If He truly cares, as Jesus insists, if He truly wants His children to enjoy the benefits of His passion, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, if it really is His nature to want to bless us with His outpoured love, WHY THE NECESSITY OF IMPORTUNING? Why can’t He answer our prayers sooner?

I can never think of it without thinking of Louise, up the state. She’s not living now, but when I knew her she was a grandmother, a gentle, Christian woman, whose grandson was serving time in the penitentiary. She told me once, “Every night of the world before I go to bed, I kneel beside my bed and pray for Johnny. He’s really not a bad boy, but he got in with a bad crowd.”

Then she said, with bad English, but impeccable sincerity, “I pray to God to bless him and give him another chance, but there don’t seem to be no answer.”

WHAT DO YOU SAY TO HER? The author of the Book of Job expressed the same agony centuries ago. “I cried to thee, O Lord, and thou didst not hear me.” That’s an honest, painful outburst if I ever heard one. WHY DOES IT TAKE SO LONG? Is it worth it to keep at it, to keep importuning? Why does God at least seem to delay in coming to us in our time of desperation?

Well, obviously we don’t know the whole reason. If we did, we’d be God and would have no need to pray.

But maybe in at least a partial way we can understand a little, and in the light of Jesus’ unmistakable insistence that we ought always to pray and not lose heart, maybe even as we do wait, we can learn to grow and become stronger spiritually.

First, I’m sure, for one thing, that God must sometimes delay His answers to our prayers in order that our motives be purified. How many times I have uttered a prayer, made a petition to God, and then asked myself, “Is this really worthy?” Is this thing I’m asking for really what I want to have happen? Would it really be in the best interest of everybody for God to grant this request?”

Sometimes when I come back to it after waiting awhile, I find my head screwed on a little straighter, and my motive a little purer.

In his novel “The Stargazer”, quoted in the Interpreter’s Bible, DeHarsanyi tells the story of the great Italian astronomer Galileo. Once, during a critical period in his early career, Galileo finds himself strapped for money as a young, struggling professor at the university, and also worried about the health of his family.

A friend tells him he should got to the village church and pray at the tomb of St. Anthony. He even gave him the words of a special prayer, guaranteed to produce results. In the night Galileo goes and sits there at the tomb in the darkness. His intention is to pray for money for himself, health for his children, and a happy old age for his mother, not necessarily unworthy prayers at all. But the longer he stays, the more he finds himself thinking about the life of that strange monk, Anthony, who like his Master, had given himself to the poor, and gone out to teach and preach the Good News and God’s love.

Finally, after midnight, he prays, “O Lord, I came tonight with other petitions. But now, through St. Anthony and Jesus Christ, I pray you, enlighten my mind, and let me do something with my life that will further human knowledge and help mankind.”

In the delay between original intention and formalized petition, his heart and his motives had been purged. What about you? Only you can answer. Is this thing for which you’re asking God worthy of the highest and best you know? Is it harmonious with your best understanding of the spirit of Jesus? Will it hurt anyone if it should be granted, or in any way make you less responsible, less sensitive, less caring? Will it strengthen your Christian character or weaken it?

These are good questions, and maybe the answer to one of them, or more, explains the delay.

I don’t believe God ever says NO or delays the bestowing of His blessings to make us squirm, or to play games, or for some kind of stubborn arbitrariness.... but I do believe He MUST sometimes have to say, WAIT... Think this thing through, BE SURE THIS IS REALLY WHAT YOU WANT TO ASK.

THE NECESSITY FOR PERSISTENT IMPORTUNING IS NOT TO CHANGE GOD’S MIND, BUT FOR THE CLEANSING AND PURIFYING OF OUR OWN.

Second, now again, I have a suspicion that God must sometimes delay His answers to our prayers not only that our motive may be purified, but also THAT OUR DESIRES MAY BE INTENSIFIED.

How easily and carelessly we throw out our petitions.... “O god, bless the world and

make everybody well.” No reputable God could answer flippant prayers like that without

prostituting his very character. If prayer were an Aladdin’s lamp, which you just had to

rub to get whatever you fancied, the world would have no meaning, LIFE would have no meaning....it would be a cluttered hodge-podge of selfish wish fulfillment.

Thank God it doesn’t work that way. YOU HAVE TO WANT IT, and sometimes God’s delays

are to help MAKE us want it.

