Whatever You Ask
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 7, 2008
Exodus 12:1-14; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

Exodus 12:1-14 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the LORD. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.

Romans 13:8-14 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Matthew 18:15-20 "If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."

I. BEGINNING

I am a little disappointed with myself.  

Apparently, I am supposed to be rich.   No, I don't mean that I wasn't supposed to remain a lawyer after all.   I had a hard time billing my clients for too much money anyway--I'd never have gotten rich that way.  

No, apparently, I am supposed to be rich because I'm a Christian.   Because I'm a Christian, God wants me to be rich.   And because I'm a Christian, God will give me anything I want, if I ask.

At least that's what some preachers will have you believe.   God wants us to be rich and have whatever we want.   It's in the Bible, they say.

II. The TEXT

They point to texts like the one we read tonight--where Jesus says, "If two of you agree about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven."   Earlier in the same Gospel, Jesus says, "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you."   And in John's gospel, Jesus says, "I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly."   Taken together, it sure sounds like we're supposed to get whatever we want.   That we're supposed to be rich.

III. GETTING WHATEVER WE ASK

That's what Joel Osteen says anyways.   And if you want proof, just ask him.   His ministry has made him rich.   That's proof, he says, that God wants you to be rich.   God especially like making rich those who give away their money... say, to Rev. Osteen's ministry!

There is an author out there making a fortune with his book The Prayer of Jabez.   He makes reference to the story of Jabez from 1 Chronicles:

1Chr. 4:10 Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying,   "Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from hurt and harm!" And God granted what he asked.

The idea is, if you say this prayer, you will get good things.   You will get what you want.

Forgive me for my cynicism if I sometimes think that the only one whose prayers have been answered is the author who has made a good sum of money selling this book to hopeful Christians.  

Reminds me of the old joke: A guy gets on television and has a commercial where he says: "I have an idea that makes $1 million--send me $1 and I will tell you what it is."

There is something fishy about this whole Jabez business.   Prayer cannot simply be about getting the words right.   I mean, there's a word for saying some words and getting what you ask for.   It's called "magic".   But it's not called "prayer."

But the bigger issue is--is this really what Christianity is about?   It's the best get-rich-quick-keep-yourself-out-of-hell strategy we could find?   Is Christianity really about what we get out of it?   What it can do for us?

IV. THE CHURCH

I think we'd better take a look at that passage from Matthew again.   Now, this is a text about the church.   It's instructions about how to settle disputes among the members of the church.   It requires the use of witnesses to ensure the presence of the community in reconciliation.   It assures the church of Divine Consent concerning the decisions of the church.   It promises Christ's presence in the congregation when Christians are gathered together.   And it promises that God will answer prayers whenever "two of you agree on earth" and ask for it.

It is not a passage about the magisterial power of the church--though the Catholics use it pretty well to that effect.   It is not even a passage about the church getting its way, having its prayers answered.   It is about the church as a community.   Something, that was well understood in the Jewish-Christian congregation that would have first encountered the Gospel of Matthew.

V. THE WHOLE CONGREGATION

The readings tonight come from the Lectionary cycle--the schedule of readings shared by the most of the denominations of Christianity.   At times like the one we're in--late in Pentecost or "ordinary time"--the lections don't always have much to do with one another.   So, we're working our way through Exodus and Matthew and there isn't necessarily any exact parallel between the story of the Israelites escape from Egypt and the message that Jesus is giving the disciples about their life together.

Except there is something that I noticed this time around.   The Israelites are given instructions as to how they are to prepare for the Passover.   How they are to eat their meal, dress for travel, and so on.   And I noticed this one thing--the Passover sacrifice is to be made by "the whole assembled congregation of Israel."   The whole assembly.   I noticed too that the word in Hebrew that means assembly "qahal" is the same word that is translated "ecclesia" in Greek--traditionally translated from Greek as "church".  

The Passover is something that the entire people does.   Not just one.   Not just a few.   Not just some.   Not even just a simple majority.   The whole assembled congregation.   All of them.

It is a reminder that our encounter with God is not an individual isolated one.  It's not really just about me. Or just about you. It is an encounter that we share with one another.   In fact, it is that encounter with God that makes us a people.   As the old liturgy says, "Once we were no people, now we are your people."

VI. Not About You

We who live in the Western World, particularly in the United States of America, have a really hard time imagining ourselves as anything other than individuals.   We like to think of ourselves as "I".   We exercise our individuality (or we think we do) in the way we dress.   We have opinions, and those opinions are all worth listening to.   We blog on the internet so that other people can read our opinions.   Because what I say and think matters. And we think that it is very often about what we as individuals want.

We are so individualist that when we try to imagine something more collective, more communitarian, we imagine it being something completely in lock-step, monolithic.

No, very often we get church wrong for that exact reason.   We assume that in order to be church, we must have all the same opinions.   We must all think the same way, pray the same way, conceive of God the same way.   We must be all alike without variation.   It's a protestant problem, I suppose.   Once we got it in our heads that we could just leave any time we didn't like the way the parent body was doing something, we did.   Over and over again.

And so it seems at times that Jesus' promise that whatever we ask--if two of us can agree--is a promise that will never need to be carried out--because we can't agree.   Our churches, like the rest of our society, have become fractured places of bitter disagreement.

In the Methodist tradition, John Wesley would have instructed us against such silliness.   He wrote, "Orthodoxy, I say, or right opinion, is at best but a very slender part of religion, if any part at all."

It was a reminder that what unites us is not our lock-step ideology or theology.   It is not common ritual.   It is not uniform conception of God.  

It is love.

Love.   Self-sacrificing, self-giving, unconditional, grace-filled love.  

Jesus is not telling us that we will get whatever we want when we pray.   Jesus is not telling us that because of our faith, we stand to make a fortune.   Jesus is telling us that first and foremost we are to be a community, bound in love.

Imagine if we had that understanding of church.   Not simply of a weekly meeting to pray and sing hymns.   Not of a fellowship of people who all thought alike or believed alike.   But a fellowship of people who loved alike.   A community of covenant love.

What would that look like?   What would it look like to truly build up the Church in such a way that people could come together no matter their beliefs, opinions, interpretations, races, ethnicities, orientations, politics, sexes, or any of the other incidentals that divides us.   A church united first and foremost by love for one another, across all the things that divide us.

It strikes me that anything that such a community asked for, it would receive, because that reality would already be present among them.   A community truly shaped by love, would have no wants, it would look out for those who have the least, it would demand justice for the oppressed, it would build fellowship with all.   If we could agree on loving one another, then truly God in heaven would give us what we asked for.

VII. END

You know, on second thought, we are all supposed to be rich.   But not in the way Mr. Osteen would have us be.   Rich in a far more powerful way--rich in love, rich in grace. Rich with the blessings of a community so open and generous that its love and witness would themselves be like a prayer--transforming the very world itself.