Jesus Teaches the Disciples About the One They Pray To
Pentecost + 10 – July 28, 2013
St. John's Lutheran Church – Brookfield, WI
He [Jesus] was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2He said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3Give us each day our daily bread.
4And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”
5And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ 7And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ 8I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
9“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.10For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 11Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? 12Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 13If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples”
This request sets up this whole passage. The disciples want to learn how to pray. There was a Jewish custom of learning set prayers: prayers for the morning, prayers for nighttime, prayers for meals, prayers they learned by heart. John the Baptizer may have taught his followers such a prayer or prayers. And it seems Jesus' disciples have seen this. And they have watched have watched Jesus praying. In Luke's gospel, we see Jesus praying all the time. It's a key to his ministry, to who Jesus is, and the disciples want what he has.
They want, perhaps, for Jesus to give them a set prayer, which of course is how we have come to view & use the Lord's prayer. Maybe they were looking for the magic words, the “Open Sesame” that would open the way into God's presence. They want to know how prayer works; how to make prayer work in their lives.
We too may want to learn how to pray, to know how it works; how to make it work - to feel like our prayers are effective, that they get God's attention. Some of us like to follow the step-by-step instructions. We go racing to YouTube for a tutorial when we want to learn a new thing so we don't have to feel so clueless when it comes to something new. We want to be sure we are doing it right. And when it comes to prayer, we sometimes want the magic formula that will convince God to help us. As if God needs to be convinced. What we now know as the Lord's prayer prayer gives us a model – but I wish Jesus would have stopped there, because verses 5-13 give us some problems. They make me wrestle with Jesus. They maybe give us some wrong ideas about what prayer is all about.
Jesus tells the story of two neighbors: the one in need of bread and the other one, his neighbor, who's already in bed and doesn't want to get up and disrupt the whole household. As a mom of a 2 and a half year old and a 9 month old, believe me, I understand why he doesn't want to get up! Woe be unto the person who disrupts my babies' sleep! Yet here we have the persistent neighbor, the Sheldon Cooper of neighbors – you know what I'm talking about right? Knock, knock, knock – Penny! Knock, knock, knock – Penny! Knock, knock, knock – Penny! And just like Penny always opens the door to Sheldon's persistence, the neighbor in the story will eventually answer the door, Jesus says, if not out of concern for their friendship, but because he knows he's not going to go away otherwise.
“So,” Jesus says, – “Ask, search, knock - and you will receive, find, have the door opened.” “For everyone who asks...,” Jesus says.
But that's not always how it works. We don't always get what we ask for.
And I'm not just talking about the “frivolous” stuff – the prayers to win the lottery or have our team bring home the championship. There are the prayers about the deeper, more important, serious stuff of life – prayers for healing, for safety, for reconciliation. And yet people still die too young, or remain in abusive situations; Evil-doers don't always get caught and stopped. Addictions continue unabated. And when this happens, we either begin to wonder if God is not to be trusted, if God is not reliable; or else we blame ourselves – questioning if our prayers were not answered because we didn't ask loudly enough, or search in the right places, or knock at the door long enough – as if God only answers prayers when nagged long enough.
But we need to look deeper, explore Jesus' words a bit more. Because even more important than the “how” of prayer is our understanding the “who” of prayer. Understanding who it is we are praying to - and that's really at the heart of what Jesus is teaching here. The Lord's Prayer isn't a set of magic words. They aren't the secret formula to getting to God's heart. They're a good model. They give us words when we don't have any. But this prayer goes beyond that to tell us about who we are praying to:
FATHER, the word that tells us about relationship, the word that makes all the other words possible, not just in the Lord's Prayer, but in every prayer. Jesus prayed, and he taught his followers to pray, "Abba" - a word that means something more like Dada or Papa. It's a word that invokes that close, trusting relationship of a little child and their loving parent. Jesus wants us to understand that when we pray, we are not making requests of a distant diplomat or an impersonal judge. No, we are talking to someone who loves us, who cares for us, who watches out for us & wants what's best for us, who gives to us abundantly. Richly. And not just because we nag.
We misunderstand this story. We think Jesus is telling us that prayer is about the persistence of the one asking, as if the result depends on the asker, not the one being asked. But we miss the context Jesus was teaching in. In the culture of his time, hospitality was a matter of honor. It was unthinkable that the first friend wouldn't provide for surprise guest, but even more unthinkable that his neighbor wouldn't get up and help him, because he would lose honor, lose status, lose reputation if he stayed in bed.
Jesus is saying that it's just as unthinkable that God wouldn't help us and not because God is like the neighbor who does things for us out of obligation or pride or fear for God's reputation. No, Jesus is saying, "Imagine! If a neighbor would do it just for pride, how much more would God do it – out of love & concern and care for our needs..." Just like a father who knows how to give good gifts. God isn't trying to trick us when we ask for the things that we need. If we ask for a fish, God's not going to give us a snake, or a scorpion in place of an egg. If human parents, with all of their faults and failings, do the best they can to do right by their children, how much more true is that of God!
This is what Jesus is trying to help the disciples and us understand: that God is more reliable than a next door neighbor helping out of obligation. God is more loving than the most loving human parent we can imagine. That's who we pray to when we lift our voices and hearts to God in prayer.
Part of prayer will always be a mystery. Lots of our deepest, most earnest prayers won't be answered the way we think they should, the way we desperately want them to. And we won't always know why. But this we do know: God wants us to pray (Jesus says, "Ask!"). And God listens when we do.
So we pray with confidence – not because we have the magic words; not because we understand how prayer works, but because we trust the One we pray to, who loves us more than we can ever imagine. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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