Christ Church Cathedral

Fredericton, NB

A Sermon by Dean Keith Joyce

Our need was symbolised last Sunday by the number of those who asked for prayer for the work of Holy Spirit in their lives. Clearly, in the privileged place of the one doing the praying, I could see and sense the presence of the Spirit at work amongst us. It's immaterial how well we understood that work or how we understood any feeling we may have had that day. We came forward to ask God to touch our lives, to speak to the needs of our hearts. St. Augustine has said, and this is a loose paraphrase, that "our souls are restless until they find their rest in God."

The need of the world has been strongly symbolised and deeply felt in the coming down of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11. The world's need is glaring.

What can't meet that need? What can't meet the very heart of that need is religiosity or spirituality or aesthetics or the beauty of nature or the goodness of creation. That core restlessness needs something far more than these and any other "means" to deal with the deepest issues of life.

How, then, can that need be met? It is met in friendship, in relationship with God the Father, through Jesus Christ, and by God the Holy Spirit.

Fundamentally, it is by prayer that we take hold of God for those needs to be met. While there are other means, even important ones, through which we encounter God, it is in prayer, in talking to God, in relationship with Him, that our core needs are dealt with. In Luke 11 the disciples had asked Jesus to teach them to pray. In response, He gave them the "Our Father" which is the better name for the Lord's Prayer since it is not His prayer to pray. It is our pattern prayer; only we can ask for our sins to be forgiven.

Very importantly, Jesus then told them to persist in prayer. He said, "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you." (Luke 11:9) This is not simply a matter of rote repetition of this or any other prayer. It's a matter of persistence, of being determined in prayer. If one is only mildly interested, one will only lightly ask, or search, or knock. Persistence in prayer is important because it will reveal the depth of our longing for God and for the things of God. And what will be God's answer? With what will He respond to that persistence? The answer is profoundly simple. It is Himself. He Himself is the response to our heart's longing.

Jesus went on to say: "For anyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened." (Luke 11:10) Always persisting in prayer will show our seriousness about wanting God and the ways of God. That's why prayer is so important. Prayer is more than only asking for things from God, though he does invite us to ask for things - what we pray, and how we pray, reveals our heart and its true desires.

In this same chapter of Luke Jesus had been commenting that if human parents know how to give good things to their children, then, he adds, "how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13) This gift of God, whom He gives to those who ask and seek and knock, who Himself is God the Holy Spirit, is vital for each Christian because He enables us to ask, and He enables us to receive, and most importantly He is One who makes real in our lives the presence and love and power of God. In so doing, God becomes really real - I wish there was more profound way of saying this, but when the presence of the living God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, is dynamically in our lives through the work of the Holy Spirit - He is authentically present to us! He is closer to us, is in us, and is more real to us, than anything else or anyone else on the face of the earth.

God no longer is simply a divine idea, or merely the object of our spiritual interests. He isn't a God who just does things for us, or gives us things, or meets our needs. He Himself is ever present to us, to love us and be with us, to direct us and show us the way of life and light and of the truth. It's out of that relationship that, indeed, He does give us the things of God. He does meet our needs according to His purposes, and He blesses us in often unexpected ways.

Thus equipped through the work of the Holy Spirit, we can walk into, and face our own needs and the needs of the world, without denial of what they are, without denying the pain, without hiding from the suffering. But we walk with hope, and not on our own but in companionship and in communion with God Almighty, the Creator of the cosmos and the lover and healer of our souls.

Yet there is something more, something a little unexpected that we receive through the Holy Spirit. Not only does God give us Himself, he gives us the gift of our very own self! By giving us Himself, by His Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ, He gives us ourselves.

Let me try to explain. The more we seek God and His ways earnestly in prayer and the more we seek the Holy Spirit's activity in our lives, the more we will become truly ourselves. Yes, we will change - which often is the root of our being afraid of the goodness of God, and why, therefore, we resist the Holy Spirit (and that's one reason why we don't talk about Him too much in Church life). But what is unexpectedly wonderful is that we will change in the direction of who we really are!! Rather than becoming strange or 'religious' or fanatical we become more normal, more ourselves.

We will become more truly ourselves with all the natural characteristics that God has created us with, and with the gifts of the Holy Spirit that He gives to His people, and with all the growth of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. In other words, we will become more like Jesus Christ yet still be the unique individual we are - and there is no higher or better standard than that!

Persistence in prayer, as a regular aspect of our lives, shows that we want more of God than Him being Someone who only meets our needs. It will show, and we will experience, the longing of our hearts for God Himself, and not just for the "goodies" of God.

When we pray, when we come and ask for a touch of God in our lives, not only do we admit our need, it also reveals our heart's desire. The Psalmist says, "As the deer pants for the water so my soul longs after you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." (Psalm 42:1, 2a) Our deepest desire, and our heart's restlessness, is for God Himself. And God does not disappoint. He gives us the great goodness of Himself, in the beauty of his constant presence, as the water for our thirsty, needful, restless, souls.

So when we pray, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" that's what we are talking about - we are asking for the true presence and life-giving ways of God for our lives and for the world. And God wants the world to know this truth, this reality. It's how he meant this world to be - perfect and beautiful and lovely - to be enjoyed to the glory of God, and not to be damaged, or exploited or destroyed.

Yet when we watched those twin towers being hit again and again and again, in the constant repetition of the news clip, and astounded and horrified we saw them crumble to the ground, we felt the strike against our souls, and against the world God made and loves so much.

An image that came to my mind was of Jesus standing between those two towers. He was weeping for the souls of his creation, weeping in great sadness at what we do to one another, weeping in sorrow at the unnecessary death and wickedness that was all around. In His sorrow it was as if he might be saying,

'But I've all ready taken blow after blow after blow of all that hurts and maims and destroys God's creation. I have experienced for you the destruction of the soul that so many experience; in the wounds of my hands and feet and side, and in the gouges of the thorns on my head, in the ripping of the flesh of my back and finally in my dying for you, in my dying for the world, so that you might have the complete opposite of this acrid dust and death and smoke - that you might have life and have it abundantly. I rose from the dead to overcome all this horror. Through me, you can have the very life of God Himself. And I won't leave you alone. I will send another Comforter, another Counsellor, One like me, to be with you forever, who will remind you of everything I have given you in my words and deeds that came from the very heart of God and which I revealed to the world in my life and death and resurrection. In me you have the very Incarnation of God in human form when I lived and wept and loved and healed and died only to rise again, here, right on this very planet.'

Therefore ask, and persist in asking. That's what the Greek means - keep on asking. Search, don't stop searching, and keep on knocking. The result is that you will receive, you will find, and when you put your hand to the door it will swing open wide for you to enter. And what will you find?

You will find what Jesus said. God our Heavenly Father will "give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" The Holy Spirit in turn will flood your life with the living reality of the light and character of Jesus Christ, and he will pour the love of the Father into your hearts.

What more can we ask for?