The Rev. Noah Van Niel
The Chapel of the Cross
July 28th, 2019
Proper 12 (C): Hosea 1:2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-19; Luke 11:1-13
Perhaps the most valuable thing you get to do when you are training to be ordained is spend some time interning as a hospital chaplain. I was lucky enough to do my training at one of the large teaching hospitals in Boston. One of my assigned floors was an inpatient oncology unit. Most of the patients who came through that floor had particularly aggressive, difficult forms of cancer, and that meant that over the course of the three months I was there, despite the best efforts of a remarkable staff, dozens of people passed away.
I can remember one patient, named Rick, who was in for another round of treatment for his disease. He was in his fifties and by the time I met him he was much diminished in body, but not in Spirit. Rick was always accompanied by his wife, Susie. She slept in the room, and rarely left his side, even to go get something to eat. Her devotion was incredible. They were evangelical Christians and they were sure that God was going to cure him. They had prayer warriors lined up from their church, family and friends calling and sending their prayers almost every day. When we prayed together it was fervent and heartfelt, they added their voices to mine in a chorus of assurance that God could take away this tumor if He so chose.
Down the hall from them was a man named Frank. He was in his 70’s and had been battling his cancer on and off for decades, and for decades he had been able to keep it at bay. He was attended faithfully by his husband John who was just as loving and caring as Susie was to Rick. Frank had grown up Catholic but did not find that a happy spiritual home given his sexuality, so he and his husband found their way to a liberal protestant denomination. So, they were men of prayer as well, though in a different sort of way. We prayed together too, for healing, and it was appreciated but less emotionally intense than praying with Rick and Susie. Mostly they liked to laugh.
After a long couple of weeks, Rick’s disease overtook him and he died. When I visited him and Susie toward the end, she was a shell of her former self, for not only had her husband been taken from her, her entire conception of the efficacy of prayer and the goodness of God had been obliterated. Frank lived, for exactly how much longer I don’t know. But he got to go home. And while he may have succumbed to his disease by now, at least he had extra time to spend with John in half-way decent health.
So what happened here? Were Frank and John’s prayers answered and Rick and Susie’s not? Was God unable, or even unwilling to intervene in Rick’s life but was happy to do so in Frank’s?
The problem of unanswered prayer is one of the most difficult theological questions I am sure we have all pondered over our lives. Now this is, admittedly, an extreme example, and most of our prayers are over less dire concerns. But still many of them, maybe even most of them depending on what we’re praying for, go unanswered. Which is strange because in our Gospel passage today Jesus seems to be telling his disciples that if they are persistent enough, their prayers will be answered. “Ask and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Forgive me, Lord, for being impertinent, but that’s just not true! In my experience people only sometimes get what they ask for in their prayers, even the most persistent of pray-ers. And I don’t know about you, but I want a God who shows up more than sometimes. I want a God who is there when I call, a God who is solid, who is powerful, who is constant and reliable. Not some capricious genie granting wishes to some and not to others.
So how do we square this problem of unanswered prayer with our belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God? How do we determine whether or not prayer actually works?
Some people can’t. I think we all know people or maybe we are people who feel as though our cries for help to God the Almighty fell on deaf ears and so we said, “The heck with this. Lot of good that God did me.” And in a sense who could blame them. If we are going to reconcile reality with Christ’s promise on the power of prayer in this passage, we’re going to need to look at it a little more closely to see if there’s another way to understand it, because if there isn’t, God’s got some explaining to do.
When Jesus says, “Ask and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find;” the implication is that you shall receive the thing you asked for, find the thing you were seeking. That’s the common reading, which I’ve heard at least. But actually, the object of that sentence remains undefined. It is unclear what “it” is that you will receive or find. And though it sounds nice to have the thing you ask for and the thing you receive be the same, it’s not explicit that that is what Jesus is saying. But what is explicit is verse 13 where we actually get the object identified. In verse 13 Jesus says, “If you, 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.” There, finally, is our object. The thing given, the thing found, the thing that answers your knock at the door is not necessarily what you prayed for, it is the Holy Spirit. It may not be what you want, but it is what you get. And in this way, the promise of prayer is kept because the Holy Spirit is always there, is always available to us whenever we open ourselves to it. It has been poured out, Scripture says, upon all flesh. So, while what we pray for matters and God wants to hear from us and is listening, the answer to our prayers is always already available to us if we can but open our eyes to it. Prayer then is like one of those old turn dial radios: The Holy Spirit station is always broadcasting, we just need to tune to the right frequency. Alas our souls are often stuck on the wrong station, or in the limbo of static, and so we assume that heavenly channel has stopped sending out a signal. But when we find the right spot on the dial of our hearts, and that Spirit comes through loud and clear, then we start to notice the presence of God all around us, already at work answering us.
Now, the presence of the Holy Spirit may be hard, impossible to feel, or to notice, or to grasp, when for example, you have just lost a loved one after months or years of desperately asking, seeking, knocking only for them to die in your arms. But that does not mean it isn’t there. Standing outside those hospital rooms it was abundantly clear to me that God was in both of them. For I saw courage in the eyes of both these men as they looked death in the face. I heard notes of peace when we talked that surpassed any rational understanding, given their situation. And I saw love, so much love it was blinding. Love displayed with a ferocity and strength that went beyond anything we normally have to display. These two men were held close by their beloved and enveloped by the love and prayers of their friends and families and communities. Yes, one of them died and one of them didn’t, but God was in both of those rooms. He was not absent. He was not powerless. He was right there as Susie stroked Rick’s hair while he slept; or while John squeezed Frank’s hand with a smile. And maybe they couldn’t see it because they were too close, but in those glimpses of the Holy Spirit, I could see a glimmer of the life beyond this one, a foretaste of heaven. For they were brushing up against, holding fast to, a power that transcended our life on this earth, a power that bonds us one to another and keeps us connected to those whom we love long after our last breath. That is the power and promise of God; that is the answer to our prayers; a taste of the eternal as we pass through things temporal, and the strength we need to journey the rocky road it will take to get there. By being with us in this way, God is assuring us that our prayers have been heard, they have been answered, and nothing, nothing, nothing will ever drive Him away.
Admittedly, this requires something of a reframing in our minds of what it means for our prayers to “work.” It means we cannot measure the efficacy of prayer by whether someone dies or not; whether we get what we want or not. By that measure prayer often fails. But where prayer never fails is in revealing the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst; giving us courage when our heart is quaking, giving us comfort when our pain is wracking, giving us peace when our grief is gripping us by the throat, and embracing us and holding us close with love even when we are passing through the valley of the shadow of death. Remember, even Jesus suffered the pain of unanswered prayer. When his deepest wish poured out in blood and sweat in the garden of Gethsemane, that, if possible, he might avoid the torturous death that lay ahead of him, went unheeded. He was nailed to that cross, sealed in that tomb. But God was not absent in those moments, even if He felt far away. He was right there with him through it all; preparing to burst open the gates of heaven and show us all the answer to our prayers: life, healing, wholeness in ways beyond our wildest imagination. So, when you pray, ask, seek, knock, pour out your deepest and truest yearnings and desires to God, look around for the presence of the Holy Spirit at work answering your prayers. Times when you feel surrounded with love, held up with inexplicable strength, or carried through with a courage you didn’t know you had. Do what you can to notice those times that show you a flash of forever in the moments of your darkness, and know that He is with you already, and remains with you, always.