Thoughts going in, Sun Jul 25th

Luke 11:1 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "LORD, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." 2 He said to them, "When you pray, say: " 'Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation. ' " 5 Then Jesus said to them, "Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.' 7 And suppose the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need. 9 "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to those who knock, the door will be opened. 11 "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (TNIV)

Wow, there is SO MUCH going on in this passage that I could talk about. This is “Luke’s version” of the Lord’s prayer. Just stating it as such has led some people to ponder which is more authentically from the lips of Jesus, Luke’s version or Matthew’s longer version (Matthew’s contains 2 extra petitions, and his is the version we use liturgically)? I prefer to solve the question by saying “both.” Jesus taught the same thing every place he went, but any preacher knows that even if you preach the same sermon twice, it always comes out slightly different the second time. There is also the fact that presumably Matthew/Levi was present when Jesus taught this prayer, whereas Luke relied on ‘sources’ for his material. Regardless, the two versions are *essentially the same.

Warren Wiersbe makes the excellent observation that this is the disciples at their best. At this stage of the story in Luke’s gospel they have witnessed miracles and even performed some themselves (exorcisms, etc.)—yet they have the wherewithal to sense their own need to learn to pray, and so they ask the Master. Others have noted that this is par for the course—that it was normal/common for talmudim/disciples to ask their rabbi to teach them *his special prayer…and/or mode of prayer, as for example (from the text) even John did. They request: “teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.” To pray as John taught is ambiguous both in the Greek and English. It could mean teach us to pray in the same way/manner that John taught, or teach us to pray because you’re our leader, and we know that John taught his followers to pray. I guess I opt for the latter, given that the bible says that some of Jesus’ disciples *had been disciples of John (and some scholars even think Jesus was too for a while).

The succinct rapid-fire petitions are interesting to dissect. “Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come” really go together. The OT opines that God’s name is profaned among the Goyim/Gentiles when those who bear his name, his covenant people are not walking in his ways and when he turns his back on them. Any Jew in Jesus’ day would’ve felt that the name of God was being profaned as the Romans could literally do whatever they wanted to them. For God to hallow his name and for God’s kingdom to come would mean the reversal of all of this and final vindication of the righteous. This does not make Luther’s spin “incorrect” per se, for God’s kingdom really does come and his name really is hallowed when the word of God is taught in truth & purity and his people live according to it—because whenver/wherever this happens, an inbreaking of God’s final kingdom is occurring.

“Give us each day our daily bread” is another interesting petition. Everybody knows, more or less, what the translation of this verse means…but it’s considerably more difficult than that in the Greek. A suggested more literal translation might be “Give us that bread which we shall need for today.” There are layers of nuance. One thinks of the manna—bread from heaven—given daily for the needs OF THE DAY. But just the fact that it IS MANNA means that it’s other-worldly. One could easily spend one’s entire sermon talking just about the nuances of “daily bread,” and I might just do that. There’s the “daily bread” that Jesus’ peasant hearers would’ve thought of….the same bread that the petitioner of the parable in vs 6 has run out of—the daily needs so well expanded upon by Luther (and as Wiersbe notes, “needs, not greeds”). Then there is the daily bread that we understand *liturgically. It is no accident that the Lord’s Prayer occurs where it does in the divine service. The faithful liturgically petition the Father to be given “daily bread”…and then they are fed with the true bread of life, the body & blood of their savior in the blessed eucharist. In this sense, the “daily bread” we need/request is that which is necessary for our soul; our very salvation. Finally, scholars point out that there is a distinct ‘other-ness’ about the bread thanks to the adjective ‘epiousious.’ More than one person has pointed out that there is an ultimate symbolism behind the epiousious bread of the Lord’s Prayer. We sing of it in our Lutheran liturgy when we sing “This is the feast of victory…” To pray for the epiousious bread to be given *today is, in a sense, to pray for a foretaste of God’s kingdom banquet in our lives today. Of course this nicely supports the liturgical reading of the prayer, as well as the opening petitions that God’s name would be hallowed and his kingdom would come.

So many other things could be mentioned: the obvious intention that this is a prayer of *community, “give *US this day…etc;” the fact that the prayer is intended to be spoken, not just serve as a template, “when you pray, *SAY…;” And lately I’ve been doing a lot of meditation on the notion of God as Father. So often, I fear, we almost freight this word TOO HEAVILY toward our modern western culture where the *ideal of fatherhood is often what we see portrayed on tv: Cliff Huxtable, Mike Brady, Ward Cleaver, or even Hank Hill. Each of these men, to the best of their ability, dote on their children individually and do their best to provide for their needs, without giving in to anything outrageous that would be harmful for their children. This is not a *bad concept of fatherhood as applied to God, but it really doesn’t get at the idea of The Father of Jesus’ day/age. The Father of Jesus day/age was not first/foremost one who dotes on his children, or one who panders to their every whim. The Father was first & foremost the patriarch of the WHOLE family; he was a mini potentate. He always had what was “best” in mind for his children, but “best” was reckoned in terms of what was best for the family/community as a *whole. Most of all, what The Father provided was shelter, protection, sustenance, stability, and a future. It was The Father’s job to preserve the family; to better the family’s fortunes; to increase, or at the very least, protect the family’s honor. I realize that the danger in pointing this out is that God then starts to sound like someone we might not “like” very much—especially we who are accustomed to having & going our own way all of the time. And it’s also true that Jesus takes great pains to point out some of the *dissimilarities between God and *typical fathers of his era (most notably in the parable of the prodigal son where the father figure divvies up the inheritance early; is shown *running to meet the son upon his return; and who throws a communal banquet).

For us today…
Praying is often not easy. We can feel guilty for not having the “time” to pray. We can feel inadequate because we feel we do not know the right words to pray. We can become discouraged because of the distractions we experience when we try to pray. We can even become confused because we’re not quite sure how prayers have an influence with God. Maybe we’re making it harder than it should be. After all, when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray…..look at his answer….

Cheers,

TM