Today’s readings are not obscure – it’s all about persistence. We have to persist in our prayer – we shouldn’t get discouraged and think God doesn’t care. But neither should we take this as a encouragement to nag God into submission! We are still responsible to direct our prayer to aims that align with God’s plan for us – and since we very often may not be completely clear what that is, we may need to recalibrate what we pray for.
We hear that the prayer of those early Israelites was for victory in battle (Exodus 17:8-13). If we were to ask for our enemies to be mown down with the edge of the sword we might not be too surprised if that didn’t happen. More challenging is the prayer that Jesus references – the prayer of his “chosen ones” for justice (Luke 18:1-8). Surely that prayer he will answer, as Isaiah and many of the prophets also foretold. Indeed Jesus says exactly that: “I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them”, and not just done but “done speedily”.
Here we hit a problem. What does “speedily” mean? It certainly doesn’t seem like it to us. Many of those suffering injustice don’t get speedy relief. In fact they may not get any relief at all.
The problem here is not just that God’s idea of speedy and ours don’t align very well. We heard Habakkuk tell us a couple of weeks ago “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” Patience and persistence are two sides of the same coin. But beyond this God’s perspective and ours are different. Of course we can’t share God’s perspective, or get fully on his wavelength – but we can find in the words of Jesus some clues that can help us get beyond thinking that speedily must mean by tomorrow, or at least next month, or surely before we die. We can go deeper than “just wait”.
If we think back a few more weeks in our readings, we can recall the story of the rich man and his poor neighbor Lazarus. Lazarus was certainly one of God’s chosen ones. Jesus doesn’t say anything about what his prayer was so we don’t know whether God answered speedily or not – but assuming he did ask, then clearly nothing happened, speedy or otherwise! But that’s not true. At least it’s not true in the framework that Jesus uses for the story. In that framework Lazarus certainly did see justice – for all eternity (as did the rich man). In the context of eternity speedily may feel very different.
We don’t live in the context of eternity, at least not yet, and we find it hard if not impossible to look at things from that perspective. We may also be traumatized by the excuses of those in positions of power who may say “don’t worry if things are bad now, suck it up, and when you’re dead everything will be great.” We should persist in our prayer for justice, and live in solidarity with those who are denied justice, and work for God’s kingdom of justice here and now, since this is where we are in this moment. But at the same time we must trust that it is God who will bring justice, speedily, and that is beyond our power or control. Then will we be amongst those that have kept faith when the Son of Man comes.