Nevertheless, She Persisted
By Griff
Martin
A Sermon on Luke 11:1-13
For
The Seventh Sunday Following Pentecost
July 28, 2019
To
the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
Incarnate and Resurrected God, we ask that you once
again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing new reality we
can all together experience. Make us aware of your presence here in this space
and in these words God, for if we are present to you then nothing else will
matter, but if we are not present to you then nothing else will matter. In the
name of the Creator, the Christ and the Comforter. Amen.
Don’t you think we would really know all we need to
know about one another if our Google searches were made public? I see the
sweating beginning and the inner gratitude for “reset Safari browser."
I think some of us would finally feel normal knowing
that we are not alone when at the first sign of a headache, instead of taking
an Advil, we turn to Google and type ‘how to know if you have a brain tumor and
how much time do I have left.’ Or, how many of us have avoided going to the
counselor and instead Googled ‘how to get over a breakup quickly’ or ‘how to
fight depression’ or ‘how to grieve?’ Or, how many of us each daylight saving’s
event Google ‘how to change your car clock?’
And those are the safe examples. Recently, a tech
company mined through over a decade’s worth of Google searches to see the most
searched and embarrassing example by state. Their research results in short:
“The Pacific and Mountain West are lands filled with nerds, the South is
insecure about its manhood, states in the Appalachian Mountains are concerned
about various vermin on their bodies, and the Midwest has terrible taste in
movies.”
The most Google searched for Texans, to help you all
feel less alone (but note this: not less shamed; we should be ashamed): Matthew
McConaughey quotes, Jade Helm, Pimp Juice, Extenze pills, hot dog pizza crust,
CiCi’s Pizza Buffet, skunk hair, porn, Is WWE real and contract killing. These
are the people walking among us.
Or this phrase: how to pray. If you Google the
phrase “how to pray,” you will find approximately 1,020,000,000 (1 billion, 20
million) results in just 0.61 seconds. I won’t ask for a show of hands for how
many of us have Googled this phrase; obviously I have, and I will confess that
I have Googled it beyond reasons of research for this sermon.
Although, the Google search is rarely helpful, but
it’s what we do.
Because prayer is hard; maybe some of the hardest
work we do as Jesus-followers.
And also, some of the most important.
We pray before meals, we pray at sports games, we
pray at bedtime, we pray several times in this worship service, we pray at gatherings
and weddings and funerals, we pray to start the day and we pray before
committee meetings – which is creating an issue now that we are meeting more
often on conference call. One of you said to me recently: “I don’t know if I
like praying on conference calls because, you know, it’s hard to close your
eyes and drive.…” Which raises the very good question, why do you think you
have to close your eyes to pray? Who taught you that? Just a minute ago when I
prayed, you all closed your eyes. By the way, I Googled it. ‘Why do you close
your eyes when you pray' is the second most-Googled “why do you close your
eyes” after sneezing, but before “why do we close our eyes when we kiss.” And I
can’t find any good reason we do so. All to say, we pray a lot
And yet, many of us in this room would also tell you
that even though we do those things, prayer is also difficult, and we don’t
really know how to do it. That is probably the conversation I have most in my
office when you all come to visit and, let me tell you, before you Google it
and feel alone, we all struggle here.
And here is why I think we struggle: because we want
a connection with the divine, we want to know that we are not alone, we want to
know that there is a bigger story going on around us, we want to know that
things are going to be okay, we want to know that there is Love bigger than us
and there for us, we want to know that this is to all… and that is why we pray.
We pray almost like this divine game of Are You My Mother, constantly
seeking to find that connection.
And we are not alone in our desire to pray and our
struggle to pray. The disciples were right there with us, hence their request
at the beginning of this story: Lord, teach us to pray.
I think a bit of background is needed; a reminder to
look through the Gospels and see how many times we have a phrase like “and
Jesus retreated to a quiet place to pray.” It’s a refrain we hear over and over
and over in the Gospels. And yet, we don’t have a lot of Jesus actually praying
in the Gospels. We know he did it, but we don’t know exactly what that always
looked like. We have a prayer before raising Lazarus, we have his prayer in
John 17 (which is the true Lord’s Prayer… it’s the one he prayed; the one in
today’s text is the model prayer for the disciples), we have his prayer in the
Garden and we have several one-sentence prayers from the cross. But we don’t know
what happened in his ministry those times “Jesus retreated to a quiet place to
pray.”
However, what we know is that something happened
there, because of this request: “Lord, teach us to pray.” Obviously, the
disciples knew there was something about Jesus’ prayer life that helped Jesus
to live. How he prayed was key to how he loved and lived. You don’t ask someone
to teach you something that you don’t think they are good at. None of you would
ask me, “Griff, teach me to play basketball,” or “teach me to be humble and not
reactive,” or “Griff, teach me to dance.” You would go to someone who knew how
to do those things.
So, when the disciples said “Lord, teach us to pray,”
they asked it because there was something about the way Jesus prayed that made
them want that. It gave him something they wanted. It helped him to live better,
and they knew this.
“Lord, teach us to pray” …. Now, just to make sure
we have the correct editor’s notes here. I don’t think the disciples requested
this and Jesus responded in this exact fashion, like Luke reports in this text.
