May 9, 2010 Sermon

Assertive Prayer
Matthew 7:7-12

A couple of years ago the wild violets that had always seemed content to stay under our fir trees started taking over the yard.  I had no problem with this.  They look so pretty with their, well, violet flowers.  And I hate grass.  Grass demands my time, energy and money.  And grass is terrible for the environment.  But the guy next door just sold his lawn care business and now has nothing better to do than work in his yard, and to look at mine.  He's a nice guy.  I love to play with his dogs.  But he asked me what I was going to do about the violets.  A little research revealed that only one violet removal method works: digging them out by hand.  So the past couple of weeks I have dug violets.  I have discovered that violets up to two feet apart on the surface often share the same root network.  Pry and pull one plant out, and chances are its roots will lead to another plant, and another, and...

When we pull Jesus' Sermon on the Mount apart we find that its roots connect. “Ask, and it will be given to you,” Jesus preached.  Immediately we have a problem.  Obviously not everything we ask God for comes our way.  A woman I know told me she is mad at God.  She is so mad at God she is no longer sure God exists.  She had prayed hard for her husband's recovery from a horrible disease.  But then she had to watch his slow, relentless descent into pain and, finally, death.  “Ask, and it shall be given to you,” seems like a cruel joke to her.  As I listened to her I thought of an answer to her anger.  I did not give it her, because she cannot accept it emotionally and spiritually.  She needs to be mad.  So I told her, “Go ahead and shake your fist at God.  God can take it.”

The answer, though, remains.  And that answer becomes clear to us when we dig out the roots of the Sermon on the Mount.  Earlier in it Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  Seek the kingdom of God.  Seek to become God's loyal subject.  Follow Jesus.  And seek his righteousness.  Try to live a holy life.  Try to obey the law of Christ.  Now here comes the connection.  The “it” in “Ask, and it shall be given to you,” is the kingdom and the righteousness.  Ask for the kingdom.  Ask to become subject to Christ.  Ask to live an obedient life.  Ask for this and you shall receive it.  That is the answer.

We make a mistake.  As a preacher at a Promise Keeper's men's rally once said, we tend to see God as a cosmic ATM.  Put in your card and punch the code (pray) and God will spit out whatever you want.  But the Bible never promises God will give us anything we ask.  Certainly Jesus did not mean for us to understand his Sermon on the Mount in this way.  “Seek,” he tells us.  “Ask,” he tells us.  But seek and ask for what?  Seek and ask to become a follower of Jesus.  Seek and ask by the power of the Holy Spirit working through you to live as Christlike a life as you can.  Seek and ask for these things and you will receive them.

Jesus sat down with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion to celebrate the Jewish Passover.  Passover re-enacts Exodus, God's deliverance of the Hebrew people from slavery to Egypt.  It recalls the miracles God performed, but also God's wrath.  A Passover meal, or Seder, uses food and wine to symbolize the pain and the blood of Exodus.  But Jesus did not merely celebrate Passover with his followers.  He changed it.  He gave Passover new meaning.  After Jesus, the bread stands for his body on the cross.  The wine stands for his blood shed.  The whole event still stands for deliverance, but no longer the deliverance of one people from slavery thousands of years ago.  Now it stands for deliverance from judgment for all people who follow Jesus.  Passover—communion—stands for forgiveness.

Jesus loved us enough to teach us the truth and then to die to make it come true.  We enter his kingdom by accepting forgiveness.  We live in his kingdom by extending forgiveness.  Ask for forgiveness and you shall receive it.  Ask for mercy and you shall receive it.  Ask for grace and you shall receive it.  Then “all these things” will come your way too.  As the Apostle Paul would famously summarize it, we will receive faith, hope and love.  God does not spit out cash when we ask for it.  God gives us things worth infinitely and eternally more.  Ask and you shall receive.

Jesus tells a mini-parable to emphasize God's gracious desire to give us what we truly need.  Human fathers do not give their children stones or snakes when asked for bread and fish.  If human fathers, sinners all, give when asked, how much more will our heavenly father give to us when asked?

Ask.  Ask for faith, hope and love.  Jesus promised we would receive these when we ask.  Pray.  Pray for faith, hope and love.  I would guess that most of us spend a small percentage of our prayer time asking for faith, hope and/or love.  (I would also guess most of us spend a small percentage of our time praying at all, but that belongs to another sermon.)  Pray assertively.  Ask for what you need.  Ask for faith.  Pray to believe.  Ask for hope.  Pray to trust in God's future.  Ask for love.  Pray to receive and to share God's essential nature.  Pray clearly for these things and Jesus tells us we will receive them.  And as we do, we will not so coincidentally find ourselves following him more nearly.  We will find ourselves inhabiting that shadow of his kingdom which we can experience in this life.

We will close our worship service today by singing Seek Ye First.  I associate this song with Christian summer camp.  I have known it forever.  I do not remember ever pondering the meaning of its lyrics.  But I did while writing this sermon.  And I realized this song connects roots from different parts of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.  Verse one gives us the title, which comes from Matthew 6:33.  Jesus followed this saying by encouraging his followers not to worry about material things.  This helps prove that when he later tells us to ask and we shall receive he does not refer to food, clothing or any other material thing.  God is not a cosmic ATM.  The second verse of Seek Ye First quotes our passage today, from Matthew 7.  The song interweaves these two sayings of Jesus, which really are only two sides of one saying.  Ask to live in the kingdom and you will. 

Who can blame a woman for praying for her husband's recovery from disease?  Who can blame a man for praying for relief from massive credit card debt?  But in God's eternal plan these things may or may not happen.  Meanwhile, since we face such frightening threats, we can pray for faith, hope and love with confidence that we will receive them.  Pray.  Pray assertively.  Pray for the “it” that Jesus promises: that we will know peace, his peace, the peace that passes understanding.  We will, by the grace of God, taste the kingdom here and now.  Ask.  Pray.  Let us pray.