The Park Road Pulpit

    Sermons from Park Road Baptist Church

      Russ and Amy Jacks Dean, Pastors

How to Wake a Sleeping God

Luke 11.1-13

Russ Dean, July 29, 2001

            We didn’t expect to like living in “The Village.” When we visited Southern Seminary, we toured this brick slum, constructed just after the Second World War. The apartment we viewed was empty, and was littered with paint chips and dirt. We found the toilet in the bathtub, stashed there until it could be re-sealed. That night at the Howard Johnson Amy begged, through tears, “Just don’t make me live in the village.” I promised.

In a few months, I backed all of our worldly belongings to the door of “T2.”

It was the best place we ever lived.

            James and Amy above, David and Beth next door, and the Deans, became “The Commune.” We ate most meals together in some fashion, gathering mostly in our apartment, which was central and usually clean enough to find a table. Neighbors always contributed to the menu, and we learned to bring our own plates, silverware, and glasses – no one had a dishwasher!

In this community, if you needed an egg or a cup of sugar -- or a commentary reference, or help with a Hebrew conjugation or with an argument for Ethics class, it was only a door away.

            Many nights before we slipped into bed, we would set the dead-bolt so the door would stay propped open. In the dark of night, books in one hand, Diet Coke in the other, “David C.” would enter and move quietly to the computer. He spent many of the “we small hours” with us. We could see the phosphorous glow of the monitor, and hear him pecking away, in the other room, word by word, toward the end of his composition. At some point before daybreak, he would gather his debris, shut off the CPU, and lock the door as he made his way down the cement stepping stones to his own apartment.

This was community, like community ought to be.

             The disciples said to Jesus, “Give us a prayer – like John gave his disciples.” A little reluctantly, I think, Jesus obliged them. “Pray like this: Abba (‘Papa in Heaven’)” – his address was dangerously casual. “Let your name become Holy to us. Let your kingdom come. Give us today, what we need just for today. Forgive our sins – in the same way that we show forgiveness. And do not let us be tempted. Amen” (author’s paraphrase).

They asked for a prayer. They got a prayer. Short and sweet. But as the satisfied disciples turned to walk away, Jesus added, “Suppose one of you has a friend…”

“Oh… Jesus… we just wanted a prayer. Not a lecture!”

Many of us would still prefer a formula. A tidy little word. A prayer, like a little talisman, a magic trinket to tuck away and use, when needed, against the world. (“Just tell us what to say, Jesus. Not how to think. It’s so much easier that way.”) But Jesus never lets his disciples off the hook that easily.

            In the first parable, the setting is a community not unlike the one that Amy and I experienced in seminary. In the ancient middle-east, several families often lived close, sharing a central courtyard where the women cooked and the men and children talked and played. In this dark-of-the-night tale, a traveler comes to a friend, asking for lodging. In Jesus’ culture, failure to show hospitality was almost unforgivable, so one man, out of compassion, or out of fear of community shame, goes searching for food for his traveling guest. Because the women baked together, one neighbor would likely know if anyone had leftovers. The man comes to his neighbor, knocking loudly on the door. “Samuel. Samuel! I know you have bread. It’s Isaac. Open the door. There is a traveler, Samuel. Open the door and give me that extra loaf that Suzannah made today. Samuel. Open the door!”

The story calls forth a host of questions about prayer and about God, for in the parable’s conclusion the neighbor does rise, open his door, and provide his friend with the requested loaf of bread. As I read, I wondered: “Can we badger God like a tired neighbor, until God finally satisfies our demands?” How do we Wake a Sleeping God? Is this what prayer is about?

Since I had a few weeks to prepare these thoughts, I sent an e-mail to some friends, as I am recently prone to do. A mother of three young boys wrote back:

As for badgering God… I had to laugh about that. I just finished reading a chapter in a book on parenting that basically said when you give-in to a child that is badgering, you are disrespecting yourself… you teach that child that you place little merit in your own decisions… And perhaps worse, that you can be controlled by badgering, whining, expressions of anger, etc… It seems to me [your question]… “Can we badger God… ?” assumes that God has all the power to grant our requests. Do you believe that to be true?” (Pam Toler, emphasis added)

            At some moment in most of our lives, faith and real life intersect in prayer. So as I work out a so-called “Theology of Reality” with you, I know that prayer must be a crucial component of this conversation. Should we pray? If so, to what kind of God? And if we pray, what should we expect from our diligence?

