Friday, 29 March Luke 11:1-13
Written by Dr Graham Leo. ©2019.
This is a difficult reading. Let’s be honest. We have all struggled with this parable and with the teaching that follows it. Ask, and it will be given to you… Who has not felt abandoned by the apparent failure of this promise at an hour of need. Who has ever received whatever we asked for? What do we do with all this, then?
The parable does not appear on first reading, quite frankly, to be much help. It seems to suggest that if we batter on the door of heaven long enough, the master of the house will give in to our requests, just because of our persistence. Not much of a loving God, that!
To make the problem worse, Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer omits a crucial line that we find in Matthew’s version: May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
So what are we to do with all this, then? Perhaps it might be better if we just sighed, shrugged our shoulders, and skipped onto the next section. That’s what we usually do.
But not today! Today we are going to dig, looking for treasure!
Luke has placed three elements together, as an answer from Jesus to a very deliberate question from the disciples: ‘Lord, teach us to pray’. It is impossible to imagine either that Jesus played tricks on them, or that Luke has recorded his answers wrongly.
First: the Lord’s Prayer (and the missing line). As above, Matthew includes an extra line. For the sake of this short reflection, I am just going to say that I accept the Matthew version.
Two reasons for now: (a) your Bible probably tells you that some manuscripts of Luke contain the missing line; and (b) the earliest first-century church document we have that definitively describes how churches ran their worship services is the Didache. It mandates this prayer for personal and public worship and includes the missing line.
This prayer is remarkable in many ways – no room for a detailed study here. Its requests are limited to
(a) the completion of God’s kingdom and
(b) the alignment of God’s will on earth as it is in heaven, [though more on this below – it may not be a request at all]
(c) the provision of daily necessities;
(d) the forgiveness of sins – on condition of our forgiving others(?);
(e) a general request for strength in times of trial and testing.
Second: In this context of a model prayer, Jesus tells his parable. People have too often assumed that Jesus told this parable to show how prayer to God works. But there is nothing in the parable that looks remotely like the prayer he has just modelled. The man being petitioned is a friend of the supplicant, but he refuses to help him, even though he is a friend. Finally, he gives in, but not because of the friendship. Jesus is quite specific about this (v8); he grants the request because he is sick and tired of being harassed.
Like you, I’ve probably heard dozens of sermons on how we need to be persistent in prayer based on this parable. I am not convinced. Not at all. The whole thing rather sounds like another of Jesus’ humorous stories that relies on hyperbole (exaggeration) for its effect. At no point does Jesus commend this type of pestering as a desirable or necessary form of prayer to receive what is requested.
Third: Jesus moves directly to the application of the parable (as you would expect). But he does not say, ‘So you must hammer on the gates of heaven. You must scream and howl like a pagan to get the attention of the Most Holy God.’
On the contrary, he says, So I say to you…
In other words: In stark contrast to the silly story I just told you, when you come to God, he won't be lying in bed, too comfortable to get up. He is not going to be moved just by your persistent knocking, and toss the contents of his pantry to you through the window to shut you up.
And then Jesus presses home the point with some more extreme examples.
Even you humans know how to be nice to your children; you don't give them spiders for breakfast, and rat poison for treats. So if you can manage to do that, how much more do you think your Father will deal properly with your requests?!?
But now we must come back to the missing line, and you will see why I’ve insisted on it. Charles Williams, (one of the Oxford Inklings) in one of his books (I don't recall which) gives us a fresh way of reading that line, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
How is God’s will done in heaven? Why, completely and perfectly, of course. Williams brilliantly suggests that this is not a prayer request at all: it is a blessing, a benediction. In his model prayer, Jesus tells us to preface our prayer requests with this confident blessing.
It’s not actually a request because of course, God will achieve his kingdom and his will, with or without our prayers. It is, rather, a blessing, a benediction, a warrant of assurance about the outcome before you offer your first request.
All of these requests in what we call the Lord’s Prayer – for daily needs, for forgiveness of sin and for divine help in times of trial – all of these will be performed as surely as God’s will is enacted in the courts of heaven. Please note that these three are things that we cannot do without. We must have food and basic necessities, we must have forgiveness for sin, and we will surely fail if God does not help us against the wiles of the devil.
But for the rest, we have other resources. We have doctors for illness; we have friends and the Christian family for comfort and solace; we have brains and hands for business and work, and so on. Nowhere in scripture is there any guarantee that we can ask God to fix our punctured tyres and he will jump into action.
It is quite possible that most of our prayers are mis-stated. We have a right to ask for comfort in the midst of our trials of sickness, grief, loss and pain, and to do so for others whom we know and love – that is the third category he promises to help with in the model prayer. Comfort does not necessarily mean that the problem will be solved. But nor is it nothing!
For many of our other prayers, it is possible that God puts his thumb and one finger under his chin, bends his head to one side, narrows one eye and says, ‘Hmm, why don't you do that?’
When we ask for hungry children to be fed, or peace to come into the world, or a person in mourning to be comforted, or the community to be kept safe from traffic accidents or drink drivers or criminals, could it be that God expects us to get off our bottoms and do some work ourselves?
Isn't this exactly what the work of kingdom-citizens would look like in the midst of a dark and needy world? Isn't this exactly why Jesus sent out the 72 and the 12 on missions, to announce the kingdom?
Prayer: Our Father who art in heaven… (well, go on, you know the rest.) Amen.
