Transcript
May I speak in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.
During the early days of the pandemic, I joined the rest of the internet on a quest to become a rustic baker. Sour dough bread was the hot topic online. Beautiful loaves of bread and proud home bakers filled my social media feed. And I wanted in.
But before you bake the bread, you have to make a starter. That strange living thing that brings the dough to life. They said it was simple. Just flour and water. You mix it. You leave it on the counter. You feed it like it’s alive and keep it warm.
So I mixed it. I fed it. Then I waited and waited for almost two weeks. Still nothing. No bubbles. No rise. Just a pale, lifeless paste in a jar. And one morning, staring at that jar, I asked the quiet question I didn’t want to ask. What if nothing ever happens?
That waiting. That hope that something might rise. That something might change. Might feel familiar for us as Christians. Because sometimes prayer feels just like that sour dough starter. Not with flour and water, but with the stuff of our souls. We mix in our longings, our hopes, our petitions as we pray. And in a way, it’s like tending that sour dough starter. We return to prayer day after day, and we wait and wait. And sometimes it seems nothing changes.
That’s why, if we’re honest, today’s gospel, this beautiful gospel can also be hard to hear. Ask and it will be given you. Jesus says search and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened.
Yet sometimes what we ask of the Lord doesn’t come. Sometimes what we search for stays hidden in the shadows. Sometimes we knock on hospital doors, on closed hearts, on heaven itself. And we wonder if God hears us knocking.
If that’s where you are in your prayers today, or if you’ve ever been there, I want you to know you are not alone. You’re not the first to wonder if heaven is listening. Hannah prayed year after year, Job waited in the dust. Even Jesus, especially Jesus, knew the ache when in the garden he prayed, let this cup pass from me and on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
So, friends, if Jesus himself has been there too, then there must be good news and love and grace in what he teaches today. Now, I’ll be honest. Today’s gospel didn’t come easy for me this week. Maybe it doesn’t come easy for you too because indeed, for many people, it’s not easy to hear Jesus say ask and it will be given you. When those words stir up memories of prayers prayed and things hoped for that never came.
But one of the gifts of our Episcopal Church tradition is that we don’t run from the hard parts of Scripture. We sit with Scripture to ask the hard questions together to pray and the tension to stay. And this week, as I stayed with the text, something came alive right at the end. As Jesus says, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?
You see, that’s the key. That’s Jesus’s promise, not a guaranteed outcome, nor a yes to every petition we pray. But the very presence of God, the Holy Spirit, the comforter. Jesus didn’t say we’d always get what we asked for exactly as we asked it. He said, ask and the spirit will be given. We’re to say it another way ask and God will come. And when God comes, we are never alone.
Looking back on my life, I remember when my grandmother was sick. How I prayed and prayed to God that she would survive her cancer. But then she died. I didn’t know what to do with that. Back then, I even wondered if I had prayed wrong, if maybe I didn’t have enough faith.
But over time, God’s gentle time, I began to notice something. The spirit. I saw the spirit in the cards that came in the mail, and the people who sat with me and said nothing at all. In time, I felt the spirit at her gravesite. When being there no longer swallowed me, but held me. And more than anything, I feel the spirit Jesus promises us today most in the love that didn’t stop with her dying. A love that keeps growing even though she’s gone. A love I can’t explain. But love I know only comes from the Spirit of God.
No, I didn’t get what I asked for. Grandma died, but I did get the Holy Spirit. I prayed and I was given God.
I wish I could say why some prayers seem to go unanswered to us. I don’t have simple answers for these holy mysteries, but I can tell you what I believe that one day we will see God’s glory face to face. And when that day comes. Every ache, every silence, every tear will be gathered up in love and made whole.
And until that day, this is what I know. When we pray, my friends. We’re not just speaking into the air. We are reaching for the Lord who is nearer than we often think, nearer than we may feel.
That’s what Jesus promises us in the gospel. Not that every request will be answered the way we hope, but that the spirit will be given to us, that God’s presence, God’s very Holy Spirit, will be with us when we pray. So ask. Search, knock. Not because the path is clear or the ache has eased, but because even in the silence and the waiting, God is listening.
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches, finds. And everyone who knocks, Jesus says for them the door will be opened. And when that door opens, grace will come in.
Amen.