            First let us recognize that much of what Jesus said about prayer gets taken out of its context, and in this dislocation, prayer becomes just a pawn of selfish service, a tool designed to manipulate God -- pray enough, and God will give you what you want, whether that means healing, a new job, or… a parking place at the supermarket. “Ask and you shall receive.”

But Thomas Moore instructs us, “Prayer is the alternative to working hard to get what we want. When we pray,” he says, “One discovers eventually that what you want is almost always what you don’t need” (Moore, Meditations, p.19, emphasis added). Our “asking” and “seeking” and “knocking,” then, can only be understood in light of Jesus’ model prayer. “Ask?” Yes, but ask, to acknowledge God (“Hallowed be thy name.”). “Seek?”  Yes, but seek, to serve God (“Thy kingdom come.”) “Knock?” Yes, but knock, to know God (“Thy will be done.”). And in our praying, it will be so.

            Should we pray? Yes. It is the essential language of faith. Prayer signifies our deepest hope as human beings. And, prayer must be developed in harmony with each life. In other words, only you can pray your prayers. Prayer should become our ongoing communion[i] with the God whom Jesus knew as “Abba” -- trusted Papa.

Jesus’ parable likens God to the friend, and makes an argument from the lesser to the greater: if the neighbor will respond in the night, certainly God will. But how will God respond? The more difficult issue, as Jesus indicates by his lesson, is not whether we should pray, but what is the nature of the God to whom we pray?

            So, back to my friend’s question in her e-mail, “Do you believe [that God has all the power to grant our requests]?” Let me respond with an argument.

If God is the “Abba,” or the friend that Jesus suggests, then in our times of deepest need, we should go to God as to a close friend. And what do we request of our friends in our times of deepest need? Miracles? No.

“What can I do?” Amy asked Vivian Privette’s daughter yesterday[ii]. “Nothing,” Carol said. “Just visit.” In prayer, we seek God’s presence as a friend, in times of deepest need.

“But,” you protest, “God is not just a friend. God is God.” Fair enough. Let’s work that out: If my friend can do miracles, and I ask for a miracle, at what point does the friend begin to doubt the integrity of our relationship? Or, at what point do I begin to question even my own motives? -- is this really friendship, or am I using a so-called “friend” just to get what I want? And… if my friend does have the power to do anything, and does, in fact, grant my “miracle,” when do I begin to question this friend’s justice? Having been granted a miracle, it should begin to seem obvious by observing a world filled with pain and suffering, that my friend has obviously chosen not to grant the wishes of so many others, but only to answer a select few.

            Does God have “all power to grant our requests?” I don’t know. I do know that when I look at the immense suffering in this world, my theology will no longer let me insist easily, as it once did, that “God is all-powerful.” (The magnitude of what an all-powerful deity chooses not to do is overwhelming to me.) In his book When We Talk About God… Let’s Be Honest, Kirby Godsey is even more forthright:

“The notion that God is the all powerful… principal of heaven and earth should be laid aside. God suffers. God is the creative and redeeming power within heaven and earth, and within our souls, enabling us to move beyond the power of suffering” (p.99).

But, I also believe that truth is stranger than fiction, and that our everyday “reality” does leave a great deal of room for mystery. There are events such as unexplained cures, that seem undeniably “miraculous.”  God does work in this world.

The important question for prayer then becomes, can we really maintain an uncompromised relationship with God as a true friend, if we believe God to be the great, all-powerful deity? Must God be awakened from long nights of sleep by our badgering? Is this what Jesus intends us to understand about God and about prayer?

What is at stake in our language about prayer, and by my perhaps disturbing words about God’s nature, is what our language will teach little Michael Chad Owenby[iii] about the Divine … Is God a distant, sleeping giant, to be feared, and then approached with our desperate pleas, bargaining, and late-night badgering? Will our language teach little Mickie that he will have to wonder whether, this time, God will rise from a deep sleep? Or can we use language that will teach him that God is his friend, who always works, through the power of suffering and weakness, to bring about good.[iv] And that God always responds with the gift of Divine Presence?

The “Abba” of Jesus, is our truest friend, the God of Israel who “neither slumbers nor sleeps.”[v] The “Abba” of Jesus is the friend whose door is always open. The “Abba” of Jesus is the friend who always grants what has been promised. And what is promised?

Jesus concludes his lesson, “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

The God who never sleeps only always promises the gift of the Holy Spirit -- It is the gift of Presence. Of comfort. Of peace. In our times of greatest need, we will never have to wonder if God will rise this time from sleep to hear our request.

God is with us[vi] – and that Presence will always be enough.

May it be so. Amen!