I think these are several conversations that have been edited, and remember,
Luke readily admits to editing this story to make it flow. I think the request “Lord,
teach us to pray” was one the disciples made on more than one occasion, and
when Luke sat down to write his gospel, these were the ones that he remembered
most vividly.
He gives three examples:
The first is what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, but
I would tell you is better titled the Disciples’ Prayer, or as the great
theologian John Dominic Crossan in his incredible book on this prayer calls it,
“a Jewish prayer on the lips of Christians for the entire world.” It’s a
beautiful prayer about justice. It’s simple. It’s kind and it’s brave. And note
this, there is nothing magic about it; it’s not our hocus pocus magic. It’s an
example of how to pray.
And then he tells this story, this parable about a
friend who has another friend who, in the middle of the night, suddenly needs
three loaves of bread because a guest has come to their house and they have
nothing to share. It is an oddly specific example, which makes me think that
it’s maybe an experience Jesus himself had… one night when he was a child,
someone was banging on their door needing food for a friend and Joseph and Mary
did not want to get up but finally did to make the friend stop knocking and go
away, and Jesus saw that and said, “that is kinda like prayer.”
And then, these riddles about who would give a kid a
snake instead of a fish, or who would give a scorpion instead of an egg. Simple
riddles to say, if you would never do that to someone, then neither will God,
because God is better than even the best of us.
So, what do these three teachings have in common?
What makes Luke recall these three? I think it’s a phrase that has dominated our
politics the last year: “Nevertheless, she persisted.” In the first prayer, the
disciples’ prayer, it’s the word “Daily.” This is something you do daily. In
the parable, it’s the knocking that won’t stop until the door is answered. In
the riddle, it’s asking for fish and eggs, food that you need each day to
survive.
When the disciples ask Jesus to “teach us to pray,”
Jesus does not give them a PowerPoint or a formula or a theological essay; he
gives them three stories of persistence.
It reminds me of working with my therapist, who is
just convinced that mindfulness and mediation is key to my well-being. She
introduced this concept and taught me a simple mediation practice. And me being
me, I tried to follow it, but I also Googled a lot of teachings on meditation, I
ordered books, I looked into retreats, I found some of you that I know are good
at this and I asked a lot of questions. So, the next few sessions I told her
all I was learning about meditation, and finally she said to me, “It’s a lot of
learning – when are you going to start practicing it? I did not say go learn
it, I said go do it.”
Which might be what Jesus says of our prayer life:
“I did not say go learn it, I said go do it.”
Prayer is the daily task of looking for our
connection with the divine and not giving up. And that looks like a lot of
different ways. Just look at these three stories – what is prayer? One is a
model of words to say, one is an action of standing at the door and knocking
and one is a riddle to think through. Prayer is words and actions and
meditation.
Prayer is whatever it takes that connects you with
the divine… finding that and practicing it daily. Persisting in it, so that it
feeds you and gives you a life that looks a lot more like the life of Jesus.
And this looks a lot of different ways in our
community. I have thought about you all and the ways I know you pray. For some
of you, this means getting up at 5:00 each morning and lighting a candle and
meditating. For some of you, this looks like a small white board in your home
with the names of those you are praying for written on it. For some of you,
this is your practice of yoga. For some, it’s sitting in silence, looking out
the window, or going on a walk. For some, it’s writing and journaling. For some,
it’s actions of justice. For others, it’s art.
It’s whatever connects you with God; turning towards
that as a daily practice.
John Gottman has taught me a lot about prayer
through his work on marriage. John Gottman says that everything you need to
know about marriage occurs in communication, and it involves a ratio of
positive to negative interactions. If you and your partner turn towards each
other and have 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction, you
are in good shape. An example: if you are having a conflict and eye roll more
than you lean in, you are in bad shape. The goal is to lean into the positive.
And this says a lot about prayer. Many of us were
taught there is one way to pray: you sit down each morning, read your Bible and
then you pray. You do your adoration, confession, thanksgiving and
supplication. But what if that doesn’t work for you? Well, we were taught, too
bad, you make that work. But what if that is a negative interaction, if you
can’t lean into that?
Well the good news this morning, here is the Gospel –
that is not what Jesus said. Jesus never said, ‘the way you communicate with me
is this exact formula.’ And Jesus did not say that, because what Jesus wanted
with us was a relationship, not a formula.
Imagine if every day, you and your closest friend
connected the same way. You got up, and one of you had written the other a
letter, so you read that silently, and then the other closed their eyes and
offered some words. Relationships don’t work like that.
It works because you know your friend, and you know when
it’s the best time for you to talk. And you know the communication patterns
that work for you, and you turn towards one another.
Such is God.
Prayer is the relationship, finding a way that you
connect with God; being aware that there are ways all day and all around you to
connect with God and persisting. Praying, because it’s the connection with God,
however you make it, that is going to change how you live.
Prayer can look a million different ways, but it’s
always finding a way to get yourself to the Abundant River of Life and Love
because without that, you have nothing to nourish yourself and to give to the
world.
Lord, teach us to pray so that we can live.
Amen and Amen.
*artwork: Prayer Flags on the Himalayas, painting by Francoise Lautier, e-modernegallerie.com/francoise-lautier-hong-kong-1
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