Prayer as Learning to Love
Rev. Jimmy Moore, preaching
Luke 18:1-8
Do you have a favorite “prayer” scene in a movie? Perhaps you’ve giggled as you watched “Meet the Parents” at the prayer that Greg offers at the dinner table of his prospective parents-in-law, weaving in the prayer from “Godspell”, “O, Dear Lord, three things we pray.” Or perhaps you’ve watched as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” laments the fact that his horse has developed a bad leg, suggests that God has done this during a fit of divine boredom, saying “'Let's see, what kind of mischief can I play on my friend, Tevye.” Or maybe you have been moved as George Bailey, having come to his better self in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, exclaims, “I want to live again. I want to live again.” All of these tease us to ask the questions, “What is prayer? What does prayer invite of us?”
Film critic Josh Larsen published a book in 2017 titled, MOVIES ARE PRAYERS: HOW FILMS VOICE OUR DEEPEST LONGINGS. In it he says that prayers and movies are alike because in both we “set aside our time and our space to gather in community and join our concentration . . . to apply our intellectual, emotional, and artistic prowess toward considering the world and our purpose within it” (10). As such, then, prayer is much more than merely “asking God for what we want.”
In Luke 18, Jesus tells a story of a woman with a problem who prevails upon the courts for judicial remedy, but the judge is not inclined to help her at all. By her repeated insistence for justice, the stubbornness of the judge breaks down, and he grants her the relief for which she has petitioned. Jesus brings home the point: if an unjust judge will have a change of heart, how much more will a God of love respond lovingly to the “chosen ones” who cry out in prayer day and night.
Such a story plunges us into the depths of the experience of prayer, because as we shape our lives in accordance to our patterns of prayer. We’ll go there on Sunday in sanctuary worship as the sermon is titled, “Prayer as Learning to Love”. We will celebrate the sacrament of Holy Baptism, and the Chancel Choir, under the direction of Gerry Sousa, will lead us in worship.