Ask, Seek, Knock

Gerry Fraser

Sundays in Ordinary Time C • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

0 ratings

· 4 views

Trust in God and reliance on prayer are calls to action, not passivity.

Notes

Transcript

In the Middle East

haggling over prices is a fine art

so that a buyer who doesn’t bargain is seen either as a dupe who doesn’t know enough to haggle

or as someone who doesn’t respect the seller

and so can be dismissed with a contemptuous wave.

I thought I had become pretty good at bargaining!

One Sunday Morning, on my way to Mass

Passing through the Jaffa Gate

Several merchants were setting up tables of goods outside of the jewelry shops there.

Some set up displays and others were making hand-lettered signs to entice buyers.

One of them called out to me;

he asked me how best to word his sign announcing a sale,

so I spent a few minutes making suggestions.

Then he said he wanted to thank me.

He led me into his shop around the corner where he offered to polish the ring I was wearing.

I said thank you and he set to work.

When he finished, he asked me to have tea with him.

I immediately remembered two articles of social interaction I had been taught:

If a stranger invites you to tea, it’s an honor and you don’t refuse unless you have to.

If a merchant invites you to tea in the middle of a negotiation, you’ve already bought the item!

There had been no hint of my shopping for anything, much less, haggling over price. I thought, ‘Why not?”

Get to the point, already.

I’ll shorten the story, but I have to finish it to get to the point.

That merchant had several more twists and turns in store for me

until he’d maneuvered me into believing I had two choices

buy the item he had said he wanted to give me

or have my knuckles broken by his cousins in back of the shop.

I knew I had been suckered

But I had drunk his tea

and by then I didn’t know whose side the locals might take in a dispute.

So I bargained him down from $100.00 to $50.00, paid the money and slunk out of the shop

just in time to get to Mass.

Now, here’s the point

Abraham lived in a culture much more like the one I’ve just described than the one we live in.

He would have been well-versed in the art of haggling

as today’s story demonstrates.

The culture in Jesus’ day would have been much like Abraham’s

He would have known very well how to haggle.

He likely engaged in it.

The prayer he teaches is

intimate

direct

admirably brief.

He tells his disciples, God already knows what you need

but don’t be afraid to persist in prayer, keep asking!

Go after what you need:

ask

seek

knock.

be persistent, maybe even haggle, like Abraham.

Asking already implies action

seeking and knocking carry it out.

Following in the Footsteps of Jesus: Meditations on the Gospels for Year C Chapter 17: Learn Again to Trust: Lord, Teach Us to Pray (Luke 11:1–13) (Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time)

To seek is not only to ask. It also requires that we get moving, taking steps to obtain something that is hidden from us because it is covered up or concealed. This is the way that Jesus sees his followers—as seekers of the kingdom of God and his justice.

Following in the Footsteps of Jesus: Meditations on the Gospels for Year C Chapter 17: Learn Again to Trust: Lord, Teach Us to Pray (Luke 11:1–13) (Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time)

To knock at or call out to is to cry out to someone who we feel is not near us, but who, we believe, can hear us and respond.

Following in the Footsteps of Jesus: Meditations on the Gospels for Year C Chapter 17: Learn Again to Trust: Lord, Teach Us to Pray (Luke 11:1–13) (Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Sadly, we do not now make enough of an effort to learn to follow Jesus by crying out to God in the midst of the disagreements, conflicts and questions of today’s world.

Related Media

Related Sermons