Recorded
Version Effective Whining

David Orendorff · Luke 18:1-8 · October 21, 2007

Don’t you just hate the whiney voice that some folks make?  Children can be particularly good at it but there are some adults who just grate on my nerves like a kind of nasal scream from fingernails on a chalk board. “I don’t have …”  “I want … “ “Everyone else gets …”  When I hear that voice I just want to reach out and strangle it.

But there is a difference between these whiners and the whining of the widow.  The childish whiners just want to whine.  They don't want to solve the problem.  They don't want justice.  They don't want the judge to act on their behalf.  They don't want real change.  They find their pleasure and reward in the perfected whine.

The widow, on the other hand, wants real change.  She wants justice.  We are told no details of the suit she brings to the judge, but we can guess.  It is a trouble that undoubtedly affects her whole life.  Widows were among the marginalized of Palestinian society, just as they often are in our world.  The only thing between life and death was often a single loaf of bread.  Upset the delicate balance with even a small injustice or disaster and they are destroyed.  The justice the widow seeks is her life.

But the legal rights of the widow are very limited to almost non-existent.  If someone were to cheat her in business, were to steal from her, were to break a contract with her, her life is literally threatened.  And what she cannot do for herself, she must find another to do for her or die.  And so she goes to the judge.

But the judge is truly in it for himself and the widow has nothing to offer him.  She cannot bribe him for she has no wealth.  She cannot call upon public pressure for he doesn’t care what people think.  She cannot threaten him with voices of the prophets since he doesn't fear God.  Her strategy is to whine and annoy her way to justice and it works.

There are a great many that have followed her example and made great changes in the world.  Almost ten years ago Tim Holmes was the commencement speaker at Capital High School in Helena, Montana.  Tim encouraged the graduates to professionalize their ability to irritate their parents, to whine at the world.  He challenged them to not whine about simple things, like cafeteria food, but about the really stupid things of the world.  He goes to say:

Let me share some examples, starting with my greatest hero, Jesus.  Now he was a true professional nuisance, (and not just because of his long hair).  There were a whole lot of things his society did that he thought were REALLY stupid, and he didn’t hesitate to tell them so.  They thought he was just whining and they didn’t hesitate to get rid of him.  Or so they thought.  The thing is he was upset about stuff that mattered so much that he’s still changing the world! 

Same with many of my other heroes.  Like Gandhi.  Here’s a little dweeb of a guy that upset the entire British Empire because he refused to participate in any kind of exploitation.  Well you can’t have an empire without exploitation!  Unlike myself the guy couldn’t grow any hair, but Gandhi kept hassling the authorities to be honest with themselves till they finally had to give the nation of India its freedom!  

How about my friend Archbishop Tutu?  Here’s a little pipsqueak who got all miffed about the racist South African apartheid government and refused to shut up about it.  So he travels around the world getting people all perturbed until finally everybody’s in such a tizzy the whole system comes crashing down and as a result, for the first time in history the South African blacks get to vote. 

You see?  All these people harassed the world they lived in, and because of it the world we live in is a far better place!1 Tim Holmes, Developing Hidden Talent, to the Capital High Class of 1998

In the parable Jesus encourages us to whine and irritate the world until real justice comes. And it works.  So keep at it.

But the parable is not just about being annoying social activists. Jesus introduces the parable with the encouragement "to pray always and never lose heart." So the parable is more fundamentally about being persistent, annoying and even whiney in our prayers to God.

If persistence is successful with this judge who cares neither for the opinion of God or the people, how much more effective will it be with the God who cares.  When we come to God with our lives, God responds.  When we seek the assistance of God in our most important whining, God responds.  Behind every prayer is a real life need that we cannot fulfill on our own.  God alone can give us what we really want and what we truly need.

"We are made for God," writes Archbishop Tutu, "we yearn to be filled with the fullness of God, and so we come asking the One who is always eager to give.  We place ourselves in his hands as supplicants, in the attitude of those who know they have nothing that they have not received, before the One who is ever the gracious one ready to give beyond our asking and our deserving.  We are like a parched land thirsty for the gift of rain - yearning, beseeching, waiting and asking and assured that we will be heard and that we will be given.2 Desmond Tutu, An African Prayer Book, (New York: Doubleday, 1995) 78

Or as Jeffrey D. Imbach writes, "Prayer is essentially the expression of our heart longing for love.  It is not so much the listing of our requests but the breathing of our own deepest request, to be united with God as fully as possible."3 Jeffrey D. Imbach, The recovery of Love, (New York: Crossroads, 1991)

God does not act for us by bribe, ritual or perfection.  What we have and what God desires is our servant love; our servant love for Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit; our servant love for our neighbor; and our servant love for ourselves.  God seeks our love not by coercion, not by violence or threat, but by serving us in love and praying we choose to be servant love in response.  We are given the power to choose to love or not to love.  We are given the power to choose to rely upon God and serve, or to choose self-reliance as if we were the gods of our lives. God acts for us because we ask and God loves us.

If it is not already your habit, I suggest you practice prayer this week. I suggest that when you wake in the morning, before you get out of bed, you thank God for the day and pray for your deepest and most honest need.  And when at noon you stop for a few moments to eat and rest, you thank God for your meal and you pray for your deepest and most honest need.  And when you go to bed at night, when the lights are turned out and before the dog has begun to snore then you remember the day, thank God for it, and consider whether your true need for bread has been met, and if not, then ask again.

It may be that after a day, or a few days, you will find your prayer being answered. Or it may seem that your prayer goes long unanswered.  But even when no answer seems to come, do not give up.  Do not stop praying.  Be persistent in your whining for justice and you will be effective.

For as Frederick Buechner writes:

According to Jesus, by far the most important thing about praying is to keep at it.  The images he uses to explain this are all rather comic, as though he thought it was rather comic to have to explain it at all.  He says God is like a friend you go to borrow bread from at midnight.  The friend tells you in effect to drop dead, but you go on knocking anyway until finally he gives you what you want so he can go back to bed again (Luke 11:5-8).  Or God is like a crooked judge who refuses to hear the case of a certain poor widow, presumably because he knows there's nothing much in it for him.  But she keeps on hounding him until finally he hears her case just to get her out of his hair (Luke 18:1-8).  Even a stinker, Jesus says, won't give his own child a black eye when the child asks for peanut butter and jelly...4 Frederick Buechner, ibid., 86

And again Buechner writes, "Even if (God) does not bring you the answer you want, he will bring you himself.  And maybe at the secret heart of all our prayers, that is what we are really praying for."5 Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, (1973, 1993), 87.  God's response to your persistence in prayer will astound you.

So be a persistent, even an annoying whiner to God and you too can be an effective whiner.  Be a nuisance to God and the world for justice and God will grant you grace.  Stay in prayer for God loves you with a servant love and even now is praying constantly that you will yet again ask for and receive divine gifts.

Shalom and Amen.