Have you seen any interesting vanity license
plates recently? Many of you have been sharing some of the plates that you’ve
seen out on the roads. The messages on these plates are not always easy to
decipher but they’re fun to figure out what the driver is trying to convey.
During these summer Sundays, we’re following Jesus’ teachings in the
Gospel of Luke and thinking about the message that he wants us convey to us.
What is the vanity license plate for this Sunday?
Many of you have figured this out. It’s “Knock two open.” By the way, I
have never spent more time on figuring out sermon titles than I have by doing
this series on vanity license plates.
The message Jesus has for us today comes from when he was teaching the
disciples about the importance of prayer.
And in this scripture reading, Jesus encourages us to pray what we call,
“The Lord’s Prayer.”
Now, a lot of us know the Lord’s Prayer or at least we know what
somebody means when they refer to The Lord’s Prayer.
Maybe you have heard of the two Christians who were trying to outdo each
other. The conversation came around to prayer. One said, “I’ll bet you $20 you can’t even say the Lord’s Prayer.”
The other replied, “It’s a bet.”
And so he began. “Now I lay me down to
sleep…”
The first man interrupted him and said, “OK, here’s your money. I didn’t think you could do it!”
Has
this prayer become so familiar that we have forgotten its meaning?
The gospel writer, Luke is known to be interested in two things more
than any of the other three Gospels and both of those two things are included
in our scripture reading for today – Jesus’ prayer life and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus
not only teaches about the importance of prayer in our scripture reading but he
models it. Notice that the only reason
the disciples asked Jesus about how to pray was because they saw him doing
it.
Even better than having religious vanity license plates is when we
practice our faith. When we practice our faith, people become curious. When
they see us praying, they become more interested about prayer because they can
see that it is a priority in our lives.
Several
years ago, William Hendricks noticed that thousands of people were leaving American
churches every week and never going back.
And so he investigated why this was happening.
In
his book entitled Exit Interviews: Revealing Stories of Why People Are
Leaving Church, written back in 1993, Hendricks shares that two-thirds of
people who attended church said they didn’t experience God on a regular basis
in the worship experience of their church. They attended these churches hoping
that somebody would teach them to pray and they left feeling very empty and
disappointed.
Fifteen years after Hendricks wrote his book, Julia Duin did the same
kind of research. And she discovered
exactly what Hendricks had found. She found that the worshippers who had given
up on attending church wanted to know how to pray and nobody was doing it in an
authentic and meaningful way.
We
may feel a little clumsy at prayer and that’s OK because like a lot of things
in life, the more we practice it, the more natural it becomes. At first, it may
feel a little counter intuitive to set aside our calendars, our cell phones,
and the TV remote and pray instead.
Jesus was aware that it can be difficult for us to have prayer become
part of our regular daily routine in life.
And so he tells his disciples to be persistent in prayer. He tells us to ask, seek, and knock. I like it that he uses these three
imperatives, these three action words to help us to start praying.
If
you can ask, seek, and knock, then you can be well on your way to having a very
meaningful prayer life. Sometimes, we approach prayer so passively that we
never get around to praying at all.
For example, someone might reason that if God wants me to get that job,
then I’ll get it and there’s really no need for me to pray. Or we might think to ourselves that the last
time I prayed about getting something I really wanted, it didn’t happen and
that just led to disappointment so I’m not going to pray the next time.
Jesus is saying that prayer is so much more than us snapping our fingers
and hoping that God will give us what we want or think we need. Prayer is about
asking, seeking, and knocking so that we can become more attentive to the
direction that God is opening up for us. What we think was a prayer that landed
on deaf ears was really a prayer that was beginning the process of helping us
to listen for God’s voice.
It’s been said that God answers prayers in four ways which are 1) No,
not yet. 2) No, I love you too much. 3) Yes, I thought you’d never ask. And 4)
Yes, and here’s more.
Even
the first response, “No, not yet” implies that God is listening and is
responding to us. But sometimes we assume that because the answer was no that
God just doesn’t care. Nothing could be further from the truth according to
what Jesus is teaching us about prayer in this scripture reading.
