A duck walks into a restaurant, sits at a table, and asks the waiter if they sell grapes. The waiter says, “No,” so the duck gets up and leaves. The next day, the duck comes back, sits at the same table with the same waiter, and asks if they sell grapes. The waiter says, “No, we do not sell grapes.” So, the duck gets up and leaves. The following day, the duck goes back to the same restaurant, sits at the same table with the same waiter, and once again asks, “Do you have any grapes?” Red in the face, the waiter yells, “No, we don’t sell grapes, and if you ask me again, I will nail your beak to the table!”
The duck leaves, but the next day he comes back again, sits down at the table, and asks the waiter, “Excuse me, do you sell nails here?” “No, we do not sell nails here,” responds the waiter. “Oh, good,” says the duck. “Then, can you sell me some grapes?”
Persistence. It could be why restaurants still serve grapes.
It’s undoubtedly one of the reasons Christianity still exists.
Think about it, after all the persecutions, heresies, so-called “holy” wars, through schisms and scientific advancements, through Reformation, the Enlightenment, Modernism, Post Modernism, Pluralism - all the isms… here we are in this 150-year-old church on a pretty country corner, with our ancient liturgies and our praise band, with our brazen plans for reconstruction that we might better love and serve the community. Who do we think we are? Who do we think God is?
You want to know what I think? I think God is amazingly persistent.
God’s persistence is modeled in our Old Testament reading. Hosea remains faithful to his unfaithful wife as God is faithful to his people, Israel. The marriage metaphor in Hosea is disturbing. Perhaps it needs to be. Perhaps to shake us out of our complacency.
God finds a creative way to garner attention by instructing Hosea to marry a “wife of whoredom.” Hosea’s dysfunctional family situation is emblematic of Israel’s broken covenant with God. It was likely scandalous around 750 BCE when this was written. It’s scandalous today as we continue to struggle with issues of honor and shame and patriarchy.
There is a lot in the Bible that should disturb us, and yet so often we gloss right over it. There’s an awful lot in the world today that should get our attention and rightly disturb us.
Lynching for one.
The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act was signed into law on March 29, 2022, establishing lynching as a federal hate crime. As you may know, Emmett Till was the fourteen-year-old boy who was brutally attacked and subsequently lynched in 1955. His killers were acquitted, but his violent death generated attention for the burgeoning civil rights movement. It’s unconscionable that it took so long for this law to be passed.
If not for the faithful diligence and courage of very early civil rights activists like Ida B. Wells, this bill may still be on the table – or worse, tabled altogether.
Ida B. Wells was persistent. Born to enslaved parents in 1862, Wells raised eight siblings after her parents died early from yellow fever. Discovering she had a gift for writing as a young adult, she began her career as a journalist and activist in her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. When close friends of hers were lynched in 1892, she drafted an article about the dangerous city of Memphis, prompting a mass exodus of blacks from that city.
Wells fearlessly spoke truth to power in a time when violence toward black bodies was commonplace. In 1895, she compiled a detailed accounting of lynching statistics in the United States, analyzing the socioeconomic, racial, and cultural dynamics of racially motivated violent acts during that era.
Persistence is critical to affecting social change, but in our prayer life, persistence is also necessary to get us through dry spells when it seems to us that God has all but gone missing. Candler Professor of Church History, Roberta C. Bondi, is an expert on the Desert Mothers and Fathers, third-century monastics who sought to reignite the contemplative prayer life of Jesus. Bondi writes of a friend suffering through a particularly intractable depression. Even when he prayed, this friend reported that God seemed to be absent. Tempted to quit praying altogether, this man, had learned from the Ammas and Abbas to stick with it, to be persistent. Resisting the inclination to give up, he imagines God saying to him, “All these years, I have protected you from your childhood wounds. I want your wholeness, and so I have stepped aside so that you can seek healing for those wounds.” This marked a turning point in the man’s prayer life, and he began to take active steps toward healing.[1]
We don’t have to become a hermit or a seminary professor to learn how to pray. Jesus lays it out for us beautifully.
The original Aramaic version of The Lord’s Prayer probably read more like a poem. Once translated into Greek, in the book of Matthew, we find a longer form of the prayer tucked in the middle of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Luke’s version is abbreviated and taught to the disciples as they journey toward Jerusalem. The doxology in Matthew was not present in the earliest versions of the Gospel; however, it was in the Didache, a late first or second-century Christian manual. In this text, Christians were taught to pray the Lord’s prayer three times a day.
There is just something about the Lord’s Prayer that gets under our skin.
According to my seminary professor, prayer, in general, shapes us. When we pray, both privately and publicly, our faith and our belief are reinforced.[2]
We pray to God, our Father, our Abba or Amma, like a loving parent whose name is holy.
Your kingdom come…I am reminded of that beautiful Taizé chant based on Romans 14:17:
The Kingdom of God is justice and peace,
and joy in the holy spirit.
Come, Lord, and open in us,
The gates of your Kingdom!
This is no throwaway line. It should disturb us.
Give us our daily bread—enough for this day.
Forgive us our sins, as we forgive and release those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial.
Jesus prayed, “Father, remove this cup,” knowing it wasn’t his call.
Thy will, God’s will, be done. On Earth as in Heaven.
This prayer calls for our radical surrender and persistence. Persistence from the very heart, mind, and soul of Jesus.
There is a lot these days to be disturbed about. But praying this prayer with persistence can change us.
I have a challenge for us: Keep praying, keep seeking.
A couple of suggestions: First, I commend to you The Bible Project podcast, especially episodes 412-416, for a comprehensive and fascinating deep dive into the Lord’s Prayer.
Try praying the Lord’s Prayer three times a day, using whichever version you find most compelling. Pray it once, sit with it. Pray it again and be present to what arises. Then pray it one last time.
Let me know how it goes. Will you?
[1] Roberta C. Bondi, To Pray and to Love: Conversations on Prayer with the Early Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991).
[2] Leonel L. Mitchell and Ruth A. Meyers, Praying Shapes Believing: A Theological Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer, Revised Edition, with Episcopal Church, Weil Series in Liturgics (New York: Seabury Books, 2016), 350.
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