You Can Do Better? No. You Are Enough

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

July 24, 2016 - Proper 12

Luke 11:1-13

You Can Do Better?  No.  You Are Enough

“You can do better.”  That was on the message we saw as we left the weight room gym of San Marcos Academy, where we stayed for our mission trip last week.  The women slept in the guy, and men slept in dorm rooms with beds (thank you, Kathy), and the only place we could get ice for our work days was in the back of the men’s weight room in the gym.  We left there each day with buckets of ice reading the same message that guys from the school saw each day as they left the weight room, exhausted from their workout, “you can do better.” 

I think the coaches or whoever put that message on the wall, probably intended it to be a motivational saying, but all I could think was that it was about the worst motivational saying I’d ever seen.  When you’re completely worn out from lifting weights and your legs are jelly, and even lifting your gym bag takes some effort at this point, and all you hear it, “you can do better (weakling…you’re kinda pathetic).” 

Unfortunately, that’s a message that we often hear in our world today.  “You can do better.”  “You’re not good enough.”  Whether it’s magazine covers or TV, people we know, or even people we hear talking, not even talking about us, but just railing against someone else for something they did, and we’re thinking, “I hope they never find out I did something like that too.”

“You can to better” is a constant message we hear, and so it’s little wonder that we often approach God in prayer as though he is a huge Voltar Machine in the sky.  The Voltar Machine is from the movie, Big, with Tom Hanks in which a 13 year old boy is tired of being the little guy, weaker and smaller than his friends, tired of constantly thinking, “you could do better if you weren’t so small,” so when he’s at a carnival, he sees the Voltar Machine.  It’s a large box like a video game, but isn’t a video game, it’s a glassed in case with head and torso of a guy with a turban, looking like a genie from a lamp, and when you put your quarter in, you make a wish, some lights flash, and a little card comes out saying, “wish granted.” 

So, in a desperate attempt to be better, the boy in the movie says to Voltar, “I want to be bigger,” and he wakes up the next day as a grown man, as Tom Hanks.  Problem solved.  There are a couple little challenges that come along with suddenly being a grown man, but you know, it’s a movie.  It all gets worked out in the end.

Sadly, for many of us, we tend to approach God like he’s a huge Voltar machine in the sky, granting our wishes if we ask in just the right way.  If only I was good enough.  If only I was better.  If only I could do better.  God help me do better.  God help me be better.  Help me be more like…whomever. 

That’s not the message of prayer that Jesus gives us.  Jesus told his disciples to pray a very simple but very deep prayer. 

To start off with, “Father, hallowed be your name.”  Not, “great Voltar machine in the sky,” but Father...not wish granter.  “Father, (one who lives me and will help guide me into all truth, one who sees me as a beloved son or daughter,) hallowed be your name. 

Your kingdom come.  Not I want to be bigger, or I want to be better, or whatever.  The implication here is, you are enough, and we’re praying, “your kingdom come.”  So this is, one, the end of all time “your kingdom come,” the restoration of all things, but we’re also praying, “your kingdom come” right now.  We’re praying that we’ll participate in God’s kingdom.  If the kingdom is coming right now, then we have something to do with that.  We don’t just pray, “Lord make it happen, and I’m going to be hands off, back here, just watching the show.”  No, “your kingdom come,” and I’m asking to be a part of that as your son or daughter, Father.      

Then we pray, “Give us each day our daily bread.”  This is a prayer of trust, of trust in God and of asking just enough for what I need for today.  There is kingdom work to be done today, and so I’m asking God for enough to help in that kingdom work today, not in a few years, not so that once I’m good enough in seventeen and a half years, then I’ll be able to do God’s work for his kingdom.  Rather, today, I am enough for God to do God’s work for his kingdom.  So please, Lord give me what I need to do the work for your kingdom now. 

