L.D. 45, Luke 11:1-13 "Those Who Ask" Scott Hoezee

Let's say that one day you accidentally rip the only decent pair of jeans you own. So you decide to head to the mall to pay a visit to the Gap to buy a new pair. Let's say you enter the mall same as you always do but are immediately approached by a friend who asks if he can borrow $5 for some lunch over at the food court. No sooner do you slip your friend the money and you turn around to discover an old high school classmate staring at you, asking you if you can forgive her for that time she turned you down for a date years ago (and was kind of cruel about it at that). You say, "Sure, I guess so," but no sooner are those words out of your mouth and another acquaintance of yours is in front of you, asking for your advice as to whether or not he should accept the promotion being offered to him at work. And then let's say that this goes on for quite a while with one friend after the next standing in front of you requesting this or that. Finally, after this goes on for an hour or two, you look up to discover that there is now a line of people running the length of the mall, all waiting to ask you for something.

Recently I heard about a videotape that someone made to illustrate what it might be like to be God. The tape runs for just over an hour and it features nothing but one person after the next making a request, asking for advice, seeking direction, requesting money, and so on. Face after face after face appears on the screen, each in a plaintive mode of asking for something. It's curious that Jesus more than once illustrates prayer with images of exasperation. In this morning's passage we have a friend at midnight baying for bread from someone already tucked cozily into bed. A few chapters farther on in Luke we find the parable of the unjust judge who finally gives in to the persistent widow not for any noble reason but just to get her off his back.

It has always struck me as odd that Jesus would use these somewhat negative images to talk about prayer. Surely we don't want to think of God as being exasperated but maybe just maybe Jesus, as the Son of God, knew what it was like to be barraged day and night by an endless line of people asking for advice, money, direction, or whatever! None of us would last very long if my scenario in the mall ever really happened. It is a credit to the almighty power of God that he is able to handle the simultaneous prayers of millions, if not billions, of people all the time.

Do you remember the opening scene to the holiday classic movie It's a Wonderful Life? The camera careers in and around the streets of Bedford Falls and from every single house on just about every single block of the city we hear people praying for George Bailey. With voices tumbling on top of one another, you hear over and again, "Dear Lord, be with George, with George, bless George, O God, be with George, George Bailey, bless George." Of course, those people were all praying for the same thing but in reality exactly such a chorus of prayer takes place at every moment except that most of the time the requests and petitions are all different from one another. At the same moment you are praying for your child to recover from the flu, your neighbor next door may be praying for her son in Iraq. Meanwhile, the folks in the house across the street are begging God to help them make ends meet even as the people in the house next to that one are praying for rain to fall over in Iowa so their brother-in-law's corn crop won't fail. In the wider cosmic scheme of things, prayer is a universal constant, the sheer volume of which staggers the imagination.

As the Catechism opens its final section, we are still in that third part of the Catechism that details how we show God our "Gratitude" for all that he has given to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. We just finished looking at the Ten Commandments as sketching out God's roadmap for all our living in the world he made. Now we turn to that other distinctive part of the Christian life: prayer. The Catechism uses the Lord's Prayer as the template for all our praying but before it gets specifically to the various parts of that famous prayer, the Catechism briefly ponders prayer in general. As anyone familiar with the Catechism knows, Q&A 116 famously designates prayer as the chief part of all the gratitude we owe to God. Somehow the very act of prayer is in and of itself a kind of extended Thank-You to our heavenly Father.

In the past we've wondered about how this claim can be true. After all, a good deal of even the Lord's Prayer, not to mention our own prayers day in and day out, consist of petitions, asking for things. But how does a constant asking count as gratitude? If each and every one of our prayers were ever and only a series of thanksgiving to God for all his glories, then it would be easier to view prayer as the single most vital piece of gratitude we can display before God. But as a matter of fact this is not so: a good deal of our prayer life is all about begging for forgiveness for our thick-headed sinfulness. A good deal of our prayers are taken up by pleas for safety, requests for resources, petitions for direction when we are facing a decision. We ask for daily bread and a successful sales meeting, for help on an algebra test and a good flight to Phoenix.

