A few weeks ago, I was on an amazing trip, bicycling around Bodensee, a large lake that borders Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It was absolutely beautiful! Some of it – especially our journey into Switzerland along the Rhine River -- was quite bit more hilly than we had been led to believe. To be fair, they would say that there would be a “little up.” They weren’t kidding. But three weeks ago today, we were on the German side of the lake. It was Sunday and we were hoping to find a church to attend. But there was nothing available in the town we were in until late morning – and we had to be out of our hotel and on our bike before then.
I was disappointed because I had asked God for a church service - but knowing that God is not only found in churches and that I could pray anywhere, I contented myself with humming praises to God as we biked through beautiful wooded paths, stopped at a little chapel along the side of the road and then continued our journey along the blessedly flat lakeshore and parks. It was enough.
But, as we were biking along a park by the lake, I noticed that there was what looked like a high school band and a couple of people in long robes and I realized that they were having a worship service! We pulled our tandem bike off the path into the park and were welcomed. I only have beginning German, so I wasn’t able to understand the sermon. But some of the tunes of the hymns were the same and I was able to sound out the words. And then… we said the Lord’s prayer.
The general cadence of the way we say the Lord’s prayer is the same in most languages and so I delighted in praying the Lord’s prayer, joining my prayer to the prayers of the people all over the world – and knowing that you all would be praying the same prayer – in English – 8 hours later.
This is the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” The Lord’s prayer as we and people all over the world say it, is structured more closely after the version in Matthew’s Gospel, but the message is the same. When we pray, “Hallowed be thy name” we are saying we revere God’s name, and treat God’s name as holy. As I’ve told my confirmation students, when you say, “Jesus” or “Oh God” - you can expect that God is listening - saying “Yes?” So make sure you remember that you are addressing God when you say God’s name.
Jesus also teaches us to ask for God’s kingdom to come. Thy Kingdom Come. It means we are looking for God’s way to be done – which may not be what the culture tells us is in our self-interest.
Jesus invites us to ask for what we need – daily bread. Martin Luther taught us that this is an inclusive word for all of our daily needs – not just food but also housing, health, education, and the welfare of our community.
Jesus also teaches us to forgive one another as He has forgiven us. And, to ask that we not be brought to the time of trial.
We could have a whole sermon series on each of these petitions but what struck me this time as I was reading and praying about what you and I needed to hear this week was Jesus’ invitation to: Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you.” Because, as Jesus reminds his disciples and us, that God is Good and that God can be trusted to give us not only good things – our daily bread – but also the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Ask, Search and Knock. That sounds so easy. Does that mean if I ask for whatever I want, I will get it? Does God really work that way? If so, why not ask for the moon? Or at least a red convertible.
There are some churches, especially those that teach the “prosperity Gospel” that insist that if you ask, and don’t receive, it means that you haven’t been praying hard enough or long enough or that you have sinned in some other way. Kate Bowler writes in her book, “Everything Happens for A Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved,” that when she got cancer her church prayed for healing, and she prayed, and when she wasn’t healed, they assumed that either she had not been persistent enough. She hadn’t pounded on God’s door loud enough like the neighbor who woke up his friend to ask for bread to share – or… more sinisterly… they wondered if there was something else wrong with her.
But Kate had been praying. But she wasn’t receiving the gift of healing. I’m guessing we have all been there – either ourselves or prayed for a loved one who is sick and we pray for healing – and it doesn’t come. And we wonder if we can trust these words of Jesus: “Ask, and it will be given to you. Search and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.” And if we stop right there, it does sound as if Jesus is promising us whatever we want. So why not ask for the red convertible? Won’t God give it to you if you just pray hard enough?
But Jesus isn’t done speaking. Jesus compares the generosity of parents to their children to the generosity of God to God’s children —and we as mere humans fall far short. Jesus even calls us evil in comparison. He says, “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.”
So, it turns out that Jesus is not telling us we can have a red convertible if we just ask long and hard enough. We can’t even guarantee that our prayers for others will be granted in the way that we want. Kate Bowler discovered that while the answer she kept receiving was not healing it also wasn’t over… And so she learned to live with this uncertainty, to recognize that she is mortal (as are we all). She learned that what was true – was not that she could ask for whatever she wanted but rather that she can trust the Holy Spirit to be with her every day – regardless of the situation of her health and her life.
And so can we. Trusting God in the midst of uncertainty is not always easy. But it helps if we don’t start when we are in the trenches of our pain or sorrow.
And this is why Jesus invites us to Ask, Seek, Knock. And one of the best ways to do this is through a daily practice of prayer.
I had been taking beginning German in preparation for our European trip. And while I am by no means fluent or even close, I had fun being able to order off the menu and to greet people with “Guten Morgan” and thank them with “viel Dank”. But I hadn’t had time to do my daily German homework – especially after we went to Italy. I spoke English primarily but when I tried to speak a little Italian I found myself sometimes saying Danke and sometimes saying Gracias and sometimes saying Grazi. The foreign language part of my brain felt completely scrambled. So… when I returned home and went to my class – I felt completely unprepared. While my classmates were asking questions and speaking in sentences, I was confusing tenses and mixing in a few words of Spanish in the midst of my halting responses. The teacher gently reminded me that in order to really learn the language, I needed to practice it every day – even if only for 15 minutes – rather than try to cram all my homework in on the day of class – which is exactly what I had been doing.
I think that is how it is for prayer too. When we develop a daily practice of prayer - praising God for the gift of life, the goodness that we see; asking God to heal the hurts of our life and of our world; searching for guidance and direction; forgiving one another and knocking on the door of truth; we learn to trust God with our cares, our prayers, our life.
This is what Jesus is inviting you and me into – a daily practice of prayer which means asking, seeking, and knocking on God’s door. And trusting that God has already sent the Holy Spirit to us to guide us and to give us more than we had even imagined possible. Thanks be to God. Amen.