Who Is Knocking?
Luke 11:1-13
9th Sunday of Pentecost
At Hope church a Korean United Methodist congregation gathers every Sunday afternoon, bringing immigrants, professors, students, and others from South Korea from all over northern MN. A few times they invited me to preach to them – Zane often went with me. I was always quite aware that I was the only person in the room who was born in this country. They were a most gracious and polite congregation. Most of the service was in Korean – the hymns and the prayers and scriptures. Then I would stand up to preach, and often they asked me to pray. The last time I was with them I prayed after the sermon and then led them in the Lord’s Prayer.
But there was a moment then, a moment you get in worship sometimes, a little rustling or unsettling, and you realize you have done something wrong, like when Rich and I didn’t know you were supposed to greet one another after the announcements on our first Sunday. I noticed something was wrong and then asked about it.
“Pastor,” the leader replied, “we usually sing the Lord’s Prayer.”
“In Korean?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
“By all means, let’s do that,” I said.
And so I sat down and they began to sing, in Korean, Albert Hay Malotte’s Lord’s Prayer. I sang it quietly in English.
It astonished me, sitting there, to hear this song of a prayer that Jesus taught in Aramaic, that had been finalized probably in Greek and then Latin, set to a tune by an American, sung in Korean in Duluth MN. This prayer really finds its way around.
“Lord, teach us to pray,” the disciples asked Jesus, and this was his answer – a little over half of what we now know as the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus addresses God as Father, or Abba, Daddy, and then there are two petitions of praise to God – hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come – and then three petitions for our lives – give us each day our daily bread, forgive us our sings as we forgive those who are indebted to us and don’t bring us to the time of trial. Part of the prayer then is directed to God and part is asking for help for our own lives, that which we need, that which we need to work on, and that which we want to avoid.
It is a solid prayer; it covers a lot of ground. It is known in so many languages, and it is so familiar we can hardly hear it. We print it in the bulletin to make sure our guests know which version we are using – where we stop – or for those who are unfamiliar with it. But if you worship very often you know this prayer really well.
In fact sometimes people say we know this prayer too well. It is rote, we don’t think about it. So these are the words that Jesus gave us so long ago – do they work if they are too familiar? I’ve led this prayer in worship probably more than 700 times so far in my ministry. I think the combined retired clergy in the room have probably led this prayer in worship at least 10,000 times. If you say it every Sunday for 60 years, give or take a few, you’ve said it a couple thousand times.
Lord, teach us to pray.
Of course this isn’t Jesus’ only teaching about prayer. Luke pairs a few teachings together in this text. The next bit, which Will read, is about what we can expect from God in prayer. So someone goes to a friend at midnight, knocks on the door, and asks for bread. Not for himself, of course, but for a guest that has just arrived. The man responds from inside – leave me alone; I’m in bed and my children are asleep and I’m not getting up. Keep pounding on the door, Jesus says, and the man will get up not because you are a friend but just to get you to be quiet.
So is God like Bruce in Bruce Almighty – God gives god-powers to Bruce who becomes overwhelmed by the prayers (in Buffalo, NY only) so he answers them all “Yes.” ? Is that it?
And then another story – if your kid is hungry, will you give them a snake instead of a fish, or a scorpion instead of an egg? Of course not. A parent, most parents, even pretty rotten parents, generally give the child what they need.
These are weird stories about God. So is God a little better than us at our worst?
Lord, teach us how to pray.
And then Jesus tells us to seek, and to knock, and to ask.
But sometimes it seems that when we ask it doesn’t work out. Sometimes it seems that when we seek we don’t find. Sometimes it seems we knock in the middle of the night and nothing happens, we say the Lord’s prayer the 1,000th time and don’t know what it is for.
Lord, teach us how to pray.
Jeladdin Rumi is a Sufi mystic and poet from the Muslim tradition from the 14th century who has gotten quite popular in the last decade. He wrote a poem about a man praying to God all night long, saying, in his tradition, “Allah, Allah.” Someone came along and said, “So, I have heard you calling out, but have you ever gotten any response?”
