The following sermon was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on October 26, 1986. The title is, A Call to Prayer, and the scripture reference is Luke, chapter 18, verses 1 through 8. 

There are two parables recorded in Luke's Gospel that don't appear in any of the other three, and they're very similar to each other, and at first glance neither one of them is very flattering to God. You might take a look with me at Luke chapter 11. For the first of them, usually called the parable of the importunate friend, Luke chapter 11, starting with the fifth verse, Jesus said to them, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him.

And he will answer from within, do not bother me. The door is now shut. My children are with me in bed.

I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though, he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him whatever he asks. His importunity.

He won't give him anything because he's his friend. Friends like that you don't need. but because of his importunity.

It's an interesting word, an old-fashioned word. Look it up in the dictionary. It means troublesome, annoying, persistent, demanding, nagging, wheedling, cajoling.

Is this how we're supposed to approach God? And more importantly, is this what God is like? that he won't do anything out of friendship or love, but just to get rid of us, he'll give us what we ask.

How do you reconcile that with the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus says, and in praying, do not heap up empty phrases, or think that you'll be heard for your many words. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. He cares for you more than he does for the lilies of the field, or the birds of the air.

Do not be anxious. Is God like a reluctant friend? Well, you turn over to chapter 18 and we have the other parable.

Joe read it just a moment ago. Parable of the unrighteous judge who says, Though I neither fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow bothers me. Key word in both parables.

Because the friend bothers me, because the widow bothers me, I will vindicate her or she will wear me out by her continual coming. Literally, that is, lest she come at last and beat me. Don't ever underestimate the power of a determined widow.

Is God like a reluctant friend? Or like an unrighteous judge who has to be badgered and cajoled and bothered into responding to our prayers? Is that what we're to believe?

Of course not. Of course not. The answer is a resounding no. But it does feel that way sometimes, doesn't it?

Be honest. It does feel sometimes as if God is not responding. Now you need to understand the nature of a parable, and I think that will help a whole lot if you just would be reminded that a parable is a story that makes one point.

One point and one point only. A parable is not an allegory. That's another genre of literature altogether.

An allegory is a story in which every element is symbolic of something else. A parable makes one point. And if you push it beyond that point, you break it, and you literally miss the point.

And people do that a lot with the parables of Jesus. I'm interested that Jesus, more than any other figure in all of history, is identified with the parable. It is his principal teaching form.

Other people used parables, of course. Plato used them. Buddha used them.

Other people used parables. But far and away, more than anybody else, Jesus is the one who uses parables for his teaching. And I find that interesting because back in the Old Testament, one of the things that was prophesied of Messiah was that when he comes, he will open his mouth in parables.

Psalm 78. Just one more little tiny evidence that Jesus was and is who he claims to be. He taught in parables.

Mark says, with many parables. He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable.

But a parable makes one point. And in neither of these parables is Jesus talking about what God is like. That's not the point of either parable.

As a matter of fact, only by way of contrast could you get an answer to that question out of these two stories. Is God like a reluctant friend who has to be pestered out of bed? No, no, not at all like that.

In fact, just the opposite. He says he is so infinitely more responsive than that. He goes on in Luke 11 to say, If you, as evil as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give to those who ask him?

It's not like a reluctant friend. How much more will he give, you see? Is he like an unrighteous judge who says, Because this widow bothers me, I'll vindicate her?

No, just the opposite. Jesus goes on to say, will God not vindicate his elect? Will he delay long over them?

No, I tell you he will vindicate them speedily. So it's not that God is like either one of these characters. It's that he's very unlike that.

But that isn't the point. The point is not what God is like. The point is what we're supposed to be like in our praying.

chapter 18 he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart that's the point of the parable our praying ought to be continual determined and when it initially does seem as if we're not getting through don't lose heart how many times have you and i prayed about something and the answer was not immediately forthcoming or it wasn't in the way that we hoped it would be or we didn't recognize it when it came and we say well I prayed about that and it didn't work. Jesus says don't lose heart. Keep praying.

And he illustrated that with his own life. He exemplified that. We're told that it was Jesus' practice to arise long before daybreak can steal away to some private place to pray and meditate and seek the face of the Father.

