29th Sunday 2016 Why pray always?

We humans are often contradictory...which leads to lives all messed up.

Here is the contradiction...We think we deserve everything and can have it and yet we tend to think too small, too narrow.

So we have this internal conflict.  We want everything, and we really can, but we end up wanting the wrong “Everything”.

This is what this scripture is addressing.

What Jesus offers to us, in the plan of Salvation, is a way for us to get past that internal conflict, to see ourselves and more importantly God differently, and be able to live more freely.

He teaches us to want the correct “Everything“.

Jesus teaches us to pray always.

He is telling us not because we need to badger and nag the Father until he gives us what we want.  His whole point in that story is that if a corrupt judge can be badgered into doing what is just, then certainly God who is all loving will do what is just without the nagging.

It is that last sentence  “...will he find faith on earth?” that sets us up.

See faith is about having an imagination.  It is about believing that God is alive in ways beyond “my” way of understanding, and therefore “I” must not try to confine or limit God’s way of acting in the world, but allow myself to be open to something greater than I.

I think in prayer we fall into the trap, because this is probably what our catechism teachers taught us in first communion, that we tell God what we want, and we tell God exactly how we want it done.

“Dear Father, please help me be happy and...Give me the winning lotto ticket number...give me an “A” on my test...let the 49ers win.”

“Dear God, give me peace...Make my husband/wife/children/friends change because they are wrong.”

“Dear God, please make me safe...by having such and such elected, such and such go away, but making walls pop up, by making other people obey the law…”

We can treat God like a dishonest judge.  We think we have the true answers!  We think we know what is right and just.

So Jesus teaches us to pray always because first of all, it humbles us.

It reminds us that just because “I” want it, does not mean it is the best solution. 

I hope I am not bursting anyone’s bubble, but I do not think anyone reading this is God. So I think we need reminded of that.

We pray TO the Father, not to ourselves.

Praying always I hope causes us to reflect more deeply on what we truly want.

This is where our imaginations can begin to grow, we can begin to see beyond our own egos and needs.

Praying always, I hope, opens us to new ways of thinking, to understanding the Mystery of God, that God does answer prayers, but not in our limited way, but in God’s own way.  

The resurrection is proof of that.  Nobody expected the resurrection!  Clearly It seems Jesus did and he tried to let his disciples know, but they didn’t seem to get it until it actually happened.

Once we let go of wanting everything to happen by our way of understanding,

Once we open ourselves to new possibilities, new ways of seeing, then life becomes so much more fun and joy filled.

We become transformed, we become changed.

We become empowered to love more, to accept change more, to enjoy life and more importantly the people around us.

Isn’t that what we signify in the Eucharist?

A Change, a surprise, a new reality in the bread and wine that become the body and blood of Christ, given to all.

Given for life.  Here, today, now.

When we are open to it.