July 24th: "Always Yes"

 

Watch the sermon here

First United Presbyterian Church

“Always Yes”

Rev. Amy Morgan

July 24, 2022

Luke 11:1-13

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples."

 2 He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.

 3 Give us each day our daily bread.

 4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial."

 5 And he said to them, "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;

 6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.'

 7 And he answers from within, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.'

 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

 9 "So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

 11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?

 12 Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?

 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

"Dear God,” the child prayed, “thank You for the baby brother but what I prayed for was a puppy."

This one makes all the lists of funny prayers from children. And it is funny. At least, until you think about how this child was disappointed by God. That child asked for a puppy. And got a baby brother instead. It’s not exactly the snake for a fish or scorpion for an egg scenario, but to that child, it might not have been any less tragic. 

During my years in youth ministry, we’d end each gathering by going around the circle and praying for each other. The teens would pray for good grades on tests, acceptance to college, wins for their sports teams, and just having a good week. And as trivial as these things may seem to serious adults with “real” problems, these were crucial matters for teens. They were asking God for what was essential to them in an adolescent universe. They were asking for their equivalent of bread and fish and eggs. And sometimes they got a closed door, no answer to their request, a failing grade, a crushing rejection, a blistering defeat, a terrible week. 

And they had to ask, “what is the point of prayer? If I ask and ask and never get what I ask for?” Recently, a woman shared with me that she is really struggling with her faith and especially with prayer because for the past several years, everything she prayed for has turned out just the opposite. If she prayed for someone’s safety, they got hurt. If she prayed someone would live, they died. If she prayed for someone’s health, they got sicker. And so she just stopped praying. Who could blame her?

Cultural Christianity, by which I mean a Christianity based on feel-good adages instead of biblical theology, has offered the assurance, “There are three answers to prayer: yes, no, and wait.” But this adage does not hold up when reading our passage today. Jesus says that, “For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” According to Jesus, the answer is always “yes.” So then the corollary is that if you haven’t received, found, or walked through that open door, you must not be asking, searching, or knocking hard enough. It’s your fault you haven’t gotten your “yes.”

In this way, prayer becomes transactional. If we do a good enough job praying, believing, trusting – God will give us what we ask for. Theologian Debie Thomas writes that this understanding of prayer, this reading of Jesus’s instruction, invites “us to believe that God is a cosmic gumball machine into which we can insert our prayers like so many shiny quarters.”

But these gumballs we are trying to get at are not trivial things. We pray for jobs, for loved ones who are sick and dying, for victims of abuse and war, for release from addiction. These are not just gumballs. These are matters of life and death, subjects of deep suffering. These are the deep yearnings of our hearts for a broken world. 

And so I think we need to look past the mottos inscribed on coffee cups at Hobby Lobby and look more deeply into Jesus’s instruction on prayer. We need to lift our prayer lives out of the transactional realm and root them in the narrative of God’s deep love for the world. 

First, let’s notice where this instruction begins. Jesus’s disciples watch him praying. There is something different about how Jesus prays, or how he is after he prays. And the disciples want to emulate this. They don’t know how to pray in a way that connects them to God in the way Jesus is connected to God. They want to learn, they want to find that deep connection. 

So then Jesus begins to teach them, saying, “When you pray.” Now, let’s stop right there. Jesus doesn’t begin by prescribing a time and place, a ritual or practice. He says, “when you pray,” like “when you get up in the morning,” or “when you get dressed.” Prayer is just a thing you do, like eating or breathing or taking out the trash. It’s just a part of everyday life, not something you have to set aside a special, sacred time and place for. Many of us have struggled to establish some kind of regular prayer practice, making a New Year’s Resolution or Lenten commitment to prayer. But Jesus begins teaching his disciples to pray with the assumption that prayer can happen anytime, anywhere. This is the first key to prayer as connection, relationship, with God. It isn’t a compartmentalized activity. It is a thing we do whenever we do it, wherever we do it, whether it’s every minute of every day, or only in times of crisis, or in times of overwhelming gratitude. 

That language Jesus offers for prayer is five short sentences in Luke’s gospel. For some folks, the very first word creates a problem. “Father” is not an image that for all people conjures up positive images. Even those with wonderful fathers chafe at the exclusive image of God as a father, which ignores the passages of scripture that allude to maternal images of God. And still others are troubled by the gendered language entirely, which can reinforce damaging gender stereotypes and patriarchal power structures. 

What Jesus is trying to communicate to his disciples, however, is not that God is male. Referring to God as “Father” in first-century Judaism would have been a somewhat radical new concept. References to God as Father, or any parent, for that matter, are rare in the Hebrew scriptures, though they are common in the New Testament. This is language that Jesus introduces. Instead of the more common addresses found for God in Hebrew - Adonai, “Lord,” or Elohim, “God,” – Jesus teaches his disciples to address God in a way that is relational, that acknowledges God as our nearest kin. In the first century, Father was the relationship that signified that bond. 

But the next phrase acknowledges that God is no ordinary father. The name of God is holy, sanctified, honored. God is relational, as close to us as a loving family member and guardian. But that does not mean we are on equal footing with God. God is God and we are not. If we don’t understand that relationship dynamic, we will have a tough time being in relationship with God. 

Then the real petitions start. Let your love reign on earth. Give us each enough and no one too much. Forgive us and free us. 

These are the ultimate yearnings of our hearts. Puppies and good grades, good health and financial security, all these things belong in God’s reign, where everyone is loved as unconditionally as a puppy loves a toddler; where everyone is valued for who they are and not what they accomplish; where everyone is whole in body, mind, and spirit; where everyone knows the abundance of life in Jesus Christ. Our petitions that may seem petty are really the desires of hearts that are longing for the love, peace, and grace of God. And Jesus teaches his disciples to ask for those things. 

