Ask, Seek, Knock

Scriptures:       Hosea 1:2-10    Psalm 138

                        Colossians 2:6-19         Luke 11:1-13          

         

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus and his disciples are on their way to Jerusalem, and Jesus is teaching his disciples along the way.  We’re told that Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after Jesus had finished, the disciples asked, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

You who are raising children, or who have raised children, understand this moment.  How many times have you been doing something – cooking, pulling weeds, building a cabinet – and your two year old or four year old or six or eight or ten year old walks up behind you and says, “I want to help” or “Can you show me how to do that?” Or those of us with no children may remember when we asked our mom and dad to show us how to do what they were doing.  It’s a very humble, trustful moment, either as a parent with those little six year old eyes looking up at you…..or perhaps remembering yourself as a six year old looking up into your father’s or mother’s eyes as you asked them to show you how to hammer a nail, how to plant tomatoes, how far apart to space the plants, how deep to plant..….

And Jesus responds in the same way, encouraging his disciples to pray to God in that same humble, trusting way.  “Father” (or “Our Father” as Matthew has it)…..the original word is Abba….Daddy.  And that’s the spirit in which Jesus instructed his disciples – and instructs us – to pray – humbly, trusting.  Trusting that the one to whom we pray loves us and cares about us. 

Luke’s version of the Lord’s prayer is a little shorter than the more familiar version from Matthew’s gospel that we pray every week, but it has the same basic elements:  to pray that God’s name is held sacred, to pray for God’s kingdom or, put another way, that God will rule as sovereign, to pray that God will provide food for the day, and for God to forgive our sins – with the qualifier that we forgive everyone indebted to us.  And for God to save us from the time of trial, from temptation.

And then Jesus taught them to be persistent in prayer.  He asks them to consider what they would do if they had a friend land on their doorstep late at night, and there was nothing in the house to eat.  This would not have been uncommon – travel was slow, and difficult, and travelers met up with unpredictable obstacles and delays along the way….so plan as they might, they could very well get to their destination at midnight or the wee hours of the morning.  As was mentioned last week, in that culture, providing hospitality even to unexpected guests was a huge big deal, and to have no food to offer a guest would have been a huge embarrassment.  And so if these disciples unexpected found themselves hosting a visiting friend who had arrived at an inconvenient hour, they’d go to a neighbor – at midnight or whenever – and asked for assistance.  Of course, they’d have to keep knocking in order to wake the neighbor up – he wouldn’t just knock once or twice and then walk away.  And of course the neighbor would be cranky – “It’s the middle of the night; we’re trying to sleep!  Go away.”  And probably a few choice words besides.  Houses were so small that not only the homeowner, but the entire family would have been wakened if the homeowner got up.  But if they kept knocking, eventually the neighbor would give him what he wanted just to make him go away.  And so if they could by persistence get what they needed even from an unwilling neighbor, how much more will we receive when we ask a loving God who wants to hear our prayers.

And then he goes on: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.”  And then he asks them to look at their own lives:  even though they’re far from perfect, they will take care of their children.  How much more will a good God take care of his children.

But Jesus’ examples also tell us that if, like children, we reach out in prayer for something that’s not good for us, God has the wisdom to know what we need, which may or may not be the specific thing we ask for.  In the Sea of Galilee there were eels and water snakes that, to a child, might look like a fish, and a scorpion might pull itself together into a ball, and a child might mistake it for an egg.  A child might mistakenly reach out for the eel or the balled-up scorpion, but of course the parent would know that what the child reached out for was harmful, and give the child what was actually needed.  How much more will God give us what we really need – and it’s telling that in Jesus’ telling, what we really need is the Holy Spirit – “How much more will God give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.”

Now lots of prosperity preachers have distorted Jesus’ words into a theology of “name it and claim it”…but that’s not what Jesus is saying.  Remember that Jesus tells us first to pray that God’s name will be honored, that God’s kingly rule will come to pass – and then to pray for our daily bread.  He didn’t tell us to pray “O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.”  Nor did he tell us to pray, “Santa baby, a ’54 convertible too, light blue…..”  The prayer Jesus taught his disciples isn’t about making up a wish list for Santa.  It’s a prayer for people living in community – “give us our daily bread/forgive us our sins/save us from the time of trial”  Ultimately, the Lord’s prayer isn’t even primarily about us, but about the Lord – it’s a prayer for God to shape us into people who will honor God’s name and live according to God’s will. 

But within God’s will, we’re told to trust, and we’re told to persist in prayer.  We will need to ask, and seek, and knock.  We may need to pray on a longer time horizon than we’d like.  Think of the Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years seeking a home.  Think of the civil rights struggle, which took decades, not days, and was itself part of a centuries long struggle for equality.  Many of those who prayed died without seeing an answer to their prayers, but their children and grandchildren saw at least some answers to those prayers.  God was faithful.  And as we pray for an end to violence, an end to mass shootings and terrorism, an end to hunger and inequality, we too need to be prepared to persist in prayer….to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. And we may need to pray, not only with bowed head, but with outstretched arms and marching feet…..we may need to pray not only with our words but with our actions, so that our whole life becomes a prayer……remember that hymn we sang earlier that said that prayer doesn’t just happen in church walls, that our life’s work can be a prayer.

“Lord, teach us to pray” the disciples asked.  May God continually teach each of us to pray, and teach us to let our lives be living prayers for the coming of the kingdom.  Amen.