A while ago, I saw this cute little video online of this kid who was so upset, crying for help. He was in a shallow pool that was only up to the knees of the adults around him.

It was a very safe situation, but this little guy apparently thought he was in mortal danger. He was holding on tight to a rope that was stretched across the surface of the water, and he was floating on his back. Nothing scary going on, but what he was experiencing was total chaos. His feet were not on the ground, he was floating, and just not feeling safe. After a few seconds one of the adults, probably mom, literally grabbed his feet and put them on the ground and stood him up. When he saw that the water was just at his waist, that he was fine, and he immediately stopped crying.

 

I love this little video, because I cannot tell you how many times I’ve felt a lot like this little guy, totally convinced that everything is horrible and that I just don’t know how things are going to come together and that life is just too much.

 

 

And then I get a good night’s rest or someone brings me a cup of coffee or I actually take my vitamins for a few days in a row, and like magic, I’m OK or at least a lot better. The world doesn’t change in these situations. I do. Time after time, I have had the experience of feeling like I’m drowning in one way or another, and somehow I get my feet underneath me, I stand up and discover that I wasn’t drowning after all. I have a guess you might have had a few of these experiences, too.

 

Today’s gospel is about prayer and all of the texts in one way or another are about talking to God. As much as sleep, coffee, and vitamins may help us stay feeling good, nothing beats prayer as the way to put our feet down, get grounded not just in ourselves, but in Christ, and find that we do indeed have stable ground on which to stand.

 

Prayer is all about setting aside our circular, sometimes panicked thoughts, and settling down with the one who actually is actually our foundation in life – our triune God.

 

So, if nothing beats prayer in managing our day-to-day emotions, why don’t we do it more? Perhaps like everything that’s good for us, a steady prayer or meditation practice seems to be one of those difficult things to actually do.

 

I imagine our unnamed disciple in the gospel today was maybe struggling with just this thing. He sees Jesus praying, thinks to himself, “Wow. The Son of God over there sure has a good prayer practice. I think I’ll ask him about it.” So, he asks Jesus to teach us how to pray and Jesus offers what we call the Lord’s Prayer. This is the prayer we pray together every time we gather and it’s become just part of who we are. That part we got down, more or less.

 

But Jesus isn’t done. It’s not just the prayer that matters. It’s the prayer practice and that he explains in the parable. Jesus tells us about bugging a friend for help, ever though this friend has already gone to bed and has his children all settled for the night. In the parable, we’re not bugging this friend because of a fire or imminent death of someone in the family. We need some bread for a guest. No one is dying or sick. There’s no fire. Granted, hospitality and care of guests was an important part of the culture, but there’s a continuum of need and this is not on the extreme end. And yet we’re being told that the friend will meet our need because of our persistence. We know what we need and our friend who loves us responds, but responds because we keep asking.

 

Who would you do this to? Show up in the night and keep knocking on the door? Wouldn’t it be on the door of someone you know who loves you, who actually wants to meet your need even if it’s a little socially awkward or inconvenient? The friend who would say, if you hadn’t asked, “Why didn’t you just come over and get me? I would have helped you.” That friend is the friend who’s door you’d knock on, because you trust this friend, you’d keep knocking until they helped you. That sounds like trust, commitment, and intimacy in that friendship.

 

This is what Jesus is saying in our relationship with God. If a friend would care for you this way, if a parent would care for their child by giving what is asked for, then how much more will God respond to our asking? If we humans can pull this off for a range of needs from this serious to the not-so-serious, then how much more gracious and generous will God be?

 

Jesus also names asking and persistence as important. We need to show up at our friend’s door and knock, and keep knocking until our need is met. With God, we just keep showing up and showing ourselves to God in prayer even if we don’t know how to quite name it and define it what we need. And we may not always get the exact thing we pray for, but Jesus does promise the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God will be given. We may not know the direction that will carry us, but it will be for the good. Good for the sake us and for the sake of all. So, it’s best we keep asking, we keep showing up for the sake of ourselves, but also for the sake of all those around us to whom God’s spirit will flow through us.

 

Doesn’t this sound like such a good idea? Again, why don’t we do it?

 

I wonder if it’s about relationship and about us wanting to assert that we’re really in charge. Sometimes I think humans are a lot like the little kids we think we grow out of being. You know how little ones want to do everything themselves, even if it’s slow and awkward and maybe not working at all? And patient parents just wait until they give up trying their best before they help? I wonder if that’s how we just still are.

 

We just keep saying, “I do it myself!” And we try, and try, and try until we give up. Maybe that’s the moment when we put our feet down on the bottom of the pool, stop our struggling long enough to pray for help, for the Holy Spirit, and it is given.

 

Some of you may remember Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was a very important spiritual leader in the United States in the 60s, particularly known for his work with Martin Luther King Jr. He says this about prayer.

 

“Prayer is our attachment of the utmost. … We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub, but the spoke of the revolving wheel. In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.”

 

I think this quote is really getting at the gospel lesson today, so let’s walk through it. He says, “Prayer is our attachment to the utmost.” Maybe this is like our moment of stopping our struggle and planting our feet on the bottom of the pool. Prayer is giving up on our own will, and saying thy will be done. It’s a way of acknowledging who is at the center of our world and it is God.

 

Then Heschel says, “We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting.” In our analogy of the pool, this when we stand up and see that we are indeed OK. We’re not drowning and suddenly we see the world and ourselves differently. We see that we are enough as we are, as we are created by God, the world is enough as it is, and we can breathe.

 

Finally Heschel says, “The self is not the hub, but the spoke of the revolving wheel. In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.” Now, my apologies for the mixed metaphors here, but hopefully you are still following. To me, he’s saying that prayer is giving up on continually saying, “Me do it.” In prayer, we say, “God, please do this.” And then we are carried by God.

 

As Jesus taught us, we don’t pray once and check it off the list for all time. We pray and pray and pray with persistence, because we have faith that the one who we are asking loves us and delights in caring for us.

 

So, the question is for all of us, where are we drowning? Where are you drowning? What fears or worries do you have that just won’t let you go? As Rabbi Heschel tells us, we are not the hub. We are not the ones who can fix or resolve our fears or do all the things. We are not the center of our universe. God is. But, we can ask for help. We are invited to ask for help. We are wanted to ask for help and to commune with God, with our thanks and praise, as well as our many needs.

 

What do you need? What do you fear? What breaks your heart? What is merely annoying? God will be there. Be persistent, knock until you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for you and you know it.

 

Remember the bottom of the pool is always there. We can always put our feet down and stand up. The gift of the Holy Spirit is always given, which will bless us so much more than we could do on our own.

 

 

AMEN