I think this is the first time that thinking about prayer took me to both Robert Frost and ice hockey. Here’s my sermon for this week.
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My twelfth grade English teacher Ms. Morse is responsible, in part, for my love of poetry—particularly the poems of Robert Frost. When Ginger and I lived in Boston, we loved driving up to Frost’s farm in southern New Hampshire, which is a national park. They had a self-guided walking tour that came with a pamphlet of poems to read at certain places along the trail that matched the words. We would walk, I would read the poems out loud, and Ginger would lovingly mock me.
In English class, Ms. Morse led us to “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” as well as some of his more familiar poems. Then we came to one called “The Death of the Hired Man” that was not like the others. It was long. It told a story. And it didn’t rhyme.
The poem starts with Mary sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her husband Warren to come home. When he does, she gives him the news that Silas, a man who had worked for them off and on over the years—and who had left on less than good terms—had returned. He is a sad and broken man on his return and seemed to have nowhere else to go. Mary has some compassion; Warren wants nothing to do with him because of some old hurt that we don’t know much about. Finally, Mary pleads for Warren’s kindness, saying Silas has just come home to die, and that causes Warren to question what home really is. Mary’s answer has stayed with me ever since:
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’
I moved around so much growing up that I have had a hard time figuring out where home is, and I also know not everyone feels like their families of origin are where they most belong. However, most of us have a place where they know that when they go there they have to be taken in.
I thought about Warren and Mary and Silas when I read Jesus’ story about the person who wakes their friend at midnight, imposing on their relationship, because another friend had imposed on them showing up in the middle of the night and asking for a place to stay and they were trying to be hospitable. The man did what friends do: they asked for help, even though it was inconvenient for the one they asked.
Jesus said, “I assure you, even if he wouldn’t get up and help because of his friendship, he will get up and give his friend whatever he needs because of his friend’s sheer shamelessness.” That’s what it means to be a friend—and sometimes that is a costly choice.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.
That’s what home is. That’s what true friendship is. Maybe that’s what prayer is as well—that place where, when you go there, God lets us in.
As you heard in our passage, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray the way John the Baptist had taught his students. Jesus responded with a short prayer that makes it sound like Luke couldn’t remember the words to the Lord’s Prayer, since it doesn’t match what we pray every Sunday. Still, it boils it down to the basics: feed us, forgive us, protect us.
Then Jesus told the story about the persistent friend who shows up at midnight asking for help, which is what friends do. We wouldn’t call a stranger in the middle of the night and ask for help, but we would call a friend because I know they love us. That’s what friends are for, as we said. They get up and do what is bothersome or inconvenient because we were audacious enough to ask and because from time to time we get a bill for what our friendships cost us, if you will, and if we are friends, we pay it.
Another way to look at it is to say that the requests we make of one another—even the impositions—happen in the context of relationships. The little things we do with and for one another are deposits in a Trust Bank, if you will, so that when the time comes to make a midnight withdrawal, the inconvenience is not the headline to the story, but a chance instead to make a memory together.
“Remember that time I called you in the middle of the night . . .”
The small story is a contagion of trust and need. The friend who showed up in the middle of the night needed a place to stay. The one answering with a room needed food for their unexpected guest. Our need for help and our ability to offer it are the things that weave our lives together. Their calls for help also remind us that we often impose on those we know will answer. We ask for help where we know—or at least we hope—we can get it.
After telling the story, Jesus said, “Ask and you will receive. Search and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. Everyone, in fact, who asks gets, and whoever searches finds, and the door will be opened to whoever is knocking.”
Then he switched to family examples to illustrate what he was saying. When a child asks for a fish, a parent wouldn’t give them a snake, or if the kid wanted an egg, the parent wouldn’t hand them a scorpion. When we love someone, we listen to them. We respond to their requests. Can’t we trust God the same way?
I would like to point out here that all of these words come on the heels of Martha asking Jesus to tell Mary to get up and help in the kitchen and Jesus responding by saying, “No.” Jesus wasn’t saying God is a vending machine where we punch our selection and out comes the item. He was saying that God is even more trustworthy than those we trust most to get up in the middle of the night when we call, if we are willing to trust. God is an open-all-night kind of God.
And that leads us to one of the things we can infer from Jesus’ words, which is when we pray, we articulate our theology: we say out loud who we think God is and what we think God is like.
Do we trust God is merciful or compassionate? Do we think God is too busy? Do we think God looks at the world the way we do? Do we think God will alter the universe to make us happy? Do we trust God will be with us no matter what happens? Do we think God will get up in the middle of the night and help?
Here’s one more: Could God be the one knocking on the door in the middle of the night asking for our help in taking care of others?
The theology Jesus articulated in the prayer he offered his followers and the stories that surrounded it is a picture of a God who calls us into relationship, who expects us to trust, to ask, to listen, and to act. If we don’t ask—if we don’t risk—we don’t give God the chance to respond nor do we give God the chance to call us deeper into relationship.
Which brings me to ice hockey; specifically, a quote from Wayne Gretzky, whom hockey fans know as “The Great One” because of his goal scoring ability. He said quite famously, “You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”
When I searched for the origins of his quote, I found that there was more too it. The full version is, “You will never get what you don’t ask for. You can’t find what you aren’t looking for. You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”
It sounds like a paraphrase of our passage: seek and you will find, ask and you will receive, shoot and you will give yourself a chance to score.” I found an interview with a movie producer named James III who said he thought what needed to be added to Gretzky’s words was “the more shots you take, the better at shooting you’ll be.”
I like that addition because it calls us to practice, in the spiritual sense of that word, repeating the words and actions to deepen our connection to God. When we pray shamelessly like the friend, in a way that leans into our relationship God, a way that makes a withdrawal from the trust bank, we deepen that relationship and open our hearts to be changed.
Remember, when we pray, we articulate our theology: we say out loud who we think God is and what we think God is like. And also remember that our theologies can grow and change. Our image of who God is and what we think God is like can grow and change.
Jesus didn’t answer Martha shameless request to make her sister come and cook by telling Mary to go into the kitchen. He answered by offering Martha a larger view of God and her sister and of the moment they were all sharing together that included her hospitality but challenged her view that Jesus would agree with her even as he it clear that both sisters belonged, which wasn’t the answer Martha was hoping for, but it gave her a new way of looking at both Jesus and her sister.
Prayer is that place where, when you go there, God lets you in. Because that’s what love does. And God is love. So, pray because we don’t get an answer to one hundred percent of the prayers we don’t pray. If we don’t ask, nothing will happen. If we don’t seek, we will never find. If we don’t knock, no one will answer.
Prayer is also the place where, when we go there, we let God in. If we don’t answer the door in the middle of the night, we will miss the chance to help and grow. To pray is to open our hearts to God. When we do that, who knows what can happen. Amen.
Peace,
Milton