Scripture Matthew 7:7-12
“Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for bread, would give a stone? Or if the child asked for a fish, would give a snake? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
Meditation
Do you member how and when you were taught to pray?
I have a very specific memory about praying with my mother, but I can’t say it’s the moment she taught me to pray. I can see her sitting on my bed as I was getting ready to sleep. I am about 5 years old. It’s nighttime, and I’m in my PJ’s, and it’s time to read my favorite book: “The Littlest Angel.” It’s one of those happy-sad books, about a little child who died at age 4, but was having a hard time in heaven because he missed his earthly home. (I could preach a whole sermon on the theology of this book, but I won’t. You’re welcome.) For some reason, every time we finish the book—and only this book, I don’t say it for others—I say “Ave.” No idea where I picked that up.
After we put the book down, my mother and I fold our hands, and say a prayer, the Hail Mary. This is first prayer I remember knowing by heart. In the first part of the prayer we recite the reasons why Mary is so special. In the second part we ask Mary to pray for us, to her Son.
Eventually my mother teaches me how to say the rosary, a series of prayers including the Lord’s Prayer and the Gloria Patri. One prayer we never pray—even though I know it, maybe I’d learned it in school? Maybe one of my friends shared it with me?—is the classic children’s prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” I think my mother doesn’t like introducing that idea, “…if I should die before I wake” to her young children. I feel the same way. It seems like an idea that can wait a few years.
When I am a freshman in high school, my pastor gives me two books for Daily Prayer. They’re a simplified version of the Daily Office, an ancient series of prayers for all hours of the day, including the wee, small hours of the morning. My version has prayers for morning and evening. I use these prayerbooks on the bus, on the way to school. My peers think I’m weird.
I still use a prayerbook—the PCUSA Daily Prayer Book. This is not to say that I don’t do what you might call “freeform prayer.” I certainly remember many free-form prayers immediately prior to exams, in both high school and college. But it’s not how I learned to pray.
Jesus teaches his disciples to pray in chapter six of the Sermon on the Mount. I like Jesus’s prayer much better than the Hail Mary for the simple reason that we are praying directly to God directly, rather than using an intermediary—which is a pretty good definition of Protestantism, if you think about it. I remember when my Presbyterian high school boyfriend, Mark Davidson, laid it out for me. Jesus is the intermediary between human beings and God. No other is needed.
In the prayer Jesus taught us we do the following:
We call God Father—we recognize God’s intimate love for us, very much like the love of a parent for a child.
We declare that God’s name is holy.
We pray that what God wills for the world with come to pass.
We pray it again.
We pray that God will provide what we need for the day.
We pray for God’s forgiveness, and we promise to forgive.
We pray that God will help us to resist temptation, and will not bring us to a time of trial.
This is where the original prayer Jesus taught us ends. We add on a doxology—words of praise of God’s glory. Then we say, “Amen.”—“Let it be so.”
It’s a pretty perfect prayer. It really is the model for what all prayer should be, and it’s a powerful thing to pray it in community, as we get to do.
But I notice there’s nothing in there along the lines of “Give us this day and A on the chemistry exam.” Or “Heal, O Lord, my pulled back muscle.” Or “O God, help my kid get into the college of his choice.”
But Jesus, in our passage this evening, gives us full permission and free rein to do exactly this. Ask, Jesus says. Ask! And you will receive. Here’s the complicated part: Jesus doesn’t say exactly what you will receive. You may not receive precisely what you asked for. You may receive something better. You may receive something you perceive as worse. You may witness no discernible change in either direction. But you will receive.
Ask, and you will be put in touch with the One who created us, the One who redeemed us, and the One who sustains us, and that is the chief benefit of prayer. Seek, and you will find a loving presence, much like the best possible parent. Knock, and a door will be opened to you that will lead you places you never expected. Prayer is not a “put-a-quarter-in-and-you-get-the-prize” type of enterprise. It’s an “open-yourself-to-the-ineffable-and-you-will-find-treasures-beyond-your-imagining” activity.
Do you remember being taught how to pray? Or is that not something you grew up with? I am still learning how to pray. My prayer practice is spotty, and it suffers when I’m especially busy. No one has the perfect prayer practice. There are any number of ways you can ask, or seek or knock on the door. Maybe a prayer book works well for you, as it has for me at different points in my life. Maybe a practice of setting the scene for prayer will be helpful to you or me, whether that means lighting a candle, or taking a walk, or putting on certain music, or going to a certain room. Maybe a practice done in community works for you—for several years I met with three other women once a month. We each shared something and then the other three prayed for us. Maybe an app can help you I love “Pray-as-you-Go,” an app Mary introduced to me. It’s between about ten and thirteen minutes a day, and it includes scripture, beautiful music, and questions to ponder, all in a delightful variety of British accents.
And whether you ask or seek or knock by use of a prayer book, or by meditating in silence, awaiting a Word, or opening your heart and talking as if to your dearest friend, makes no difference. All ways of praying are praying. Ask, and you shall receive. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door will be opened, and One who loves you will be standing on the other side.
Thanks be to God.