“Knocking on heaven’s door?” (Luke 11:1-13)
July 25, 2010 | Year C, Proper 12
July 25, 2010 | Year C, Proper 12
Beginning in the third century of our era, many earnest Christian men and women set out into the deserts of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in pursuit of a life totally dedicated to God. The sayings of these ‘desert fathers’, as these simple hermits came to be known, have been handed down to us in a collection conveniently known as The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. One of them goes like this:
Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace, and, as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame' [From The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, ed. Benedicta Ward (New York: Penguin, 2003).]“If you will, you can become all flame.” Now, I don’t know if one can become all flame, or even whether Abba Joseph’s fingers really did become like ten lamps of fire. But I share this story with you because Abba Joseph’s response shows the power of a transformed imagination. Abba Lot could not imagine what else he could do to grow in love and devotion to God, but Abba Joseph’s uplifted, flaming fingers showed him that something else was possible. Abba Lot had suffered from an inadequate perception of the possible, until Abba Joseph showed him that he could become all flame.
If we are honest with ourselves, I think that we often suffer from a similar lack of imagination, a similarly limited worldview. And I want to suggest that Abba Joseph’s horizon-expanding response is similar in effect to the parables of Jesus. That is, Jesus challenges our perceptions of what God is like and what it means to be in relation with him. Take today’s Gospel lesson for instance. How might Jesus’ teaching on prayer effect a transformation in the way we view God and our relation with him? Consider for a moment what you imagine God to be like. Is he like a man sleeping at midnight, oblivious to our needs unless we bang on his door, and only then reluctantly answering us? Or do you believe God will graciously give you what you ask? that you will find what you seek? that God will open the door at your knock? What do you imagine God is like?
Listen again to the parable of Jesus related by St Luke:
“Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; and he will answer from within, 'Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything'? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs.”The scene would have been familiar to Jesus’ first-century audience, for whom hospitality was paramount, who baked daily the bread they would need for the day (three loaves of bread was likely a typical evening meal), and who lived in close-knit villages and slept in one-room houses. A story of a persistent man who came at midnight to his friend’s house, desperate to not leave until he had procured what was necessary to provide proper hospitality to his unexpected guest.
Is this story Jesus’ answer to the disciples request for him to teach them to pray? Does it suggest that the key to prayer is importunity, persistence, a stubborn knocking on heaven’s door until God relents and gives us what we need? Is God like the unwilling neighbor?
Consider the related parable of the unjust judge in Luke 18, a parable which St Luke explicitly states that Jesus told his disciples “to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). That parable goes like this:
"In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man; and there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, 'Vindicate me against my adversary.' For a while he refused; but afterward he said to himself, 'Though I neither fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming.'" (vv. 2–5)Clearly, this parable does teach persistence in prayer; Jesus tells it to teach that the disciples “ought always to pray and not lose heart.” But does it not also teach us something about God, namely, that God is not like the unjust judge? God does not stubbornly refuse our request for deliverance until he is worn out and irritated by our continual coming. “Will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night?,” Jesus asks, “Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily” (vv. 7–8).
But does it not often seem to us that God is delaying long? Indeed, the Scripture is full of instances of God’s people crying out in desperation, “How long, O Lord?” Who among us has not at some time prayed to God and heard only the echoing silence? Do we not often feel as if our prayers are like knocking on the door of a friend who is not at home? Doesn’t it often seem that God is like an unjust judge or an unwilling neighbor?
It does seem that way. But Jesus, in these parables, gently teaches us that the way things sometimes seem is not the way things actually are. God is not like the unjust judge; rather, “he will vindicate his elect speedily.” As the Old Testament lesson today demonstrated, the Judge of all the earth will do what is right (cf. Gen 18:20-33). Nor is God like the unwilling neighbor. Rather, God is like a good and generous Father who gives good gifts to his children. “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?,” Jesus asks. “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!" In other words, God gives the very best gift to them that ask: his very self. It is precisely because God is, like a good father, trustworthy, generous and faithful, that we can be confident that he will answer our prayers by giving us what is truly good.
