Ask, Search, Knock
A Sermon by the Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (C), July 24th, 2022.
Luke 11: 1-13
Once upon a time, my family and I lived on Coronado for two years. Coronado is an idyllic place, an island across from San Diego. It is beautiful almost 100% of the time. Birds of paradise growing in December. Fruit trees all around. It seemed pretty incredible to people from the East Coast. The Hotel Del, an 1890s showplace where the movie “Some Like it Hot” was filmed, Spreckles Park around the corner from where we lived, with an old school band stand where we would go to Sunday night concerts and sit on the grass with a picnic. It was quite the small town experience. And a big part of our life there was centered on Christ Episcopal Church. We went to church there and our son Andrew went to the Day School. One week-end, we decided to go on a camping trip with two other families. Our children were all about the same age, 8 or 9 years old.
So we left sunny Coronado late one Friday afternoon for the two hour trip to a campground near Julien, a small town in the Cuyamaca mountains. We set up camp, prepared dinner and hung out around the campfire, roasting marshmallows. We all finally decided to turn in for the night and went to our separate tents. Each set of parents had a tent and we had brought another one for all the kids to sleep in together. It had been a long, hard week and Robbie and I were really tired.
About an hour or so after we had fallen asleep, we awakened to the sound of kids yelling from their tent on the other side of the camp site. “Hey, we need some help!” You can usually tell as a parent from the sound of your child’s voice, how serious it is, and this didn’t sound too serious. So we laid there a few minutes, hoping they’d all just go back to sleep. And after a while we heard another chorus, a little bit louder this time, “Hey, come help us, we can’t get the flap open!” This time I think one of us yelled something like, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out”, and again tried to go back to sleep. Things went on in this vain for a good while, until one of the other parents got up and went over to the kid tent to see what the problem was. And they discovered that the tent had partially collapsed. The kids really couldn’t get out and didn’t have any way of fixing it without some parental intervention. We felt pretty bad. To this day, we all laugh about this story of parental failure. The story ended happily, however. The next morning, we all woke up to snow on the ground and very cold temperatures that we weren’t prepared for, so we packed up and went back home to sunny Coronado and took our son to the beach.
I take some solace in my shortcomings as a parent when I reflect on today’s Gospel. Jesus tells a story with God cast as the reluctant, sleepy one. A friend knocks on his friend’s door long after he has gone to bed. He asks for bread, not for himself, but in order to provide hospitality for someone who has shown up unexpectedly. And the man in bed really doesn’t want to get up, even though it is the right thing to do to respond to a friend in need. In biblical times, there was a social expectation and a religious requirement to offer hospitality, so this seems like a strange story for Jesus to tell. But the point, he explains, is not about the failure of the man in bed to respond on the first knock, but about the persistence of the friend trying to rouse him. Persistence.
Jesus tells this story right after his disciples ask him to teach them how to pray. They see him praying and they want to be like him. They see that he is frequently in prayer. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus prays a lot. Up on mountains, in gardens, before calling his disciples, before his death. Prayer is woven into his life every day. So his friends see this and they see how he lives his life. They realize that there is a connection between his prayer and what he does. They want to be more like him, so they ask him how to pray. And Jesus responds with what we now know as the Lord’s Prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer is at the very heart of Christian tradition. We hear Luke’s version of it today and there is a slightly different form in Matthew. Very early on, Christian communities added the doxology that we still use in Episcopal worship today, “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Amen.” We say the Lord’s Prayer during every single celebration of the Holy Eucharist, without fail. Jesus persisted in prayer and Christians have persisted, Sunday after Sunday, year after year, for over 2,000 years. When you really think about the Lord’s Prayer, it is very simple, which I think was a big part of what Jesus was telling his disciples. We don’t need a lot of eloquent words, we don’t need a seminary degree, we don’t even need a quiet space and a candle, even though you guys know I am a huge fan of candles and quiet. All we really need to do is to get in touch with our limitations and exercise the tiniest bit of faith, just enough faith to reach out. Desperation can be an excellent teacher.
Jesus tells them to start with “Our Father”. That says that prayer is about relationship. Reaching out to God who loves us as a good and loving parent loves their children. Children can trust good parents. And God is so much more than a good parent. We can trust in God’s ultimate goodness.
“Hallowed be thy name”. God is God and we are not. That is why we reach out to God. Because we can’t fix our own messes by ourselves. We need God, the Divine parent to help us.
“Thy kingdom come.” Lord, make this world look more like the world you intend. We can’t do it alone. Help us to be your partners in healing this world”.
“Thy will be done.” We don’t always know what we need, but we trust that God will answer our prayers as may be best for us and those we pray for. God’s answer may be different than we had imagined. God is God and we are not.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” Give us our basic needs, Lord. Food, rest, sleep, a job, love, whatever we need for sustenance. And help us to realize that our everyday lives are lived in the expectation of the heavenly feast when we will no longer have to be concerned about these things.
“Forgive us our sins.” We need God’s forgiveness so that we won’t be weighed down by all of the things that we are ashamed of. All of those things that are separating us from our relationship with God, our relationship with other people and our relationship with ourselves. Estrangement can make us sick, spiritually and physically, and only God can restore us to health.
“Forgive us our sins as we forgive others.” We get in touch with our own need for God’s forgiveness so that we can also have the strength and courage to forgive others. When we recognize our own shortcomings we are more able to forgive the trespasses of other people. But it’s hard work. Forgiveness is a process. If we have been deeply hurt, we have to work through the layers. It can take years. That’s why we pray the Lord’s Prayer so often.
“And finally, “do not bring us to the time of trial” or “do not lead us into temptation”. And that, is probably the biggest thing we all need to pray for right now. “Do not bring us to the time of trial, help us not to give into temptation.” Help us keep our faith, Lord, whatever challenges come our way. We are all in an extended time of trial and our faith is being sorely tested right now. It’s hard not to give into cynicism and despair when we see what is happening in the world. We have to hold onto hope with both hands. We have a job to do as Christians and a big part of that job is praying for a world that sometimes looks like it is falling apart. Our hope does not come from this world. Hope comes from God. So, if we are losing hope, we need to pray for it. Hope is essential. It is a basic need. It is part of our sustenance. We need it as much as we need our daily bread. It is essential to our humanity and it is key to our Christian walk. We can never ever lose hope that God is with us and working in this world, in ways we can see and in ways that we cannot see.
“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you.” Ask, search, knock, or in the case of a collapsed tent, yell. And just remember, we may have to wait a while for God to respond. It’s all about persistence.