Luke 10:25-28 has Jesus agreeing
that the summary of Jewish Law is to love God with all that we are and to love
our neighbors. He told the parable of the Good Samaritan in order to show that
we are to learn to be neighbors to all persons we meet. He visited the home of
Mary and Martha, which became an example of what it means to love God with all
that you are. You are to listen to Jesus. If you do this, you will find
abundant, meaningful life.
Luke 11:1-13 continues to invite us
to reflect on what it means to love God completely. It involves learning to
pray.
There is a message of faithful
assertiveness running all through Luke 11:1-13 that encourages us to be bold in
prayer and confident in the results. This begins in 11:1-4 with a succession of
imperative statements: "teach us to pray," "When you pray,
say," "hallowed be your name," "Your kingdom come,"
"Give us" and "forgive us" (plus two textual variants:
"Your will be done" and "deliver us"). Here, Luke depicts a
disciple not so much asking as telling Jesus to teach about prayer. Jesus then
bids the disciples to say a prayer, the mood of which in the original Greek
reads more like a series of insistent instructions than humble intercessions.
The Lord’s Prayer has a set of
petitions, but the prayer begins with thanksgiving and adoration of the Father.
Christian prayer has its basis in this prior relationship with the Father and
desire to submit to the wisdom and will of the Father. We need to read the
following sayings that involve petition in prayer in that context.
Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer
has six basic points: honor God (11:2b), yearn for God's reign (11:2c), rely on
God's daily providence (11:3), seek God's forgiveness (11:4a), forgive others
(11:4b), trust God's protection (11:4c). This is a community empowerment
prayer, not a personal piety prayer. It is a prayer about being in relationship
with God and humankind where the interface of the divine-to-human and the
human-to-human is specifically centered in forgiveness.
The prayer Jesus teaches begins
with “Father.” It continues with petitions regarding the hallowing of the
divine name, the coming of the kingdom, and the doing will of God.
Jesus taught us to prayer out of the intimacy of our
relationship with God: “Father” or “Daddy.” Of course, God does not have a
gender. Yet, the word “father” communicates provision, caring, and nurturing.
Prayer arises out of a desire to deepen our relationship with God. The prayer
Jesus now recites is another way to create in his followers the proper attitude
they should maintain as disciples of the kingdom. That Jesus urges his disciples to address God
so informally also points to one of the primary motives behind this
prayer. Jesus was trying to instruct his
disciples how to pray, not so much what to pray. Compare the simplicity of the address in this
prayer, "Father," to the "Prayer of Eighteen Petitions"
which a conscientious Jew is to utter three times daily. It begins "Lord
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob! Most High, Creator of heaven and
earth! Our Shield and the Shield of our Fathers!" (1.23-24).
Pannenberg will stress that what
Jesus says about the Father has a close connection to the message of the
nearness of the lordship of the Father and the summons to people to subordinate
all other concerns to the dawning future of God. Then, they will acknowledge
God as God. Thus, the Lord’s Prayer begins with petitions to the Father for the
hallowing of the divine name, the coming of the divine kingdom, and the doing
of the divine will on earth, as it is done in the hiddenness of heaven. The
name of God is hallowed among us as we honor God as God and give place to the
divine will. For that reason, the first three petitions belong closely
together.[1] This
prayer also shows that the proclamation by Jesus of the fatherly goodness of
God has a relation to the message of the nearness of divine rule. The prayer
begins with three petitions that are oriented to the coming of the lordship of
the Father.[2]
The first
order of prayer is align oneself with who God is and what God wants in the
world. What does God want? This is a time to reflect prayerfully upon what God
says to us through the bible, through other religions, through friends and
neighbors, through devotional reading, and through world events. This requires
a discerning mind and heart. What will bring honor to God? What will bring our
lives into conformity with the will and purpose of God?
The Lord’s Prayer continues with a
set of petitions regarding personal needs for daily bread, forgiveness, and
temptation.
The prayer to the Father that Jesus
taught his disciples to pray combines the prayer for daily bread, the sum of
all earthly needs, with the prayer for forgiveness, which is connected with a
readiness to forgive. Pannenberg stresses the notion of the Father by saying
that the heart of the message of Jesus was the announcing of the nearness of
the divine reign. Yet, Jesus called this God whose reign was near and even
dawning with his coming, his Father. God shows fatherly qualities in many ways,
but is especially ready to forgive those who turn to the Father and ask for
forgiveness and forgive others.[3]
Since we
need daily spiritual and physical nourishment, we properly pray for the things
that will sustain our lives. This prayer does not expect abundance. Rather,
this prayer sees the sufficiency of receiving what we need for this day. We
properly make such basic needs a matter of prayer, recognizing that sometimes
Christians die of starvation in a famine and do not receive what they need for
each day. Yet, placing such matters before God helps us to know God as the
source and sustainer of life.
