Matthew 7:7-11
I eat breakfast on Thursday mornings with Alan Luttrell and Rex Johnston. Every once in a while, Alan will hit us with a big question. One morning, a couple of weeks ago (January 25) was one of those mornings. Alan asked, “What are your goals and aspirations for your future self; and, what are you willing to sacrifice of your life right now to attain those goals and aspirations?”
Rex scratched his head. I scratched my head in thought. It’s not one of those kinds of questions you can readily come up with an answer. If Alan had asked, “So what are your plans for the weekend, I could have answered with a snap. But not a question about my aspirations for my future self.
But I had to open my mouth and say something. So I told him it’s one of those double-headed dragon kinds of questions. The first head is figuring out our future self—what will make our future self joyful and at peace. The second head is figuring out what we are willing to let go of, or give up, in order to make that future self happen. Most of us would like to mold a future, joyful, peaceful self with as little expense as possible.
But that’s not how it happens. If we are going to make some kinds of changes in order to create a future self we can live with, there will be a cost. Not just financial. I don’t think that’s exactly what Alan was asking. At least I didn’t take it entirely that way. I was thinking more of costs in terms of emotional costs, relationship costs, identity costs. Things like that, that are much harder expenses to meet than just finances.
Alan’s question is a good one, and it is something I had already been thinking about as I get closer and closer to retirement. So I’m going to use Alan’s question as the basis for a sermon series during Lent. I’m going to concentrate on that second head of the dragon: what we will have to sacrifice to attain whatever vision of our future self we are hoping to attain.
I’ve come up with a list of things we will have to give up, and it isn’t your usual list of things, like chocolate, or Pepsi, or TV watching, or whatever people normally give up. This is a list of sacrifices that will be a lot harder than all that.
So, let’s get started. The first thing you will have to give up, if you are thinking about making aspirations for a different future self, is the notion that things are easy.
I’m one of those naively optimistic kinds of persons when it comes to certain things. They usually have to do with fixer-upper kinds of things: minor carpentry, plumbing, that kind of thing. I say to myself, “Self, this will be easy. It shouldn’t take any time at all.” Then, half a day later, with water all over the floor, or fingers smashed trying to hammer in nails, I do what I should have done in the first place. Call someone like Rex to come help—or just do it for me. Then it would have been easy. And it would have been done easily.
My sense is, that we approach big changes in our lives the same way. We get an idea about the kind of person we want to be. We think to ourselves, “Self, this will be a snap. In two or three months I’ll be well on my way to being a new person.” But somewhere along the way in that two or three months we find out this isn’t going to be easy. It’s harder than it first appeared. We are tempted to scale back, if not give up altogether.
It appears that Jesus does us a disservice in this regard. Jesus makes it sound easy:
Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, those who seek find, and to those who knock, the door will be opened.
Easy peasy. Piece of cake. Just ask. Just knock. Just seek. Nothing to it. And since that’s all you have to do, everyone wins! No probs!
Let’s go through each of these words—ask, seek, and knock—and see if Jesus is making it easy.
First, ask.
The word Jesus used in the Greek language in which he spoke, literally means to beg, to crave, or to desire. So, it’s not just about asking. There’s an attitude that a person has to bring with their asking. Our asking must be more than a blithe or erstwhile question. It’s not just asking as if the answer doesn’t matter.
What is my destiny?
What is my future self?
These questions and their kin must be asked with passion, says Jesus. You don’t just want to know. YOU WANT TO KNOW!! YOU HAVE TO KNOW!! Your very life depends on the answer. That is the fervor that must be brought to this kind of asking and these kinds of questions.
We aren’t asking, “What’s for dinner?” We’re asking, “What do I need to survive in the future—to really live, to feel like I’m really alive and matter?”
Thus, it’s the passion and craving we bring with the asking that is important in Jesus’ mind. That’s the kind of asking that Jesus honors.
It’s also the kinds of questions we ask. Dinner or sustenance? Is it Friday yet, or, What did I do with my life this past week, and how can I live better next week? The kinds of questions we ask will demonstrate the level of craving and desire with which we are asking.
Then, there’s a further question that asking implies: Ask whom? Asking implies there is another involved. This isn’t just a conversation going on in your own head. That’s a closed feedback loop. It’s like your head is a hula hoop, where you are the only one answering your own questions. You are the only source of your information and answers to your asking. That isn’t what Jesus implies. Questions create dialogue with another. That’s why Jesus said, “Ask.” He wants us to get out of our own heads and engage another. Question/answer. Question/answer. Question/answer. Dialogue!
