When Jesus saw His hearers were losing heart, He told them the remedy for despair. He gave them an antidote to the poison called losing heart. I don't know about you, but I'm all ears. I don't know about you, but I seem to have woken up to a life of despair lately, day in out. If not personal, despair with the death of my husband and the bad health of my parents, then the despair of the schism of the denomination I serve. And if not that personal and that religious despair, then the despair in the world, with breaking news every other hour, the school shootings, children starving with bags of food across the road. Crimes against humanity, Gaza, Ukraine, deportation. Hate is up, love is down. I am losing heart fast, and so I am listening keenly to Jesus to know the antidote for despair.

When Jesus saw His hearers were losing heart, He told them, the remedy for despair is praying always. That the antidote for despair says Jesus is to pray always. My, please don't judge me when I admit Jesus’ prescription of praying always disappoints me, and I know there are those who are not just disappointed, but will be angry with Jesus. Have we not heard loud and clear the rejection of quote sending thoughts and prayers. We don't want your thoughts and prayers when you hear of mass shootings. Why? Some say prayer is political in action when what is needed is legislative action, community support and political accountability. Don't send me prayers.

When Jesus saw His hearers were losing heart, He told them to pray always. And Jesus must have seen or heard the cynics matter seriously. Prayer is the answer. Jesus must have known that He had a tough customer like me, because Jesus did what He does when working with a difficult audience on a difficult topic, Jesus told them a parable. Have you noticed that Jesus tells parables when there's a hot potato topic and a need for a nuanced understanding? You know, like that time when someone asked Him, Who is my neighbor? And how do you answer that question? Because when you know, you know, and so Jesus told a parable. Or when there was grumbling in the leadership because Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners, how does one defend oneself, because when you know you know. So Jesus told a parable. So here we are, Jesus talking about prayer, and someone like me not convinced. So Jesus does what He does. He tells a parable.

The parable Jesus tells is a short story. If not familiar to the audience it could have been plucked out of the newspaper, an ordinary, everyday story. It's short. Two characters, only a judge and a widow, living in the same city. The parable is only four sentences long. The widow comes to the judge asking justice from her opponent. The judge refuses her justice. The widow shows up every single day asking for justice. She wears down the judge with her nagging until the judge gives her justice just to get her off his back. That's it.

When Jesus saw His hearers were losing heart, He told them the remedy for despair is praying always and He told them a parable, a parable that seems to make things worse for me. Leaves me wondering is parable, asking God for something, day and night, nagging God until God gives what one is asking for, just so that God can get you off God's back? What exactly is prayer?

I grew up in Kenya, East Africa. My first language is Kimeru. The word for prayer in Kimeru is kuromba, which means begging. So I grew up hearing let us pray as let us beg God. Whenever it was time to pray, we begged God. So I won't be too hard on myself that prayer can often seem to be giving God my Christmas list and begging, begging, begging, God, give me, give me, give me, give me.

Or maybe prayer is a protest march. I can see that widow, that widow, walking up and down. What do you want? Justice. When do you want it? Now. What do you want? Justice. When do you want it? Now. Until finally, months in, the judge says, fine, fine, fine, take it. He does the right thing for the wrong reason. When Jesus saw his disciples were losing heart, he told them, the remedy for despair is praying always.

But you see, prayer is not in the begging. Prayer is what makes her stubborn.

You see, the widow refuses, refuses the outcome of the judge and is committed to justice.

Walter Brueggemann is helpful here. Brueggemann describes power structures that seek absolute control over society, structures that not only control and monopolize technology, but also monopolize imagination, suppressing any thought or language that challenges its authority. That's what the widow is up against. That's what we are up against when it comes to despair. The monopoly of our imagination. You see, we're told this judge does not fear God, and this judge does not respect any human. In other words, this judge is above human and divine law. We're up against a judge who seems to own the world.

We can tell the widow, go home, curl up in your bed and give up. But you see, prayer is the practice of prophetic imagination. How does Brueggemann put it, prophetic imagination is daring to imagine something different. And practicing prophetic imagination is not a quaint or fanciful idea, but a powerful act of conjuring and proposing a different future, an otherwise world outside the judge's singular, thinkable reality.

When Jesus saw people like me were losing heart. He must have known that people like me had drunk the Kool Aid and we had bought the judge's lie that only the judge decides. When Jesus saw people like me were losing heart, Jesus called us into prayer. And prayer is how life with God looks like. The life we call prayer is a prayer that hopes against hope. A prayer is walking on justice street past the dead end sign. Prayer is walking past Calvary’s death into resurrection.

Under her despairing circumstances, the widow refuses to accept injustice as the last word. She refuses to lie down and die because she sees something different. She refuses to participate in her own victimization. Something in her rooted in God's better day continues to ask, day in and day out, for justice. She gets out of bed, walks out of her house, goes to the judge and asks for the one thing the judge could give her justice. You see, prayer is not in the begging. Prayer is in the life that she is rooted in.

When Jesus saw that they were losing heart, He told them, the remedy for despair is to be rooted in the life with God, to see something different from the world, that makes us stubborn. And then He wonders, will you be able to stay the course until the Son of Man comes and finds people like us who are rooted in God, who live a life with God, he will find faith on Earth.

Oh, what a good word for you and I, especially those of us who find ourselves, day in, day out, in despair, may our life be rooted in God, not just in our words, but in our daily living. Thanks be to God. Amen.