Since sin
so powerfully affects our lives, we are grateful for a God who is gracious,
loving, and compassionate enough to forgive us our sins. This same God calls
upon us to release any tendency toward resentment we might have, and forgive
the sins others commit against us. Relationships are far from easy. We often
hurt those closest to us. What we want is to extend forgiveness to others, even
as we know we will need forgiveness from them. The forgiveness and love that
flows from the Father to us is not our private possession, but must flow
outward toward others.
Times of
testing come often enough in life. We rarely have to seek them out. They come
our direction. On a personal level, tests often come as challenges to the kind
of person we are today and want to be in the future. When we fail to be patient
with a child or spouse, when we fail to get the promotion or job we wanted so
desperately, when we are not faithful to a spouse, when we do not keep a
promise, and when we do not act with integrity or authenticity, we have failed
a test. To pray for the strength that we need today to pass the test is an
appropriate prayer. It recognizes that no matter how wonderful our lives may be
now, life also its dangers that would pull us away from the highest and best
that we can be.
Such petitions in the Lord’s
Prayer, as well as the instructions in verses 5-13, raise the question of the
place of petition in Christian prayer. Barth makes a beautiful point here,
stressing that God does not just want us to listen to God, to hear God, or even
to worship God, thereby receiving strength and peace. God wants us to call upon
God. God listens to the prayer of faith. People can call upon God in definite
prayer for what they need, with the expectation that God will provide, with
wisdom, of course, what they need.[4]
In 11:5-8, faithful assertiveness is
illustrated by a parable about a persistent friend, which echoes the parable of
the bothersome widow in Luke 18:1-8. The persistent friend is an unyielding
cuss who finally receives the bread he seeks not because he is considered a
good friend but because he will not stop annoying his way into getting what he
wants. While it is unlikely that this parable is an invitation from Jesus to
willfully exasperate others to get our own way, he clearly expects us to bring
a strong measure of initiative and tenacity to the table in our approach to
prayer. Therefore, we misunderstand the parable if we view it as emphasizing
prayerful persistence. True, we need to persist in prayer, for prayer feels
unanswered to us. We do need to keep asking. Yet, Jesus' point is precisely the
opposite. In contrast to the friend who will give his persistent neighbor three
loaves of bread at midnight only because the neighbor makes a pest of himself,
God will simply give to those who ask, and not only will give, but give what is
asked for.
Faithful assertiveness is further reinforced
in 11:9-13, starting with another series of imperatives, all of which have
direct beneficial consequences -- ask and receive, search and find, knock and
it will be opened (11:9-10). Jesus emphasizes the reliability of these benefits
by making the case that since one does not give a snake when one's child asks
for a fish or give a scorpion when one's child asks for an egg (11:11-12). Since
even evil human parents know how to give good gifts to their children (11:13a),
then we can rely even more on God, our heavenly parent, to give the Holy Spirit
to those who ask (11:13b). We find sayings regarding good gifts. The saying
uses the image of the father and son relationship. The argument moves from the
lesser to the greater. The saying assumes that God is good. Requests addressed
to the Father will meet with positive responses. For Luke, the supreme gift God
gives is the Holy Spirit. The stress is upon the good gifts God gives.
This does not mean that particular
personal petitions do not matter, or go unanswered. However, the results of
prayer need to be considered from a perspective beyond the particular and
personal alone. Yes, we experience how in the Holy Spirit the results of prayer
can be obvious and palpable. Yet there are times when the results are not the
immediately obvious or palpable end of suffering, grief or tragedy, but rather
are the strength ever so gradually received from beyond all logical reckoning
that helps us endure and even find life meaningful in ways we could never have
anticipated. Is the answer to prayer that a loved one survives as we expect, or
that we suddenly discover the unexpected spiritual wherewithal to face the
future without that loved one?
The Lord's Prayer points us to the big picture
and the long run of being more prayerfully focused on honoring God, yearning
for God's reign, relying on God's daily providence, seeking God's forgiveness,
forgiving others, and trusting God's protection. The Holy Spirit's presence in
our lives sustains this focus. Thus, we mature in faithful assertiveness --
bold in prayer, confident in results, and remaining so even when the results
come slowly or not according to our expectations -- because our greatest
confidence is the result of having already received the gift of the Holy
Spirit, who serves us over time with the wisdom and courage to navigate life's
vicissitudes.
The truth is that the language of
prayer can be so difficult to learn. It so quickly becomes a matter of magic,
as we seek to use God to get what we want. We use words to express to God our
desires. Some of us have anxiety about whether we use the right words. We might
even wonder if we pray long enough or hard enough. We may try so hard to get it
right. We so quickly make prayer about us. Jesus taught us to pray in a
different way. He also taught us to pray in a relatively simple way.
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