I had a teacher once in theology school... Dr. John T. McNeill. He was a visiting professor

that semester at Emory on loan from Union Seminary, in New York. He taught Church

History, and he knew that stuff like nobody’s business. He’d come into class and say,

“Brothers and sisters, let me tell you this morning about some of my medieval friends,” as if he’d just had breakfast with Duns Scotus, or Albertus Magnus.

He was fascinating, but firm and fair. Several times, when one of us would ask a question we should have known the answer to, or could have found the answer to, on our own, he’d whirl around with flashing eye and probing finger, and say, “Do you really want to know? How badly do you want to know?” He said it to me one time and I spent the rest of the day in the library... I can still tell you the difference between nominalism and realism in the thought of Peter Abelard......

The French, I am told, have a saying, “Take whatever you want, and pay for it.” It means, I think, that the desire of your soul, if it’s worth anything at all, is probably going to be expensive.... it’s going to cost something.

I see that concert pianist, practicing, practicing, practicing.... while others are out doing something else. I see that medical student, pouring over his books, burning the midnight oil, because he knows it’s the only way to mastery. I see that young Olympic hopeful, determined to be a gold medal winner, swimming lap after lap, hour after hour, because she wants it so badly she can taste it.

COULD IT BE ANY DIFFERENT WITH PRAYER? WHY SHOULD IT BE ANY DIFFERENT? Maybe God sometimes has to say NO, or WAIT, or maybe He says nothing to us to fan our desire into a flame.

Do you really want this thing you’re asking Him for? How badly do you want it? Are you willing to pay for it? It’s not in the hasty, ill-conceived, throw away petitions that we have true communion with God. He doesn’t share much on that basis. AND HE HAS PLENTY OF TIME. The necessity for staying with it, for importuning is that He might help us put muscle on our prayers and build them into firm resolve.

And finally, in the 3rd place, I suspect God must delay sometimes His answers to our prayers not only that our motives may be purified, and that our desires may be intensified.... I SUSPECT HE MUST DELAY SOMETIMES THAT OUR PATIENCE MAY BE FORTIFIED.

We are so hurried, and so hurried, most of us, most of the time. Instant gratification is our compulsion, and the wrist watch is our slave driver. This is the North American pattern. We go, go, go, without a let up more serious or permanent than a coffee break..... I heard the other day about an airplane that was lost somewhere out over the ocean. The voice of the captain came over the intercom---  “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have lost touch with the ground, we have lost radio contact, but you will be comforted to know that we are proceeding ahead at an unreduced rate of 750 M.P.H.”

It could almost be a parable of our modern culture. We lived in Latin America long enough to feel the contrast intensely.... The reverse cultural shock of returning presses on you. It’s so relentless here.... Do it immediately, Do it NOW, almost as if we were afraid to stop and look inside for fear we might find nothing there.

But God’s timetable is not the same as ours, and He want us to learn that. He doesn’t make mountains overnight, or the great starry heavens in the twinkling of an eye.

The really worthwhile things of life take time and something happens to the doer in that interim. As we wait, for whatever it is, a maturing, a ripening, a deepening of perspective, a growing can take place in us that can make us appreciate the answer more when it comes.

It is for OUR sake that He sometimes delays, not out of spite, but out of LOVE. Quick, easy answers, like too many presents, don’t build character, they build rotten, spoiled children.

Home is dearer when the journey is long. Health is more appreciated when you lose it for a while, God’s gifts are more precious when we have to wait for them.

And I have a sneaky feeling that the trusting patience of His saints may well be the most potent weapon in the great arsenal of faith. Faith catches, faith becomes contagious, faith spreads, into corners, into nooks and crannies, and across the earth as Christian men and women persist for God despite all odds, and against all disappointments. THAT’S WHY WE MUST IMPORTUNE.

Why does God sometimes delay His answers to our pleadings? We can’t always know, of course... He’s God, after all, not us.

But at least a partial answer is that He delays sometimes for our benefit.... that our motives may be purified, that our desires may be intensified, and that our patience and therefore our power may be fortified.

It’s the priceless and beautiful lesson from the story of the widow who would not be denied. DON’T GIVE UP....

Keep praying..... for God is faithful, and His love will never end.

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[1]     Gary Hart was a presidential candidate who had a moral lapse of judgment which forced him out of the race.