So, it’s not only your questions that matter. Or the passion you bring with your asking. But also, who you are asking your questions to and with. Those whom you ask, those with whom you dialogue, will shape and determine your answers—the answers you passionately seek.
So, Alan’s original question: “What/Who is my future self, and what am I willing to sacrifice to create that future self?” Do you really want to know? Or is that not your question? Maybe you have another. Something you need to ask that is driven by your passion? Who are you going to talk with as you desire and divine your answers?
So, is asking easy. Nope. Not anywhere close to what we thought.
Let’s go on to the next: Seek.
There’s a real surprise here. The word that Jesus used in his Greek language for the word seek literally means meditation or worship. Meditate and you will find. Worship and you will find.
It’s more than being on a treasure hunt, seeking is. In fact, seeking in Jesus’ vocabulary, has little to do with activity at all. To the contrary, seeking is about slowing down, stopping, being still.
God, speaking through the Psalmist, said, “Be still and know that I am God.” Or as the Revised English Bible has it, “Let be then; learn that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10). Being still, or letting be means to be idle, to relax; literally it means to sink down, as in sitting on the softest and most comfortable easy chair. Just sinking down into stillness.
To seek, as Jesus is describing it here, means to just chill. To sink into worship, to relax into meditation.
The order of these words as Jesus said them—ask, seek, knock—may be important. We do the seeking after we do the asking. We ask our questions with passion and fervor. We engage in conversation with another about the questions we ask. We dialogue with another about our questions. And then, when we have done the work of our asking, we seek. That is, we move into worshipful meditation, and we do nothing but ponder what we have discovered from our asking.
We just stop and be still. We take time to think. We go into idle mode so we can meditate.
In worship, we are opening ourselves to God in an intentional way. In meditation we are making ourselves accessible to God in an intentional way. We aren’t talking. We’re musing. We’re absorbed into God like being absorbed into that easy chair. We’re reflecting in God.
Being still, musing, meditating, being fully present to God, is not easy.
And thirdly, knock.
This one is pretty straightforward. Sort of. To knock means just what Jesus said. It means knocking on a door.
But, like the word “ask”, the same question could be asked, “Knock where?” Knock at which door? Wherever the door is, or what the door leads to, or what kind of place the door is a part of. That will determine the kind of response you will get when you knock. Or, who will answer the door.
Why do we knock? We knock to arouse a response. To gain entrance. Knocking implies this is not our place. This is someone else’s place. We want to be invited in. We want to be a part of the place where we have knocked. We may, or may not know the people inside this place, but we need to knock first to gain entrance. The door upon which we have knocked must be opened for us from the inside.
But, again, as I mentioned these three words of Jesus might be in a certain order intentionally. Once you ask, then, once you slow down and meditate and worship, then you will know at which door to knock. You won’t know where to knock until you have done the work of asking and seeking.
You finally then can knock because now you know the house you want to live in. You know the place you need to be. You are ready to enter the life of the person you need to be. You know what you need to give up, to sacrifice to become that person. In other words, you are ready to knock and enter in.
OK; the title of this sermon is, “Giving Up Any Notion of Easy.” Why are these three (ask, seek, knock) not easy? Especially in the larger questions of life.
We aren’t naturally inclined to ask. We ask questions that don’t matter. We dialogue with others who have nothing for us, about the insubstantial minutiae matters of life. We don’t initiate dialogue about the substantial. We keep those kinds of dialogues internal, within the closed feedback loops of our own skewed thinking. Only under duress, or in crisis, do we ever attempt to vocalize those questions of substance.
Seeking is hard because this kind of seeking requires us to slow down. To even stop. Meditation and true worship is a slowdown, clear out the mind clutter kind of activity in order to concentrate on God. To listen to God’s Voice, in an intentional way. Seeking is not about doing. Seeking is about being. Be still and know that I am God,” not, “Do something and know that I am God.” How hard is it for you to just be and not do?
Knocking is hard because most of us haven’t spent the time in order to know which door to knock at. Instead, we go door-to-door in an undiscerning way. “Maybe if I just read this book; or maybe if I just watch this TV show or video; or, maybe if I go hear this speaker; or, maybe if I attend this conference...”. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Do you know which door to actually knock on?
This is not going to be an easy journey. But maybe a necessary journey. If you are ready, let’s begin. Ask. Seek. Knock.
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