Texts: Ecclesiastes 10: 12-16; Matthew 7: 7-12

Over the past few weeks the Middle East has been shaken by a number of popular revolutions calling for an end to autocratic governments, dictatorships, corruption, and all the evils that accompany such governments. Many of us have been thrilled by the power of peaceful protest in Egypt and Tunisia, appalled at the continuing brutality of Ghadafi and his regime, and apprehensive about the outcomes of these movements. As protests escalate across the Arab world, much of our concern here in America has been focused on questions of oil, Islamic radicalism, and the place of women in Arab society.

Resistance to sweeping changes is not limited to the Javerts of this world nor is the excitement of revolution limited to Enjolras and the stirring lyrics he sings. Although we claim we want change, what we really want is stability, predictability, security. None of these are brought about by even non-revolutionary change. The American political scene over the past several years clearly indicates that. Most of the so-called “change” called for is little more than a return to times past fed by our nostalgia for a time that never existed.

Matthew’s Jesus tells us, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you.” This often misunderstood phrase is repeated by the writer of Luke’s Gospel as well. To be sure, it does not mean that we look up into the sky and present a laundry list of what we want. That is not prayer. If we look at the context of these words attributed to Jesus, we will see that in prior passages, we are told to listen, to ask for what is sufficient to the day, not more, and to engage in a meaningful relationship with God.

The second part of the phrase tells us to seek. This is an active word; in other words, we are not just to ask and then sit back. We must seek, search, work for what we want. Or as Gandhi put it, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” The Preacher provides us with a warning about our speech making it clear that we know fools by the words they speak. How true that is in modern America. As an aside, although identified in the narration portion of the text as “the son of David, king in Jerusalem,” most scholars agree that the author was not Solomon but a compilation of various post-exilic writers; this is the case because the language of the text in Hebrew is clearly post-exilic and may have even been influenced by Greek philosophical thinking such as Stoicism. The tenor of Ecclesiastes is similar to the tenor of ancient thinking of the time, not just in Greek Stoicism; it seems that as in science there is a confluence of thought based on models of thought. Be that as it may, what really is important here is that these two passages taken together make it clear that we really do need to be careful what we pray for.

But as many have said, prayer is not just a laundry list. It is an active dialogue with what is holy within us and the Holy One who encompasses us. We are told to seek and to knock, not just to ask. So we are in the position of seeking, searching for what we should ask for, what we should request. We are also in the position of knocking on a door that we cannot necessarily open by ourselves. “And it will be opened” are truly confusing words because those words do not mean that we are going to get what we ask for. I believe those words mean that the door will be opened through our persistence in our seeking and searching. That opening could be a new awareness of faith, it could be a discovery of a meaning we did not understand before, it could be something we did not even or could not even imagine.

Well, after unloading the laundry list concept of prayer, are we left with anything at all? Can we look at our relationship with God, with all that is holy in a new way? The art of prayer -- and it is an art -- is learning how to listen to the depths of our souls. The rush of the world around us threatens our internality, the sense of who we actually are. We rush about, often not considering the consequences of our words or actions. As the Preacher notes, fools multiply words. Our current political scene is certainly indicative of that problem. We need to stop, think, consider, and then engage in a dialogue with the One who encompasses us all. We need to stop talking and to really, really listen. Then we will have a deeper appreciation of what we actually pray for.

Let us enter into that dialogue: Wondrous Creator who fashioned us to reflect your holiness, bring us into a deeper consciousness of your holiness so we can have a deeper sense of our own. Amen.