The man fell silent and went to sleep.
In his dreams he saw a guide who asked why he quit crying out to God.
“Because I never heard anything back.”
“This longing you express is the return message,” the guide said.
The connection is in the longing, in the asking, in the desire, in the repeating, in the knocking on the door all night long. Praying over and over and over gives us a connection, it burns a pathway in our brains and souls to God, it keeps the phone lines open, it increases the bandwidth of the connection. It isn’t about polite conversation, it isn’t about taking turns in responding, it isn’t about waiting quietly for God to say something. It’s about persistence, tenacity, irritating repetition.
Lord, teach us how to pray.
In Jesus’ stories we often know exactly who we are. In this one we are the ones knocking on the door. We are the ones with the inconvenient but well-excused request. We are the ones with the holy purpose, demanding help so we can go ahead doing what God has asked us to do in the first place. But sometimes I think it is helpful if we think about the story a new way, if we switch up the roles a little. What if we are the ones in bed with our families all sleeping, tired from a long day, not wanting to get up, and God is the one knocking on the door of our house, demanding a response, demanding help?
Sometimes we are the ones sleeping, sometimes we are too tired and crabby to hear, but God is always banging on the door, asking us to open it, to keep the connection going, to respond, to keep praying even if we don’t know what the prayer does, or how to pray, or what words to use and what use it all is.
Lord, teach us how to pray.
Teach us how to keep using the Lord’s Prayer so that when we are old and dying and don’t remember much and someone takes our hand and starts saying the prayer our brain remembers it, deep within and we are connected to that person and to prayer again.
Lord, teach us how to pray.
Teach us how to keep praying. Teach us how to set aside our politeness and demand a response from you, to keep praying even though we don’t know what to do or what to say or how to sit or what to do.
Lord, teach us to pray,
and teach us how to be awake when you bang on our door in the middle of the night.
Amen.
9th Sunday of Pentecost
At Hope church a Korean United Methodist congregation gathers every Sunday afternoon, bringing immigrants, professors, students, and others from South Korea from all over northern MN. A few times they invited me to preach to them – Zane often went with me. I was always quite aware that I was the only person in the room who was born in this country. They were a most gracious and polite congregation. Most of the service was in Korean – the hymns and the prayers and scriptures. Then I would stand up to preach, and often they asked me to pray. The last time I was with them I prayed after the sermon and then led them in the Lord’s Prayer.
But there was a moment then, a moment you get in worship sometimes, a little rustling or unsettling, and you realize you have done something wrong, like when Rich and I didn’t know you were supposed to greet one another after the announcements on our first Sunday. I noticed something was wrong and then asked about it.
“Pastor,” the leader replied, “we usually sing the Lord’s Prayer.”
“In Korean?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
“By all means, let’s do that,” I said.
And so I sat down and they began to sing, in Korean, Albert Hay Malotte’s Lord’s Prayer. I sang it quietly in English.
It astonished me, sitting there, to hear this song of a prayer that Jesus taught in Aramaic, that had been finalized probably in Greek and then Latin, set to a tune by an American, sung in Korean in Duluth MN. This prayer really finds its way around.
“Lord, teach us to pray,” the disciples asked Jesus, and this was his answer – a little over half of what we now know as the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus addresses God as Father, or Abba, Daddy, and then there are two petitions of praise to God – hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come – and then three petitions for our lives – give us each day our daily bread, forgive us our sings as we forgive those who are indebted to us and don’t bring us to the time of trial. Part of the prayer then is directed to God and part is asking for help for our own lives, that which we need, that which we need to work on, and that which we want to avoid.
It is a solid prayer; it covers a lot of ground. It is known in so many languages, and it is so familiar we can hardly hear it. We print it in the bulletin to make sure our guests know which version we are using – where we stop – or for those who are unfamiliar with it. But if you worship very often you know this prayer really well.
