Sylvester and Rosamond

by Dave Wilkinson

Luke 18:1-8a

August 25, 2002

Anyone involved in sales or marketing should listen to the story a woman wrote some years ago in Reader’s Digest. You might learn something.

"We had just moved into a new home and besieged by salesmen for everything from laundry service to life insurance. One busy morning a dairyman came to the door. ‘No, ‘ I said firmly, ‘My husband and I don’t drink milk.’ (Actually, they did but she got it at the supermarket).

‘Be glad to deliver a quart every morning for cooking.’

‘That’s more than we need,’ I replied, starting to close the door.

‘Well, ma’am, how about some cream? Berries comin’ in now, and…’

‘No,’ I said curtly, ‘We never use cream.’

The dairyman retired slowly, and I congratulated myself on my sales resistance. The following morning, however, the same dairyman appeared at the door, a bowl of dewy strawberries held carefully in one hand and a half-pint bottle of cream in the other.

‘Lady,’ He said as he slowly poured the cream over the berries, ‘I got to thinkin’ – ‘you sure have missed a lot.’

Right then and there we signed on."

This dairyman’s persistence paid off. This morning, Jesus tells us that persistence can pay off for us as well. Luke writes:

(Read Luke 18:1-8a)

This is one parable where we should have no difficulty figuring out the purpose because Luke tells us the purpose. He says: "Now Jesus was telling them a parable to show that they at all times must pray and not lose heart."

Did you hear that?

We are to pray at all times and not lose heart.

What a wonderful truth!

It is also a truth that Jesus very much wants us to know. In fact, He tells a parable to make sure we don’t forget. So, to make sure we remember what Jesus wants us to know, let’s look at the parable. Let’s see what these characters have to show us that will encourage us to pray at all times and not lose heart.

The first person we meet is a judge. He’s the heavy in the story. Let’s call him Sylvester. That’s not a very Jewish name but that’s okay because Sylvester is clearly not a judge in the Jewish tradition. No single Jew would exercise so much power. Under Jewish law, if a matter was taken for arbitration, there were three judges – one named by the plaintiff, the second by the defendant and the third by the first two. This was to insure an impartial court.

Sylvester is apparently a judge who was appointed by the occupying Romans. The theory was to make the blessing of Roman justice available to the masses. Judges like Sylvester were officially called in Aramaic "dayaneh gezeroth" which means "judges of punishment."

But, like a lot of government programs, it looked better on parchment than it worked in practice. The village people referred to these Roman appointed judges as "dayaneh gezeloth" which means "robber judges." The people rapidly learned that only those able to pay hefty bribes could get justice. Justice was on sale to the highest bidder.

Jesus says two things about Sylvester the judge. First, he doesn’t fear God. And second, he doesn’t regard people. What Jesus is telling us is that "Here is a man that you cannot make feel ashamed." You can’t say: "For God’s sake do this" because he doesn’t fear God. And you can’t say "For my sake or for the sake of mankind or for the sake of your personal honor do this" because he has no regard for people. There just aren’t any handles to use where you can grab onto with a guy like The Honorable Judge Sylvester.

The only other character in the parable is a widow. We’ll call her Rosamond. Rosamond is having trouble from a person she calls her opponent.

Now Jesus doesn’t tell us anything about her opponent. From my extensive training in melodrama, I’ve always figured that he is one of those guys in a black hat with a thin mustache who are always after widows and their pretty daughters. "You must pay the rent!"

Maybe, maybe not. But anyway, Widow Rosamond is in big trouble. Sylvester is the only one who can help her and he’s a far cry from Dudley Doright. He isn’t willing to help. This widows isn’t rich enough, important enough or connected enough to rate his attention.

So Rosamond goes into action. When she’s done, he’s still unwilling to help. But he helps anyway. Jesus says that the reason is that Rosamond makes helping easier than not helping. She makes him an offer he can’t refuse.

Sylvester goes out to pick up the morning paper in his judicial bathrobe and there she is behind his BMW Chariot. "Give me protection from my opponent!" He goes to his office in the afternoon and she’s chained herself to the desk. "Give me protection from my opponent." He’s at a stylish party in the evening and she arrives as one of the caterers. She hands him a plate of Hors D’oeuvres which spell out in anchovies: "Give me protection from my opponent." After enough of this, he gives in.

A class of high school sophomores was assigned a term paper. One particular student named Gene had not been working steadily on his paper as others had in the class. The teacher was prepared for some sort of excuse. Gene didn’t disappoint him: "My dog ate it." The teacher, who had heard them all, gave Gene a hard stare of unbelief. But Gene insisted. "It’s true! I had to force him, but he ate it."

Sylvester the judge is like Gene’s dog. He can be forced.

For awhile he hangs tough. But finally he says: "Even though I don’t fear God nor regard people: -- (You see, this is a rat who knows he’s a rat) – "I will give her legal protection lest by continually coming she wears me out."

Literally in the text he is afraid she will turn his face black – she is doing to him what one boxer does to another boxer. And it’s become a lot easier to help her than to not help her.