And
underneath all of what Jesus is teaching us about prayer is this basic
theological truth that we find throughout all of scriptures from the Book of
Genesis to the Book of Revelation. And that truth is, God loves you and is
always offering you good gifts.
Jesus even uses a wild comparison to get his point across. If your child
would ask for fish for dinner, what parent in their right mind would serve up
snakes instead? Or what parent would
give their child a scorpion when all he or she wanted was some scrambled eggs
for breakfast?
Jesus is saying that it would be just as crazy and just as ludicrous if
God would respond to our prayers by harming us. That’s not who God is. God is a
loving parent who wants us to have everything we need.
Jesus is telling us that if we want to
experience an authentic prayer life, all we need to do is ask, search, and
knock and the door of God’s love and God’s grace will be opened to us. Ask,
search, and knock. Be persistent.
I
like it that Jesus gave us a specific prayer to pray. Not only was Jesus
praying which caused the disciples to want to learn how to pray, but he gave
them a sample prayer, the Lord’s Prayer.
Let
me highlight four parts of this great prayer that Jesus has offered us. And the
first part is how Jesus begins this prayer.
He says, “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom comes.”
When we knock and open the door of God’s good gifts, it’s good to begin
by first acknowledging who God is. God
is our loving parent who wants the Kingdom of God to be made real on this
earth. What a great way to begin a prayer by reminding ourselves to whom we are
praying and what the goal of our prayer should be which is for God’s kingdom to
come on earth.
The
second part of the Lord’s Prayer is to invite God to supply our basic needs.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Sometimes our focus is on our wants that we forget to thank God for providing
for our needs.
The third part of the prayer is to ask God to forgive us our sins. This is the humble part of the prayer because
we acknowledge where we have not lived in harmony with God and those around us.
“Forgive us our sins for we ourselves
forgive everyone indebted to us.” God wants us to live in community and you
can’t have community without forgiveness.
And the fourth part of this great prayer. “And do not bring us to the time of trial.” Now, we all face
different trials from time to time and trials can actually strengthen us and
make us better for having faced them. But there’s also a kind of trial that can
defeat us. It’s the trial that would take us from our families, our jobs, our
self-respect, and even our souls.
When we are persistent in praying which is what Jesus wants us to do in
this scripture passage, then we will become more aware of the trials that would
keep us from being the people we are called to be. Praying isn’t just about
getting God to do things for us. Prayer is about reminding ourselves of what it
truly important.
Jesus
offers us a lot to think about in his teachings on prayer. But the main thing he wants us to know is
that if we really want to be a people of prayer, then we need to remember to
knock and the door will be opened to us.
Many
of us are familiar with Adam Hamilton. He’s the pastor Church of the
Resurrection, the largest United Methodist Church in the country located in
Kansas City. This past January, Adam was invited to preach at the inauguration
worship service at the National Cathedral in Washington DC.
Even though he speaks to large crowds each week at his church, he was
very nervous. There was the president, the vice-president, members of the
cabinet, many members of congress, and C-Span cameras broadcasting this event.
He
said that just before it was time for him to get up to deliver his sermon, that
he became unusually nervous. All of the sudden, he became overwhelmed by the
national spotlight. He started to think,
“What if I trip and fall while climbing
up the steps of the large stone pulpit? What if I make a mistake and say
something that I will regret? What if my pounding heart doesn’t stop pounding?”
And that’s when he remembered all of the people who were praying for him
back at his church in Kansas City. As he thought about those many prayers that
were being lifted on his behalf in that very moment, a sense of peace came over
him. He didn’t feel as nervous anymore. He felt God’s presence with him and he
ended up delivering quite a powerful and prophetic message to some of the most
influential people of our country.
Jesus tells us to ask, search, and knock and the door will be opened for
you. You might not be asked to preach at the National Cathedral in front of the
members of Congress, but you may be nervously waiting to become part of a new
ministry in the church, or offer devotions in your small group, or walk in for
a job interview, or hear the results of your medical test.
Whatever it is you may be facing, Jesus reminds us that God has good
gifts to offer us. God even offers us a sample prayer to use anytime we’d like.
Just remember. If you want the door to open, all you have to do is
knock.
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