In fact sometimes people say we know this prayer too well. It is rote, we don’t think about it. So these are the words that Jesus gave us so long ago – do they work if they are too familiar? I’ve led this prayer in worship probably more than 700 times so far in my ministry. I think the combined retired clergy in the room have probably led this prayer in worship at least 10,000 times. If you say it every Sunday for 60 years, give or take a few, you’ve said it a couple thousand times.
Lord, teach us to pray.
Of course this isn’t Jesus’ only teaching about prayer. Luke pairs a few teachings together in this text. The next bit, which Will read, is about what we can expect from God in prayer. So someone goes to a friend at midnight, knocks on the door, and asks for bread. Not for himself, of course, but for a guest that has just arrived. The man responds from inside – leave me alone; I’m in bed and my children are asleep and I’m not getting up. Keep pounding on the door, Jesus says, and the man will get up not because you are a friend but just to get you to be quiet.
So is God like Bruce in Bruce Almighty – God gives god-powers to Bruce who becomes overwhelmed by the prayers (in Buffalo, NY only) so he answers them all “Yes.” ? Is that it?
And then another story – if your kid is hungry, will you give them a snake instead of a fish, or a scorpion instead of an egg? Of course not. A parent, most parents, even pretty rotten parents, generally give the child what they need.
These are weird stories about God. So is God a little better than us at our worst?
Lord, teach us how to pray.
And then Jesus tells us to seek, and to knock, and to ask.
But sometimes it seems that when we ask it doesn’t work out. Sometimes it seems that when we seek we don’t find. Sometimes it seems we knock in the middle of the night and nothing happens, we say the Lord’s prayer the 1,000th time and don’t know what it is for.
Lord, teach us how to pray.
Jeladdin Rumi is a Sufi mystic and poet from the Muslim tradition from the 14th century who has gotten quite popular in the last decade. He wrote a poem about a man praying to God all night long, saying, in his tradition, “Allah, Allah.” Someone came along and said, “So, I have heard you calling out, but have you ever gotten any response?”
The man fell silent and went to sleep.
In his dreams he saw a guide who asked why he quit crying out to God.
“Because I never heard anything back.”
“This longing you express is the return message,” the guide said.
The connection is in the longing, in the asking, in the desire, in the repeating, in the knocking on the door all night long. Praying over and over and over gives us a connection, it burns a pathway in our brains and souls to God, it keeps the phone lines open, it increases the bandwidth of the connection. It isn’t about polite conversation, it isn’t about taking turns in responding, it isn’t about waiting quietly for God to say something. It’s about persistence, tenacity, irritating repetition.
Lord, teach us how to pray.
In Jesus’ stories we often know exactly who we are. In this one we are the ones knocking on the door. We are the ones with the inconvenient but well-excused request. We are the ones with the holy purpose, demanding help so we can go ahead doing what God has asked us to do in the first place. But sometimes I think it is helpful if we think about the story a new way, if we switch up the roles a little. What if we are the ones in bed with our families all sleeping, tired from a long day, not wanting to get up, and God is the one knocking on the door of our house, demanding a response, demanding help?
Sometimes we are the ones sleeping, sometimes we are too tired and crabby to hear, but God is always banging on the door, asking us to open it, to keep the connection going, to respond, to keep praying even if we don’t know what the prayer does, or how to pray, or what words to use and what use it all is.
Lord, teach us how to pray.
Teach us how to keep using the Lord’s Prayer so that when we are old and dying and don’t remember much and someone takes our hand and starts saying the prayer our brain remembers it, deep within and we are connected to that person and to prayer again.
Lord, teach us how to pray.
Teach us how to keep praying. Teach us how to set aside our politeness and demand a response from you, to keep praying even though we don’t know what to do or what to say or how to sit or what to do.
Lord, teach us to pray,
and teach us how to be awake when you bang on our door in the middle of the night.
Amen.
posted by Michelle at 12:55 PM
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