But how is all that one big, extended act of thanksgiving? To return to our opening illustration this morning: if it ever really did happen that a seemingly never-ending line-up of your friends formed in the mall with each person in turn asking you for something, do you think that gratitude is the main feeling you'd absorb from all those needy friends and acquaintances? On a sheerly human level, don't you think that if anything you'd sooner or later feel like you were being used, exploited, burned out?

Yet perhaps there is a way to view even this perpetual act of requesting things as demonstrating thankfulness after all. Because by taking everything to God in prayer, aren't we conveying to God that we trust him alone to help us in all areas of life? In a way, we're paying God the supreme compliment by as much as saying that only God is loving, merciful, powerful, resourceful, and wise enough to receive our every petition.

Have you ever had the experience of someone's seeking you out for advice, perhaps someone whom you already admire and look up to? You didn't expect this particular person would ever want your input, and so when this happens after all, you respond along the lines of, "Wow, I'm just honored that you asked!" Sometimes it really is an honor to be asked for something. Why? Because you sense that this other person sees something good in you that makes you a potential source of help. It's downright complimentary at times. Perhaps this is how it is for God all the time. The sheer fact that we bring our needs, wants, dreams, and desires to him demonstrates our faith in his glorious ability and willingness to provide for us. For God, it's an honor to be asked.

In Luke 11, following the curious mini-parable of the friend at midnight, there is that concluding material about fathers and sons. No good father would give anything bad to his son and if that much is true of even us mere human beings, think how magnified it is when it comes to the eternally loving Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the point of the analogy in verses 11-13, but when you think about it, there's a lot of loving warmth in that image, too. As a parent, I know there are few things more precious to hear than the word "Daddy" on the lips of my children. True, sometimes children ask for things that we can't give, that we shouldn't give, that they shouldn't receive and so there are times when you have to say No to even the most earnest request your child makes.

But there are many other times when as a parent you feel so honored to be asked for something. When children are small, you take delight in being able to provide the basics of food, drink, clothing, and shelter. When children are older, their needs change and eventually what they may ask for will be very serious matters involving major decisions about marriage, education, and career. But when your child loves and trusts you enough to ask you for help, you are not just flattered but deeply, deeply moved. You're actually thankful that your relationship with the child is so solid.

But perhaps prayer as gratitude toward God includes also something else. As we just said, the very fact that we ask God for help may in and of itself be a source of joy for God. But isn't it also true that the more you bring to God in prayer, the more potential there is for God to provide exactly what you asked for? And if that is so, isn't it also the case that recognizing this will give you ever-more opportunities directly to say "Thanks" to God for answering your many past prayers? In other words, a life of constant prayer introduces a kind of happy cycle and rhythm to our lives. The more you bring before God, the more God can answer you; the more God answers you, the more often you get to say "Thanks" back. In fact, when this way of looking at life becomes deeply ingrained into you, the odds are that you may begin to see everything in your life as the gift of God.

Whether or not you specifically prayed for the lasagna you had for dinner Tuesday evening, you see in that square of pasta, cheese, and sauce evidence that God is at work in your home, providing all that you need. And so you say "Thank you" to your heavenly Father. The more of your day-to-day living that you bring to God in prayer, the more you will see that very same day-to-day life, and all its details, as having something to do with God. And that way of looking at life becomes the seedbed for gratitude.

When we come before God with open, outstretched hands to ask for something, we sooner or later realize that those same open, outstretched hands can be turned over and raised upward in a posture of praise. Eventually, this becomes the dance of your life, daily moving from petition to praise, from request to joyous singing, from turned-up palms waiting to receive something to lifted-up hands eager to give praise and gratitude.

