Persistent prayer – Luke 11, 1-13 Sarah Curl

Trinity 6 Proper 12 27th July 2025

Writing a sermon is never just about finding the right words. For me, it always starts in prayer, and then I wait. I wait for a particular moment, and when that moment comes when inspiration arrives it’s not usually the words, but that moment is often found in an experience, a walk, a conversation, a song, a place a photograph. And it is from that waiting, and observing, tuning into what is around me that the ideas come and the words begin to flow.

This sermon began here in church last Sunday afternoon, I had prayed, a few days before, and used this time to read the gospel for today, and reflect so armed with my notebook and pen while listening to Sasha Doronin perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor, I began, and somewhere between the heavy chords in the first movement and the tempestuous finale, There was a spiritual sensation that I can’t explain easily. I wonder, had I heard the voice of God, not in a quiet still voice, but in a cascade of notes.

Rachmaninoff composed this piece in 1908, drawing inspiration from Goethe’s Faust. The story of Faust is a tragic one: an intelligent man with a thirst for knowledge who, unsatisfied with a life of learning, calls upon the Devil for something more, more power, more pleasure, more meaning. The music echoes Faust’s fall from grace, at times the music is brooding, at times soaring, but it’s always searching. And as I listened, I thought isn’t that, in many ways, like our spiritual life? A relentless seeking. A reaching for something that is just beyond our reach.

The sonata is in three movements. The first, Allegro moderato, begins with a sense of hesitancy, deep, unsettled chords The second, Lento, is gentle, melodic and lyrical, And the third, Allegro molto, is relentless, virtuosic, full of darkness and drama, the climax of the piece incorporates the themes that have run through the whole piece,  layer upon layer of themes, moving and flowing in and out like a waves  landing on the shore, gently lapping upon the sand one moment and the next crashing and untamed the next. and the emotions it evoked within me were raw and real, and I realised this was the moment, this was the experience which I was seeking. This music reminded me of prayer, those same words we pray day after day, returning, repeating, reshaped by what we live through. Some generic daily intercessions and then that other kind of prayer, the desperate, urgent, aching and longing kind of prayer.

Dolly said to me after the recital I’m exhausted.  So was I.

So this was the backdrop of my reflection on Jesus’ teachings on prayer. In Luke 11, the disciples ask, “Lord, teach us to pray,” and Jesus responds with his simple, model: “Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread…” we all know it, off by heart. But He doesn’t stop there. He tells a story about a man knocking on his friend’s door at midnight, desperate for bread. The friend doesn’t get up because of love or duty. He gets up because of his friend’s persistence. his “shameless audacity,” as the passage puts it. And then Jesus tells those listening: Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.

And in the tension of the music, in the strong emotions, stirring my head and heart I thought, sometimes the door doesn’t open? Sometimes we ask and it isn’t given to us, what about those times you have prayed hard for a resolution, a sign, but you never find it.

What if you knock, and knock, and knock—and still nothing?

And as the piano notes soared with their great crescendos I asked myself when was I persistent in prayer, not just a few words over a few days, but really persistent, intense prayer and various situations come to mind. I think on those times and although painful at the time, wondering where the Lord was in the silence, it led to a reliance on Him, and it is during the long waiting that I was shaped, transformed

My call to ordination was one of those times. A prophesy from years before and then a quiet nudge that over time became a persistent pull. For years I prayed, and I resisted. I questioned. I wrestled.  Did I trust myself in what I thought I was hearing, in what others were saying. Not at all, but over time, that inner voice grew louder, more insistent, until the only path forward was through acceptance and surrender, in my ordination those of us being ordained lay prostrate on the cold stone in the church, I was really aware during this moment that this calling, is surrender. Like Rachmaninoff’s sonata, it wasn’t a straight line, it was wave after wave of emotion, doubt, urgency, and submission. Eventually, clarity came. But it came through persistent prayer.

And then I thought about my mum. She was on holiday in Australia when the call came it will be 19 years in December. The night before, she’d emailed to say how excited she was for the beach, looking forward to swimming in the sea. That’s where they found her—in the water.

That night I left my four-month-old daughter in Somerset and flew across the world with my son. I prayed like never before. I fasted. I wept. I pleaded. I believed God would heal her. I had to believe. But she died a few days later. I was utterly shattered. My faith didn’t shield me from the pain. I had more questions than answers.

Last Sunday, memories overwhelmed me. I remembered that flight, my daughter needing me in the UK, my mother needing me in Australia. I then remembered the cards: sympathy cards mixed up with baby’s first Christmas cards. I remembered her last words at Heathrow, looking into the pram, stroking my daughter’s face: “You’ll look so different next time I see you.” If only I had known. I would have hugged her longer. I would have told her more. What do we do with those prayers where we don’t get what we want?

What do we do when, despite our faith, our fasting, our persistence, despite our “shameless audacity”, the answer is silence?

This is where last Sunday Rachmaninoff’s sonata and the Gospel collided. I’ve listened to it over and over this week and conclude that sonata doesn’t resolve the tension; it lives with it. But I thought it’s not without hope. Those themes from the previous two movements  return in that third and final movement, and they are changed, reshaped, they are deeper, fuller. They are transformed.

And that’s what I’ve found in prayer.

Not always answers. Not always healing. Not always what I want, but transformation and reshaping.

We are not called to pray because we will always get what we ask for. We are called to pray because it is through prayer that we are formed.

In baptism we publicly announce our relationship with the Lord, and we begin a journey, a journey that is like the lives of every person, with times of joy and contentment but also like others times of hardship, pain, grief and despair but the difference is that we walk it in faith, in prayer, with trust and acceptance and through that we are shaped and transformed in the experience. 

We celebrate those times when our persistence in prayer pays off, when we get the outcome we were hoping for, but be reassured that in those difficult times in the darkest most desperate moments of our life journey when our prayers have ended in hopeless tears, when all about us is broken,  in the absence of miracles, if we trust and fall into His arms, if we can surrender ourselves in His presence, there is a shred of light, thread of grace. A promise. A personal transformation.

Isaiah says, “Those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles”. Waiting is not passive. It is active, it’s courageous. So, what do we do with the prayers that feel unanswered? We mourn. We weep. We rage. And then, at some point  if we can, we listen for the still, small voice that says, “I am with you”

We pray because it is in the very act of asking, seeking, and knocking that we are drawn closer to our God who hears, even in the long silence, even in the outcomes that we didn’t want.

We pray because prayer is the music of the soul, the yearning, the aching, the joy, the anticipation, the journey, the hope. It is the Rachmaninoff sonata played out in our hearts: turbulent, searching, heartbreaking.  And sometimes, when we least expect it, we find that the door does open, not outward, but inward. And by the grace of God we are changed, by the grace of God we are transformed.

Amen