Okay! That’s the parable. Now you know that you should pray at all times and never lose heart. God is like the judge in the parable. He might not want to help but if you keep coming at him you can wear him down and he’ll do what you want just to get some peace and quiet. Is that what Jesus is saying?

Of course not.

The point is not that God is like this judge. He isn’t. The point is the contrast between God and the judge. The point is that if an unrighteous, secular judge will finally hear your appeals, how much more will you Heavenly Father, who loves you and cares about you, hear you when you pray.

Prayer works because of who God is not because of how we pray.

Lawrence Richards writes: "Too often the reader of popular literature on prayer is given the impression that God stands watching like a tennis judge, ready to disqualify us if we are even slightly out of bounds – if we don’t hold our hands right or say things in the right order. The relational nature of prayer is missed, and prayer is recast as a spiritual exercise with answers depending on our efforts rather than on God’s grace and good will."

Yes, it is true that prayers are not always answered according to our time table. Jesus knows that delay can cause us to lose heart. That is the reason for the parable.

But Jesus assures us that God is not at all like the judge in the parable. The judge did not respect God. But God respects himself and his own reputation. Again and again God says in Scripture: "I have sworn by my own name and I will do it." David relies on this in the 23^rd Psalm: "You lead me in right paths for the sake of your name" – for the sake of your reputation as God.

Prayer works because of who God is and the fact that God, again unlike the judge, has regard for people.

We don’t know why this is so.

The Psalmist asked God : "What is man that you are mindful of him?"

A poet wrote: "Isn’t it odd, a being like God, who sees through the facade, still loves the clod, he made out of sod? Isn’t it odd?"

It is odd. But God assures us that he has regard for people. And as a result, he answers our prayers without delay and without having to be nagged into a response.

Jesus is telling us that prayer isn’t trying to get an insensitive God to be sensitive. We act as if it were at times. "Dear God, I’m terribly concerned about the victims of the earthquake. I wanted to point out their situation to you. The song goes ‘What the world needs now is love, sweet love’ – Lord, if you really want to know." But God doesn’t need our instructions in loving. God is infinitely sensitive and compassionate.

Prayer isn’t an attempt to make an unwilling God willing -- that God’s kind of lazy and he doesn’t like to use his power very often, so I’ve got to keep pulling on him until he heals my father or my grandmother.

Now there is a place for persistence in prayer. But some nagging goes beyond persistence. It comes from a root of unbelief rather than faith. It assumes an unwilling God you have to bully into something.

That kind of praying isn’t needed with the true God. He’s absolutely loving and absolutely concerned. If the prayer is not answered affirmatively we must assume that there is a larger goal we cannot yet know.

But knowing God’s love ought to encourage us to always pray. God wants us to pray. In fact, Jesus commands us to pray. The verb in verse one is not "may" but "must." Prayer is an imperative for the Christian.

One of the many things I appreciate about my just completed sabbatical is the positive impact on my prayer life. As a pastor involved in people’s lives, I always have a full complement of things to pray for for other people. I’m not saying that that’s wrong. It’s not. Jesus tells us to support each other in prayer. But the list can get so long that I sometimes find that I don’t start to pray unless I know I have a good amount of time available. My prayers also tend to be kind of purpose driven. It’s "Praise, praise, confess, thank you and let’s cut to the chase, Lord. There’s a lot to talk about. Here are the needs that are on my heart."

However, during the sabbatical time I had two factors that changed that. First, I had little hard information about what was going on in the life of the church family so my list became more succinct. At the same time I enjoyed more open-ended blocks of time. The result was that my prayers became less functional and more relational.

There’s a difference between the two.

In a functional approach to prayer, you have a washer to wash your clothes, a dryer to dry your clothes, a refrigerator to keep your food cold, aspirin to cure you headache and a God to take care of any problems you can’t solve with the others. God goes around finding parking spaces, keeping your relatives from being mad at you, bringing instant recall on tests. That’s what a lot of people want. But it is not what prayer is about. True prayer is about relationship.

Relationship is the key. Jesus spoke these words about prayer not to the crowds as a whole but to his disciples. Jesus says in verse 7 that the privilege of coming to God in confident prayer is for His "elect" – His people. He is speaking to those who enjoy a family relationship with God as Father through faith in Jesus Christ.

What prayer is finally about is to know God. It is to involve Him in our lives as his people.

Scripture says that we are to pray without ceasing. But even more, Jesus says, we are to pray at all times. The word for time that is used in verse one is "kairos" – not just time as it goes by, but the right time – the important time – the crucial time. Jesus is telling us that we are especially to pray at each of the crucial junctures of life – as we face temptation, as we explore opportunities, as we make decisions at home, at work, with our families and in our relationships.

For God, through Jesus Christ, has made himself our Father. He is not a remote creator but the One whom Jesus tells us to call "Abba" – "Daddy." We are to come to him in this way. We are to talk to him and not lose heart. We are to make God a conscious part of our key moments.

Because God cares. And Jesus tells us this parable, to show us that he cares and in the words of verse 8, will hasten to bring about justice for His elect.