Sermon 2025 10 19 Pentecost 19 C

Saint Margaret’s

Anglican Church

Budapest, Hungary

Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 121; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8

Jesus told his disciples a parable…

In the early sixteenth century, famous painter and

printmaker, Albrecht Dürer, completed a sketch of praying

hands which remains famous and cherished to this day. You

see the image here. Dürer is noted for his naturalism and

attention to detail, and this trait is perhaps nowhere more

on display than in this sketch. One might almost think it was a photograph. You can view the

original, by the way, in the Albertina Museum in Vienna. It is not much larger than a greeting

card. But it is drawn on oddly pastel-blue paper, as you see, said to have been made by Dürer

himself. Dürer, as you may know, and I would be remiss if I did not mention this, was of

Hungarian family background.

There are legends and theories about whose hands these are. Some suggest that they are the

hands of Dürer’s brother, a coalminer, though they hardly look like the hands of a common

labourer to me. But it could be… Most art historians seem to think they are Dürer’s own

hands, but I am not quite sure how one sketches one’s own hands...with one’s own hands. In

any event, the print was apparently a preliminary and quick sketch for a later painting of an

Apostle at prayer, a painting which was apparently completed but which was also alas later

destroyed in a monastery fire.

In any case, I find it interesting that a preliminary and almost ephemeral sketch has become

an enduring image of that which our Gospel account today calls our “need to prayer always

and not lose heart.” There are no legends or theories, as far as I know, regarding what prayer

was being lifted up by these hands. So, I suppose we are free to speculate. If in fact they were

the hands of a coalminer, perhaps the prayer was for safety or for better wages and more job

security. If they were the hands of an Apostle, then perhaps the prayer was for success in

spreading the Gospel. And if they were Dürer’s own hands, the prayer might well have been

for artistic inspiration.

Or, as in the case of our Gospel account, it might have been a prayer for redress of

grievances. No one of course will ever know. Curiously, the hands are disembodied. They

begin, or end if you prefer, in up-turned cuffs and a bit of sleeve but are missing arms and

body and background. They have been lifted up in prayer now for some five hundred yearsand show no signs of tiring, which leads me to think of them as the hands of any or all of us.

The hands of generations of Christians at prayer.

“Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

The parable Jesus tells is a peculiar one, I think, that of an exasperated widow improbably

petitioning an unscrupulous judge for justice. In my mind, I visualize the widow, not with

hands neatly folded in prayer, as Dürer might have depicted them, but with arms

outstretched and with fingers pointing, shaking in their demand for justice. Perhaps she is

even pounding on the hapless judge’s door or bench. Hers after all is not a prayer of

resignation but of outrage.

She will be heard. And is. “I will grant her justice,” thinks the judge to himself in Jesus’

telling,

“so that she may not wear me out…” A very literal translation of the judge’s thoughts

by the way would be rendered, “so that she does not slap me in the face.” Now, what is

sometimes missed in interpretation of this almost comical vignette is that the judge actually

does not represent God as we might at first read be tempted to think. Quite the opposite.

Jesus tells us in explanation that God grants the prayers of his people quickly and, unlike the

judge in the story, without delay. Of course, what quickly means to God from the perspective

of eternity may not exactly be the same as what we understand by quickly in human terms.

To God, “a thousand years are as one day,” as Peter tells us in one of his Epistles or Letters.

So again, the moral is: Pray always and do not lose heart.

Indeed, some sages suggest that every prayer brings with it a belief in eternity. After all, why

pray at all if you do not believe in an eternal God, one capable of entering the world of the

temporal, our world, one capable of offering us solace and consolation…? In some sense, we

always pray backwards from God’s eternity into our own time, into our own needs, our own

day-to-day lives. Prayer in a very real sense is a moment, an experience, of eternity, midst our

daily mundane frustrations and fears. Yet in some sense, from God’s perspective all is

already known, already decided, already sliced-and-diced, already done. But as Jesus tells us,

this is no reason to lose heart. No reason not to pray. Just remember Dürer’s hands.

Prayer is then an affirmation of our oneness with God, not only in the here and now, but for

all time and eternity. Prayer brings with it not only communication but community with God

as well as with all believers in all times and places, indeed with all humankind believing or

not. Knowing that instinctively may well be that which is behind the enduring beauty and

fascination of Dürer’s Praying Hands. We see in them and in their posture a oneness with the

world and with the eternal at the same time.

According to one urban legend, Mother Teresa once visited a couple of Wall Street or City of

London tycoons, hoping to convince them to make a substantial donation to the cause of the

poor. The financiers saw what was coming and were determined not to give her a penny.Mother Teresa made her plea. The financiers in turn declined to donate. Mother Teresa

folded her hands and said, “Let us pray.”

After a few awkward moments of silent prayer, Mother Teresa again made her case. And

again, the executives declined her request. Mother Teresa again folded her wizened hands,

hands not unlike those in Dürer’s sketch, I suspect, and said, “Let us pray.” After what

seemed to the entrepreneurs an eternity of quiet, they both pulled out their checkbooks and

made substantial gifts to her ministry. Perhaps prayer works after all. Quickly or not depends

upon your perspective. Pray always, my friends, and do not lose heart. Or as Mother Teresa

might say, let us pray.

Amen.

The Rev. Canon Dr. Frank Hegedűs