Jesus says,“if your child asks for a fish,
would you give a snake instead of a fish?
Or if they ask for an egg, will you give a scorpion.”
One year when I was in college,
my grandmother gave me a ham for my birthday.
She gave me a canned ham.
She wrapped it and everything.
I don’t know what was going through her mind.
I know that had not asked for a ham.
I was actually a vegetarian at the time.
If you grandchild asks for -- anything.
would you give them a canned ham?
My grandmother may not have been very good at gifts.
But Jesus insists that God is good at gifts.
On his final trip to Jerusalem,
Jesus is teaching his disciples about ministry.
The disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray
and Jesus complies.
What Jesus tells them is the prayer
that we have been taught as children
the one that we have said so many times.
The Lord's prayer is not very poetic,
it's more of an outline,
setting out the things that we should be praying for,
-That God's name would be holy,
-That God’s kingdom would come to us.
-That God would give us what we need to live every day
-That we be forgiven.
- And that our time on earth is would not be too hard.
That’s pretty much it.
There are a ton of things written about this prayer
I read a lot this week, there was nothing too gripping.
which was too bad, because I wouldn’t mind
talking longer about the Lords prayer,
but the next part of this exchange
is actually the part that always gets my attention
and I can’t quite ever ignore it.
The knock at the door at midnight
the fish and the scorpion, asking and it will be received.
That always raises the question for me of why we even pray at all.
Prayer is a very complicated thing for me.
Not the actual doing it, but thinking about why we do it.
The concept has been troubling ever since seminary
Aren’t we telling God something that God already knows?
And if God already knows, why doesn't God just do something
about those things that we pray for? Why to do we need to pray?
To be honest, I have a struggle with this particular scripture
especially preaching on it, because I want to show you the evidence
that what Jesus says is right. The proof that what he’s saying is true.
Ask and it will be given to you.
Seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.
Everyone who asks receives.
And I know, I have seen prayers that have been answered.
Amazing prayers. Things that have happened- healing and life and
recovery and reconciliation. Justice done.
That has no other explanation but people of faith prayed fervently
and God replied with the impossible.
But Jesus says, Ask and it will be received. Just keep asking.
And what sticks in my mind is the times that hasn’t happened.
the times that people have asked, persistently, in good faith
and they haven’t received.
For thousands of years, Christians have prayed for peace
for justice, but once one problem is solved, another springs up somewhere.
There are parents who have knocked their knuckles bare
praying for that the lives of their children be spared.
And yet so many children have been lost.
There are people who have prayed for work that never came.
People have prayed that they would
overcome addictions that they never beat.
That they would have enough food,
so their family wouldn’t go hungry - and yet people starve.
Some prayers, some good, honest, genuine prayers haven’t been answered.
There was a story this weekend of a couple,
a Lutheran couple who met at church
and were supposed to be married on August 10th,
in Good Shepherd Lutheran church in Pearl River, NY
who were on a boat ride with their
wedding party and the boat crashed into a
big cargo boat and the bride and the best man were lost.
The mother of the bride said that “It just can’t end like this”
and she said she “has been praying for a miracle.”
But her daughter’s body was found yesterday.
And to suggest that prayers that don’t get answered
are just not done with enough persistence or faith
or that their not the right ones,
is rediculous and cruel and not the point.
But I do believe that persistence is a big part
of Jesus discussion of prayer. Keep praying.
Trust in God’s goodness and love, even
when signs are showing the opposite of that.
keep on going.
And I also think that maybe prayer is less about receiving.
Less about what we ask for and more about a relationship.
In the parable today, Jesus poses:
“Suppose one of you has a friend and you go to him at midnight
and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread”
When I was reading this story and putting myself in the character's place
I was thinking - wow, I would be really uncomfortable
knocking on a stranger's door at midnight and ask for something
if it wasn't life threatening.
But Jesus says that this is a friend.
What kind of special friend would that be
who you could knock on their door at midnight?
and get them out of bed to borrow some stupid food for a midnight party?
And know that they wouldn't call the police?
That would be a very good friend, a very loyal friend.
A best friend even.
Not the image that most people would have had of God in Jesus time.
It might have even been a scandal to think of God as being so close.
Most people thought of God as being distant
and unapproachable. More like a king or queen.
Not the person living next door.
Not your best friend who you could wake up in the
middle of the night to ask a favor of.
The benefit of this kind of relationship,
I would think would not be getting the bread
it would be knowing you had a friend
who’s door you could knock on at midnight.
Prayer is the conversation between us and God
the conversation that is vital to any good relationship.
Prayer is us telling God our thoughts and hopes,
our worries and concerns, our joys and delights.
Prayer is sharing our secrets with our friend.
Prayer is the knock on the door at midnight.
The feeling, even, that we can take God for granted.
The assurance that we can knock on that door over and over
and that we will surely find something –
Maybe not always what we want,
but maybe something even more precious than that.
It is having faith that, even when our requests aren’t answered
that God will still be at the other side of the door, ready to hear.
Elie Wiesel is a writer who was in Auschwitz
when he was around 15 years old.
He wrote a book called The Trial of God.
In the book he remembers that in the camp,
the older prisoners created a rabbinic court of law
and the purpose was to indict God.
They had been faithful, they had prayed, they had done
what God required and still they suffered unimaginable pain and anguish.
The trial lasted several nights.
Witnesses were heard, evidence was gathered,
and a unanimous verdict was reached:
They declared God guilty of crimes against creation and humanity.
Then after a long silence, the Rabbi there looked at the sky
and said 'It's time for evening prayers,'
and they recited the evening service as they had done every night.
We pray because it is time to pray.
We pray because it is proscribed for us in the worship.
We pray prayers that we have memorized, that we read
that we make up in our heads and that we call out in a time of crisis.
We pray sometimes because there is nothing left to do.
We pray because even though we don’t always feel it,
we know that God loves us.
Mostly, we pray to maintain the relationship with God
even if, like Elie Wiesel, we may angry and ambivalent about God.
We pray to bridge that gap between
the every day world and the mystery.
We pray to bring the concerns of our
friends, our neighbors, and our world into the presence of God
And to bring the presence of God
into the concerns of our friends, our neighbors and our world
At the end of his instruction, Jesus says:
“how much more will your heavenly Father
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?”
We are not promised all that we will ever request.
in the end, we are promised the Spirit of God.
We are promised that t when we knock on that door at midnight,
that God will be there on the other side
and that God will answer.
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