We're told that he often spent the whole night in prayer and that virtually all of his major decisions, such as the choosing of the twelve, came out of that kind of an extended prayer time. Now, I can't absolutely prove this, but I have a theory about it. I think that the reason for concerted prayer, the reason for extended prayer, the reason Jesus says keep praying and don't lose heart, is that prayer is a dialogue.

It's not just me speaking to God, but it's also God speaking to me. And the real issue in prayer is not so much that I beat on Him long enough to change His mind, but that I keep at it long enough to come to know His mind and change mine. I start off and I've got an idea about the way things ought to go and I begin to talk to the Lord and I begin to see it a little bit differently and slowly I come to know what His perspective and His will is and I align my thinking and my heart and my will with His and I move into the center of His will and I know I'm on solid ground to move ahead.

I mean do you really think that when Jesus was up all night praying he was saying gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme I think he was asking father what is your will father out of all these people that you've given to me to be disciples which ones are your choices to be the apostles the ones who take the leadership the ones who write it down the ones who establish it Which ones are your? Do you see what I'm saying? I believe that Jesus was searching the mind of the Father so that He could be in agreement with it.

Interesting, isn't it, that when He's baptized in the River Jordan, and God declares Him, this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased, and the Holy Spirit comes down and anoints Him for His ministry. I mean, that is the moment that all of history has been waiting for, for Jesus to start His ministry and go out and save the world. His first priority is to go out in the wilderness for 40 days, prayer, fasting, meditating, seeking the Father.

Would that have been yours? You might have thought He was all ready for that. He's been spending 30 years getting ready.

Yes, He was ready, but He needed to spend still more time in prayer. we're told that the last thing before he was betrayed and carried off to crucifixion was he spent the whole night in prayer in the garden and three times he asked his apostles won't you spend even an hour praying with me can't you stay awake for even an hour to pray jesus made prayer an absolute priority in his life. In fact, one wag has suggested that maybe the real reason that he walked across the lake was that he could be alone with the Father.

Now mind you, the person that we're talking about is the incarnate Son of God. Who says, my work is not mine, but His who sent me. Who says, I can do nothing of my own accord, but only what the Father is doing.

Who says, my thoughts, my teaching, my purpose, my ministry, my mission is that of the Father. Who says, if you've seen me, you've seen Him. Who says, I and the Father are one.

And whom we confess every Sunday that He was and is God from God, light from light, true God from true God. begotten, not made of one being with the Father, and He needed to pray? Of one substance with the Father, and He needed to pray?

If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father, and He needed to spend a whole night in prayer? How about you? How about me?

obviously that teaching pertains to all of our life to whatever you're facing right now to business decisions to family decisions to whatever you're faced with we need to bathe those details of our lives in that kind of concerted prayer if we would be faithful to Jesus But I want to press it in a particular direction this morning. It could not be more apropos for where we are as a people here at Truro for a decision that lies just immediately before us and for which I appeal to you for this kind of prayer. Most of you know that the vestry has been considering for the better part of a year The question of whether or not the Lord would have us still further expand our facilities.

I do not mean this building. Praise God for that. But the rest of our facilities, all of the support facilities, our classroom space, which is literally bursting at the seams at this point, our nursery facilities, which are woefully overcrowded.

I've had mothers come to me and say, I want to come to your church, but I cannot in good conscience leave my infant child down in that nursery. It's too crowded, there are too many kids there for the space involved, and we simply can't come until something more is provided. Our large meeting rooms, do you realize that they are now reduced to exactly one, namely the undercroft, because everything else has been subdivided.

Our office space. We are literally sitting on top. You wonder why I'm away from here so often.

And of course, it's not only our office space, but one of the things that God has called this parish to be involved in is the sponsoring and the caring for other related ministries. and to provide space for those ministries is just about impossible. For instance, this morning, we're praying in a few minutes for the needs of Episcopal Renewal Ministries.