That's finally what it's all about in the Christian life. Perhaps this explains also the last part of verse 13. Jesus says something in conclusion that we didn't necessarily see coming. The model prayer Jesus gave was all about bread, forgiveness, and the avoidance of temptation. The subsequent little parabolic examples he gave were likewise about common, everyday realities like bread and eggs. So how arresting it is to then come to the capper of this teaching on prayer to hear Jesus saying that God will give "the Holy Spirit" to those who ask for it. But where in the twelve verses that led up to this last line is there any mention of the Holy Spirit? Jesus' model prayer doesn't mention the Spirit. The people in the analogies aren't talking about the Holy Spirit. So why does Jesus conclude with mentioning something that has not cropped up before?

Maybe the answer is that whether we know it or not, in all our praying, in all our asking and begging and pleading with God, what we are finally asking for--and what we for sure will in the end receive--is nothing less than the indwelling Spirit of the Living God. We pray in the power of this Spirit, who is our sacred companion that brings to us the fullness of Christ Jesus in our hearts. And when we pray in the power of the Spirit, we find that same Spirit living in us and assuring us that no matter what happens, we serve a loving God who holds us tenderly every moment of our lives.

That is perhaps the best piece of news in Luke 11. This passage began with the disciples asking Jesus to teach them how to pray. Jesus did that wonderfully but in and through all the specifics he laid out, these final words tell us that it was the Holy Spirit we have been seeking all along. When Jesus tells us to ask, to seek, to knock and then says that we will be answered, that what we seek will be found, that the door will open, he's talking about the Spirit of God there. Anyone with much experience with prayer knows full well that despite the blank-check appearance of verses 9 and 10, God does have to say no sometimes, the door does remain shut sometimes, what we seek remains elusive sometimes. We know this.

But if it's the Holy Spirit we receive in and through all of our praying, then we can understand Jesus' words here a little better without getting forever hung up on the counter-examples that just about every person here could mention. If God always gives the Holy Spirit to those who pray, then even when a prayer goes "unanswered," God has provided a deeper answer after all. This is not an easy truth, and I do not utter these things lightly here this day. If you prayed for your husband to recover from cancer and he died, you are right to claim you didn't get what you prayed for. Period. And who on this earth would dare to say he or she knows the why or wherefore of such a thing? But even still you as a praying person received the Holy Spirit to help you even in the grief that came despite your most ardent prayers that it would not come. The love of God for you is not less because something you wanted did not come. The proof of that abiding love comes through the gentle ministry of the Spirit, assuring you that the gospel is still true, the hope of the resurrection is still real, and Jesus remains in your heart by his Spirit.

Not even our Lord Jesus would expect us to give thanks to God for an unanswered prayer. But the Catechism reminds us that even when what we feared most happens, when next we turn to God in prayer only to cry out, "Why, dear God, why!?" even that counts as a small portion of that larger thankfulness to which our every prayer contributes. Even lament, in other words, somehow displays a kind of trust in God that is part of a larger web of gratitude.

If you doubt that, consider the example of Jesus. One dark night long ago in a placed called Gethsemane, he made a request and, in the end, his Father had to say no. A certain, bitter cup of suffering would not pass from Jesus. The next time we know Jesus prayed, he was crying out in dereliction, "My God, my God, why? Why have you forsaken me?" Jesus moved from an unanswered prayer to a lament and yet the grateful nature of his prayer life remain intact. His Father had said no, had had to abandon him for a time. But before he bowed his head and died, Jesus said to this same Father, "Into your hands do I commit my spirit." In our lives, too, our every prayer contributes to the thankfulness we owe to God. Even at our most disappointed, the Holy Spirit is in us and we receive the further anointing of that same Spirit every time we pray.

As we said when we began a while ago, no one of us could imagine what it would be like to be confronted night and day with a steady stream of people asking us for this or that. Our minds stagger to consider the multitude of prayers that arise every moment of every day. But the vastness of God's majestic power allows him to hear and understand and respond to every one. He never tires. He never grows weary. And he forever sends the Spirit to those who pray. Even to begin wrapping your mind around something so amazing as all that is enough to make you . . . well, thankful. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.