Not only does he teach them to ask for those things, he teaches them to persist in asking, banging on the gates of heaven until we finally get a response. We are instructed to keep on asking, keep on knocking, keep on seeking, keep on praying, all day and night, for however long it takes. 

There are folks who give up praying, who give up on God, when all they hear is silence on the other side of that door. And I get that. That’s fair. We’re practical people. Why keep at something that clearly isn’t working? If God isn’t going to solve my problems, I guess I’ll just have to solve it myself. It’s a big reason why people give up on God. And again, it totally makes sense, logically, to do that. 

And that’s why I find it so remarkable when someone who is suffering for a long time, or has deep compassion for the world’s suffering, continues to pray. The Psalms are full of faithful prayers that essentially say, “God, get off your duff and do something already!” Some of them even point out that they are doing everything God wants them to do and God is still not showing up for them. And yet, they are still praying. 

When we look around the world and experience in our lives that God’s kingdom has not come, that people do not have what they need, that resentment and hostility and shame reign supreme, that our trials are more than we can bear – the most faithful thing we can do is pray this prayer Jesus taught, relentlessly banging on the door to God’s house, even when it seems like God is fast asleep and not coming to help us. We don’t have to pray it nicely or politely. There is no “please” in the prayer Jesus taught. What Jesus teaches his disciples, and us, is that God can handle our desperation, our frustration, our fear and anger even. God is God, so God can take it. 

And if we trust what Jesus teaches about God, and about prayer, the answer to our prayers is not “yes, no, or wait.” The answer is always “yes.” 

But that “yes” does not come in the form of a puppy, or college acceptance letter, or miraculous healing. If we look closely at what Jesus says, there is only one promise Jesus makes in this passage. Jesus does not say we will get what we ask for or find what we’re looking for or have the door opened to the life of our dreams. 

Jesus says God will give us the Holy Spirit. That’s it. And that’s everything. Because the Holy Spirit is God’s very presence with us. She is our Advocate, the wisdom of God, the inspiration and empowerment of God. She gives us grace and peace, insight and every good gift to endure whatever we must endure. 

Debie Thomas writes, “when we pray, when we persist in prayer, when we name our longings in prayer without fear or compromise, God will never fail to give us God’s own, abundant, indwelling and overflowing self as the Answer we actually need. When we contend in prayer, God will not withhold God’s loving, consoling, healing, transforming, and empowering Spirit from us.  When it comes to no-holds-barred, absolutely self-giving generosity, God’s answer to all of our prayers will always be Yes.”

“God’s answer to all of our prayers will always be Yes.” God will always answer the door, always give us good things. Because God loves us like a mother, like a father, like a friend. And God will show up when we persistently demand God’s presence in our lives. 

God may show up with a baby brother instead of a puppy. God may show up with a loss that helps us grow instead of a win that makes us more egotistical. God may show up with a career change instead of a job. God may show up in a hospice nurse to hold our hand as we die instead of a miraculous recovery. 

A woman came to me recently with a spiritual struggle. Someone she knew who was a life-long good and faithful Christian had died a long and painful death. And she couldn’t understand how God could let that happen to him. Many people had been praying for this man all through his illness. He had been ready to die, but he lingered in pain for a long time. It seemed so unfair. Why would God allow that to happen to such a faithful person?

I didn’t know much about this man or his situation, so I couldn’t speak to the ways God may have shown up for him, the ways the Holy Spirit was with him through his suffering. But that is what Jesus promises - the Holy Spirit. But I also had to remind this person that we do not follow a Savior who promised life would be easy and free from pain. That was never part of the deal. In fact, Jesus prays that, if it be God’s will, he might not have to suffer and die. And he did suffer and die. 

And God’s answer was still Yes. Because God was with Jesus on the cross, even in the moment when he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Even when he could not feel the presence of God, God was in that human body, feeling that human pain and suffering, empowering Jesus to do what must be done in the name of love. The Holy Spirit was with Jesus in his last breath, in the cold of the grave, and in the new life of his resurrection. 

That is the same Holy Spirit that is promised to us through prayer. Whenever we pray, whenever we demand the earth look more like heaven, whenever we beg for forgiveness, whenever we are pushed beyond our limits – the Holy Spirit is our answer. The Holy Spirit is our Yes. The presence of God is suffering with us, empowering us, inspiring us, healing us, loving us. 

So when we pray for each other – as we’re going through challenging times, facing surgery or illness, anxious about our future – we are not just dropping shiny quarters into a cosmic gumball machine. We are demanding God’s Spirit will gift those we pray for with her comforting presence, show them hopeful possibilities, and open the doors of their hearts to enter into deeper relationship with God. When we pray for the world around us – for those affected by war and violence, for those affected by natural disasters, for those who are hungry and unhoused – we are not praying they would be good enough to deserve God’s Yes. We are testifying that God’s Yes is already theirs, that the Holy Spirit is as close to them as their breath, that God’s presence is inseparable from their suffering. 

Jesus teaches us that prayer is not transactional. Prayer is relational. And while it may be tough for us to grasp because we live in a transactional society, it is good news that God’s answer to prayer does not depend on how often or how well or how faithfully we pray. God’s answer is always Yes. And that Yes is God’s very self, suffering with us, loving for us, making a way when there is no way, sitting in the darkness with us, bringing God’s reign of love to earth, giving us enough, forgiving us, guiding us. That Yes is maybe not what we’re asking for, but it is the answer we need, whenever we pray. Amen.