When we say doing work for God’s kingdom, what are we talking about?  Bringing about the kind of world that Jesus preached about in those parables he told.  For example, the parable of the workers in the vineyard in which some worked all day, and others only worked for an hour at the end of the day because they couldn’t find any work before then, and they all got paid the same, the daily wage.  They got paid their daily bread.  They got paid what they needed for that day, not what they needed for an hour’s worth of that day.  The lived the whole day.  So in God’s kingdom, you get what you need for the full day, even if you didn’t do a full day’s work.  It’s not fair.  God’s not fair, but that’s the kind of kingdom Jesus tells us to strive for, to bring about, to partner with God in bringing about. 

Then we ask God to forgive our sins (which sounds great), as we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us (dang it!).  We really are supposed to forgive which means we really are supposed to see others and not say, “You can do better.  You messed with me and you can do better.”  Instead we are to say, “You messed with me, and I get it.  You’re not perfect, neither am I.  I forgive you.  It’s ok.  You are enough, and I forgive you.”  If we can’t say that we forgive those indebted to us, then that sign above the door, “You can do better,” really should be our motto because that’s what we’re proclaiming to everyone else.  I don’t think any of us want that.

Finally, we pray, do not bring us to the time of trial, this time that we see in scripture where we are brought before God, and the Adversary, the Accuser, is there laying out all of our transgressions before God.  We pray, “Please, Lord don’t make me face that, because I know I’m not going to do so well when all of that is laid out.”  Do not bring us to the time of trial.  What we’re praying is, “Jesus, I believe in you,” because what did Jesus do but say, “I’ve got this covered.”  We’re right there at the time of trial; it’s all being laid out, and Jesus says, “No, no, no, this one’s mine.”  He says that about all of us.  He says that about everyone.  “No, this one’s mine.  I’ve got their sins covered.”  So save us from the time of trial, Jesus.  We’re praying, “Jesus, climb up on the cross, and take our sins upon you.”  To which Jesus says, “Done.”

So Jesus gives us this very short, very simple, very deep prayer whereby he calls us beloved, whereby he tells us that we are enough as we are to work for his kingdom, whereby he reminds us to forgive others as he has forgiven us, whereby he reminds us that we are his eternally, and then he goes into this whole thing about how you’re supposed to pray all the time.  He gives this analogy of a guy who had a friend with really bad travel plans, who showed up at midnight demanding food.  (Wait six hours, dude, you won’t die.)  As the story goes, we’re supposed to go berate our neighbors until they finally say, “Fine, here’s some bread; shut up; leave me alone.” 

That’s how people do it.  I don’t think we’re going to be praying to God until he finally says, “Ok, I hate you, I can’t stand you, but here, take this.”  That’s not how God sees us.  The idea is that if this person whom you have woken in the middle of night and who can’t stand you will give you what you ask just to shut you up, then how much more will God give us what we need since Jesus has already shown us that God loves us?

Does this mean, then, that God is the big Zoltar machine in the sky, that if we ask enough he’s going to make us bigger or better?  No.  Jesus tells us what God is going to give us…the Holy Spirit.  God is going to give you what you need, and he tells us that what we need is the Holy Spirit.  Now, is that because we’re not good enough without the Holy Spirit to do this kingdom work?  No.  It’s because God trusts us enough to work with us. 

Ask for God’s Holy Spirit.  Say, “God I don’t want to do this alone.”  I guess I could.  We say we can’t do anything good alone.  Yes we can.  We can do plenty of great things alone.  It’s just kinda terrible.  It’s so much better to do it with others, to partner in this Kingdom work with God, and God says not, “You can do better.”  God says, “You are enough as you are, and trust you enough and believe in you enough that I will partner with you and grant you my Holy Spirit to do this Kingdom work together.”

So unlike the sign above the gym (we should have painted over that before we left…that would have been great; it would have been vandalism so I’m glad we didn’t), God does not say, “You can do better.”  The sign above our door as we leave out house, as we leave in the morning is, “I am with you, and I am for you, and I will do this Kingdom work with you, because you are enough.”  Amen.