This is not to say that God gives us precisely what we ask. After all, Jesus does not say that a good father gives a fish when asked for a fish, or an egg when asked for an egg. He does say that he will not give evil, harmful things instead of the good things the son had requested. But he doesn’t say that the father gives the son exactly what the son had wanted. And this is good news! Just as a father would spoil his son by giving him dessert every time the son wanted some, but gives him instead healthy, nourishing vegetables, so too our Heavenly Father gives us what is truly good for us, rather than what we, in our immaturity and ignorance and sin, think we need.
Jesus shows us that God is like a good father, graciously giving us what we truly need. Sometimes God’s grace is manifest even in our perception of His absence. Anthony Bloom, who was a Metropolitan in the Russian Orthodox Church, wrote of the ways in which God’s seeming absence is actually a gift. Why? Because, as the book of Hebrews puts it, “our God is a consuming fire.” Meeting God face to face is always a moment of judgment, of crisis. Think of the prophet Isaiah, who saw the Lord enthroned in glory, surrounded by seraphim shouting the Sanctus, and who cried out: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" (Isa 6:5) Or think of St Peter, who upon witnessing Jesus’ power in the miraculous catch of fish, “fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord’” (Lk 5:8). God’s coming lays bare the truth of who we are, the secrets of our hearts, leading us to cry out for mercy. Thus, the fact that we do not always perceive his presence is a grace. Metropolitan Anthony writes that at such times we must seek “to pray in the absence of God, to know that he is there but I am blind; that he is there but I am insensitive and that it is an act of his infinite mercy not to be present to me while I am not yet capable of sustaining his coming" [Meditations on a Theme (New York: Continuum, 2003/ London: Mowbrays, 1972), p. 38].
Recognizing our blindness and insensitivity and God’s graciousness in dealing with us brings us to the place where we can truly begin to pray. For longing for God’s presence is the beginning of true prayer. Prayer, after all, is fundamentally about a relationship, an encounter, and it wells up from us when we become aware of our lack, of God’s absence from our lives. Recognizing God’s absence, Metropolitan Anthony says, teaches us “to test our thoughts and our hearts, to consider the significance of our actions, to ask ourselves whether our will is really oriented towards God or if we only look to God for a moment’s respite from our burdens, only to forsake him the next instant" [Meditations, p. 39]. True prayer begins when we long for God himself. Prayer starts, when we come to the position of the psalmist who could pray, “As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God. My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God; when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?” (Ps 42:1–2). If we did not thirst for God, would we seek him? If we were not aware that we stand outside, would we knock at his door?
We must, then, cultivate an awareness of our need for God and that it is because of his infinite mercy that he welcomes us in when we knock. We must not deceive ourselves into thinking that he somehow owes us, that we have the right to barge into his presence. Rather, we must consider the possibility that what the ascended Lord says to the church at Laodicea in the book of Revelation he might say to us. He says: “You say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see” (Rev 3:17–18). This is why regular examination of our lives and regular confession of our sins is so important. Doing so shows us where we stand before God, and helps us to recognize that it is only because of the grace of God, “whose property is always to have mercy,” that we can come and sup with him. When God’s grace shows us our true condition, we cry, “Lord, have mercy.”
Through Jesus, we know that God does have mercy. And in Jesus we also know that God comes to us. He comes to invite us into his presence, to his feast. Our Lord says to those same lukewarm Laodiceans, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev 3:20). So it is not only that we knock on God’s door, as it were, but that he stands at our door, waiting patiently for us to open and welcome him in.
What do you imagine God is like? Jesus teaches us that God is like a good Father who gives what is good to his children, who comes to us in invitation. Therefore, let us pray in confidence to God our Father. Let us come to the Table where the risen Christ presides as Host and gives himself for our nourishment, for the life of the world. Let us cry out, by the Spirit and with the whole Church, “Come, Lord Jesus!”
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