Luke 11:1-13
On Prayer (and the
Bible)
James Sledge July
24, 2022
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| Arabic calligraphy of the Lord's Prayer |
Every Sunday in the bulletin, just below the “Prayers of the People,” there are two lists. The first says “prayer concerns,” and the second says “continued prayers.” The first list is where names go when we first learn of an illness or concern, first find out that someone is in the hospital. The second list is for ongoing concerns. These people were on the first list at some point, but we no longer tell the specifics.
I occasionally hear from someone who was on the prayer list, thanking me for the prayers they received. And sometimes these people tell me how they could feel the prayers and how they helped. No doubt most of us have heard a story of someone with a terrible illness who was being prayed for by many who then had an inexplicable and miraculous recovery.
Of course that is often not the case. People on the prayer list, people for whom I and many others have prayed for healing are sometimes not healed at all. Sometimes this seems especially tragic when a young person is sick and dies. Why are some healed and some not? Why does prayer seem to work sometimes and not in others?
Such questions can feel especially poignant and difficult when part of this morning’s scripture is brought to bear. Jesus says, "So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given 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.”
Taken in isolation, these verses might well lead one to think that when prayer doesn’t work it must be the fault of the one doing the praying. Somehow they didn’t say the right words or pray the right way. Perhaps they didn’t have enough faith. There must be some reason that God didn’t respond to those prayers.
I’ve known of occasions where a pastor actually told someone that if they only prayed hard enough and faithfully enough then they would get the healing they wanted. I can only imagine the pain this must bring someone when their loved one dies, feeling as though it were somehow their fault.
I think the verses I just quoted may be a perfect case study in how not to use the Bible. Too often people use the Bible as though it were a reference work with lots of independent facts and formulas that can be lifted straight out and applied. It is that sort of logic that leads someone to say that if a prayer isn’t answered it’s because you didn’t ask correctly, you didn’t search hard enough, you didn’t knock long enough.
But the Bible is most certainly not a reference book. If I had been in charge of making the Bible, I might well have made it one, but as it is, the Bible is complex mix of stories, rules, poems, letters, and more. The Bible records how people have encountered and experienced God over the centuries, and through the sum total of that, we begin to get a picture of what God is like and what life with God is supposed to look like.
No one story or letter or psalm gives a full picture of God, anymore than spending a few minutes with someone would allow you to say that you fully know and understand that person. God is revealed in scripture when we look at it in total.
We Christians also believe that God is particularly well known through the person of Jesus. But once again, a brief snapshot or a few words of Jesus don’t paint the full picture. Unfortunately, people are terrible about lifting a few lines from scripture, with little or no context, and making grand claims from those words.
That’s exactly what happens when people lift up the line, "So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you,” and then claim that Jesus has promised to give us whatever we ask for. And that comes with the nasty corollary that if we don’t get what we ask for, then there is something wrong with the asker, a lack of faith or some such problem.
But anyone who knows the entire story of Jesus knows that even Jesus does not receive everything he asks for. Jesus prayed in anguish to be spared from the cross, but the answer was “No.”
Besides, Jesus’ words about asking are not offered in isolation. To begin with, Jesus teaches his disciples, and us, how to pray. This very simple prayer, a version of which we use as the Lord’s Prayer, hardly encourages asking for anything your heart’s desires. Instead it asks for forgiveness, and for enough for the day.
It is in the context of this prayer that Jesus urges persistence in prayer and the promise of, “Ask, and it will be given you.” And Jesus finishes his teaching on prayer with these words. “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!” It is interesting that Jesus speaks specifically of the Spirit as answered prayer.
The implication is that God wants to send us the Spirit. God wants to forgive us and provide daily bread. And so God does not say yes or no based on the quality of the prayer or the proper technique of the one doing the asking. The God Jesus shows us is not capricious, not a God who only responds if one says “pretty please” and gets the formula just right.
Of course that still leaves the question of why some prayers aren’t answered. I can understand why God might say no to my prayer to come into a huge fortune, but what about a parent who prays for a sick child?
I think I’ve shared before the words of the great preacher John Claypool from the first sermon he preached after his daughter died of leukemia. He told of finding solace from a letter he received from another great preacher, Carlyle Marney, just prior to this daughter’s death. Dr. Marney “admitted that he had no word for the suffering of the innocent and never had had, but he said, ‘I fall back on the idea that God has a lot to give an account for.’”[1]
Dr. Marney can say that because he knows a God who is predisposed in our favor, a God who is love, and so he expects an explanation even though none is forthcoming at the moment. He knows that God is not capricious or vindictive, that God loves all people, and so there should be an accounting. But for now, the answer to the prayers “Why did my child die?” “Why were people slaughtered in Uvalde and Highland Park and far too many other places?” is not given. It is somewhere within the hiddenness of God. Surely the answer will be known someday, but for now, it remains hidden in mystery.
One of the things that is clear when you view the Bible as complex revelation and not a reference book is that no full comprehending of God is possible for humans. And faith is no magic formula for getting God to give us what we want. Faith is about trusting in the goodness of God when it is hard to see. Faith is knowing that God cares for us more than any parent ever could even when the evidence is not always compelling.
Perhaps Jesus is thinking about unanswered prayers of “Why?” when he urges persistence in prayer. To ask “Why?’ even to demand it, is an act of deep faith that knows a loving God and so seeks God, even confronts God when that love appears to be missing.
So ask. Seek and knock loudly. Jesus has promised that when we do, God will send the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to strengthen our faith and hold us fast, until that time when God’s new day arrives in full and all will be revealed.
[1] John Claypool in “Life is a Gift” published in A Chorus of Witnesses, Thomas Long and Cornelius Plantinga, editors (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1994) p. 125.
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