“KNOCKING AT
THE DOOR”
[A sermon on prayer]
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A sermon preached at Readings: Acts
11:27-12:2, Lk 11:1-13 |
“So I say to you, “Ask and
it will be given to you,
search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you.”
(Luke 11:9)
There is a
story about a small town.
A local
businessman applied for a licence to open a casino.
A group of
Christians from the local chapel were concerned
and planned an all-night prayer meeting to ask God to
intervene to stop this.
It just so
happened that shortly thereafter lightning struck the casino
and
it burned to the ground.
The owner of
the casino sued the church,
claiming
that the prayers of the congregation were responsible,
but
the church hired a lawyer to argue in court that they were not responsible.
The judge, in
his summing up, stated that
"no matter how this case comes out, one thing is clear.
The casino
owner believes in prayer and the Church members do not."
Well
do you believe in prayer?
That sort of thunder and lightning evoking prayer?
Do
you believe that if you ask it will be given,
that if you knock, the door will be opened?
Leslie Weatherhead, one of the great Methodist preachers of the 20th
Century,
once told of an exam he had to take at the age of 15.
Weatherhead says,
"I very badly wanted to pass that examination, and I had worked hard
for it.
So, on the night before it began, I reminded God
that Christ had promised, in his sacred word,
that whatsoever we asked in his name we should have.
I
failed!
What was worse, though I didn't think so at the time,
I lost a good deal of faith. It didn't seem fair.
What is the good of scripture promises
if they let you down just when you want them most?”
[Sermon
by Weatherhead, "Can We Get What We Want if We
Pray in Christ's Name?"
quoted in George M. Bass, Lectionary Preaching Workbook III, CSS Publishing
Co., 1991]
Thankfully
Weatherhead grew to a subtler understanding of God’s
ways –
And
we too need to learn that
Yes, God opens when we knock, he does give when we ask –
but not in the simplistic way we might sometimes imagine or hope for.
Why
do we sometimes pray for things and we do not get what we ask for?
Maybe
sometimes we pray for the wrong things –
If we pray
“Lord make me rich and famous
and help me to forget the needs of others lest they upset me –
Give me the warm glow of an untroubled conscience
that I may grow rich whilst exploiting the poor”
we would expect God to answer “No” – that is not God’s will.
But
that argument doesn’t always help
How
many of us across the world have prayed
“Lord end the nightmare of Iraq,
Lord end the scourge of AIDS in Africa,
Lord bring peace and justice to Zimbabwe, to Palestine;
Lord bring peace and food to the starving of the Sudan.”
And
these things have not just happened.
We
say Amen, and the problem is still there.
And surely no one is suggesting that we are asking for the wrong things
here.
We are not going to say it is God’s will
that children suffer and die of war, famine and disease.
No – our God is a God of love and compassion
We
have to face the fact that in a very real sense
we do often ask and not receive,
knock and find the door closed against us.
Why??
Not because God does not want to give us peace and justice,
but because he cannot do so.
God
has made us human, and given us freedom
·
to share or hoard our food,
·
to make swords or ploughshares,
·
to develop medicines or weapons
·
to
value wealth and power or love and service.
And
time and again we, the human race, make the wrong choices -
and because God has given us freedom,
we use that freedom to thwart and deny the will of God.
If
you think that every good prayer will be automatically answered,
remember that Jesus himself prayed
“Thy will be done on earth as in heaven” -
a prayer yet to be fully answered.
Of
course it is God’s wish that his will be done –
it is a good prayer to pray – Jesus told us all to pray it –
but
throughout human history, the powers that be have prevented it.
Today
is the feast of St James – James the brother of John.
We have just
returned from the tiny Greek Island of Lipsi.
I stood by the harbour-side and watched the fisherman of a morning,
sat by their boats mending their nets.
And I thought of those 2 brothers 2000 years ago doing the same thing -
and that one brother James –
little did James know that following Jesus would lead
(we read the words from Acts 12)
to martyrdom when Herod had him put to the sword.
Did
the early Christians not pray
that all the world would bow the knee to Jesus as
Lord?
Did the early Christians not pray
that every sword would be turned into a ploughshare?
Of course they did –
And
yet Herod chose not to bow the knee but to wield the sword –
by which James was to die.
So
what are we to make of our text – is it plain wrong??
“Ask
and it will be given to you, …
knock and the door will be opened for you”???
Look
at it this way..
Think of a time
when you have been in real need or trouble
(maybe the time is now, maybe in the past) –
think of the people you turn to to help you –
your closest family, friends, those you can trust and rely on.
Think of the
conversation you have with them
when you spill out your problem, your heartache to them.
Why do you need
to do this, and what are you seeking from it?
Are you
demanding, expecting, relying on your friend
to get rid of the problem –
to take away the divorce, the debt, the disease, the death?
Are you merely talking to your friend
for what you can get out of him or her?
Of course in a
crisis conversation I say
“If only I could be rid of this problem”
but often I know my friend cannot remove the problem –
“There may often be nothing practical he can do.
But I know that I could not have got by
without the help and strength I received from his presence.
‘But I did nothing’ he may exclaim,
when at some later date I offer him my halting thanks.
However it was not what he did or did not do.
It was what he was,
and the fact that he made himself available to me at that time,
that proved the difference for me between life and death”
(Peter
Baelz, “Does God Answer Prayer?” DLT 1982, p50)
·
Even so does God hear and answer our
prayers –
·
Even so when the evil and the sin and the
death is unabated,
does God hear and speak to us and soothe our troubled soul
·
Even so though the cross still lies
beyond Gethsemane,
does God go with us and hold our hand
in the olive grove & the place of the skull.
·
Even so when the door to hope seems
barred and bolted
does God open a way for us –
not a way of simple ease but a way of hope alongside him in suffering.
So
my friends, go to God and hold up before him in prayer
your sins and sorrows and heartaches and ask his blessing –
and you will find like James and all the Saints,
that whatever the powers of evil may do,
whatever our suffering, even unto death,
yet still shall the door to life be opened –
And
if in this vale of tears it sometimes seems
we may see but the door ajar -
One
day shall the Kingdom come and the door be thrown wide
Christina
Rossetti’s poem “Uphill” talks about the pilgrimage
of life –
the pilgrim asks questions each of which is answered:
Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my
friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
That
is God’s promise to each of his children
at the end of earth’s pilgrimage.
Meanwhile,
If some doors remain locked and chained
in this sinful world of ours,
they are bolted on our side not God’s -
In God’s name let us struggle here below
to pull the bolts and break the chains -
Let
us pray for Zimbabwe and for the Sudan -
but let us help Graham Shaw
and let us support the Sudan Relief Fund -
God needs our hands and our pockets
to answer the prayers of the needy!
And
as we struggle, let us never forget that at the last
love
will defeat the powers of evil,
Life
will break out from the tomb of death
So
when we finally
you and I and all God’s suffering and sinful children
reach the gates of heaven,
then even as we knock,
so shall the doors be flung wide in welcome.