They did not know what I was going to be preaching on this morning, but when we come to that outreach prayer, you're going to see that one of the concerns is, Lord, we need more office space. And they may not be under our roof forevermore, but one of the aspects of the vision that God has given us is that we would be in a sort of a midwifing role to a number of ministries that would come and we would help establish them and provide facilities for them so they don't have to go out and get their own mimeograph and their own duplicating equipment and their own mailer and all that, and that we'd have a place to be able to share with other ministries. God is giving us a ministry beyond our own borders here, and we're not able to provide any more for that.

The music department needs more space. The tape ministry, incredible how tight that is. The bookstore, the altar guild, and so on and so on.

When we were led so clearly by the Lord five years ago to expand the tent, as we put it, to push out the walls of this building and expand the tent, what we did was we enlarged the capacity here by 40%. and then we did nothing about all of the support systems to go along with that, to care for the children of a dramatically increased congregation and expanded staff and ministry and program. And we anticipated that a day of reckoning would come, and it has.

So that's the question before us. I want to do this as quickly as I can, but we ask your prayers. The Buildings and Grounds Committee last spring did an extensive space use survey and in essence compiled a sort of a wish list of all the things that it would be lovely to be able to provide.

Across the summer we had a special task force working under the chairmanship of Dick Seymour that prioritized all those needs and began a feasibility study. We consulted with a number of architects, finally selected one, and asked him to draw up some preliminary sketches of what might be provided here on this site if indeed the Lord called us to do that. I need to emphasize no decision has been made yet.

But that's what we're praying about. I hope I've got your attention. You might just want to sort of grab on to the pew back of the seat in front of you, give you a dimension of what we're talking about.

No, I mean that. Go ahead, Barb. Grab on.

If we were to do everything that the architect has sketched for us, which is simply putting into one comprehensive package what we told him we needed, We're talking about a project approximately $4 million across the next three years. I do have your attention, don't I? Do we build or do we not?

Do we do all of it? Do we some of it? None of it?

Do we do it in phases? Do we do it all at once? We're asking the Lord for a clear sense of direction from Him.

And the vestry has agreed to meet in special session this Tuesday evening. We're going to spend the day in prayer and fasting, and we would ask you to join us in that prayer, and some of you, if you can, to join us in fasting as well. I want to read you from the architect's recommendation, Having received all of the input and then he began to work with it, this is what he wrote.

He said, the architect was asked to present alternative solutions to the set of needs given him, but in exploring the requirements of the vision, there were no alternatives to be found. To meet its needs, you must construct a second floor of the parish house and construct additional space for the choir and bookstore, and construct as large a four-story building, which would be out back behind the church, behind the education building, coming across the back, in essence completing the quadrangle here. He says construct as large a four-story building as possible, and relieve the constrictions of the present narthex.

There are no either-or choices to be made. There are choices of when to build and when to finish the parts of the vision, depending on priority of needs and funding resources. I repeat, no decisions have been made.

If we sense the Lord is leading us into such a project, there will be enormous amount of detail to be worked out, and we will not only welcome, we will be actively soliciting your input on that question. But at this point, we're at the beginning. We're at the pivot question.

Lord, are you asking us to build or not? Some folks have an immediate, intense, negative reaction to the thought of building any more buildings. it's almost a knee-jerk reaction I just want to remind you that the Lord told Solomon to build the great temple in Jerusalem he commanded the people to be involved in financing that and he told us five years ago to build this physical plant we're sitting in he can do that he sometimes does on the other hand He said in the Psalms, unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

We don't want to be wrong. We do not want to be wrong. It's not our money.

It's His money. It's not our church. It's His church.

It's not our ministry. It's His ministry. And the issue really is not, what do you think about that?

It's not, what do I think about that? It's, what does He think about that? So I'd ask you to join us in prayer.

I'd ask you to join us in seeking a clear sense of direction from Him about all of this. All of it? Some of it? None of it?

Lord, what do you want? Perhaps as we pray, the Lord will give some of you a sense of His Word for all of us. He did that last time around.

There were lots and lots of confirmations from among the people of God, words of Scripture that He brought to mind, words that He illuminated to us, and if that happens, I'd ask you to share them with us. He told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray, to pray as long as they needed to, until they came into a clear understanding of what His will was so that they could be right in the center of it. They could move out on the firm foundation of knowing that they were in the center of the will of God.

And that's our desire, to the praise of His name.