C Proper 12 17 Ord Paul 2025Luke 11:1-13July 27, 2025
I
have related how my life with faith during my teenage years was fraught with
anxiety. Particularly around prayer, I
didn’t know how to pray, and I thought of God as some cosmic genie. Yes, I could pray to make the junior high
basketball team. But what if God, in
some trick, made me manager of the basketball team. So technically, I made it, right? But that’s not really what I prayed for.
Like the guy who
makes one of this three wishes, ten thousand more wishes, I could ask God for
things in prayer. But what if God took
me to literally, or tricked me, or somehow made my life more miserable when I
got exactly what I wanted? Was God good?
Some things are so
familiar to us within the Christian tradition that we almost have to “unlearn”
them to really hear what they say. “The
Lord’s Prayer” is still one of those parts of the tradition that churches
rarely write out in their bulletin because we expect everyone to know it by
rote. We say it so many times that we
sometimes forget to really consider the words to know what they mean.
In
the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is teaching the disciples the attitude and the
direction of prayer—how to pray and what to pray for.
My favorite
historical mystic, Julian of Norwich, believed that prayer was a “onening
ourselves to God,” a way of transforming our lives so that what matters to God becomes
what matters and is important to us. Our
heart becomes God’s heart. Julian
believed that the goal of prayer was to become a friend of God, a form of deep
intimacy.
In
the Gospel of Luke reading today, Jesus conveys that intimacy by opening the
Lord’s Prayer by addressing the Creator of the Universe as Father. God is not some far-off despot or king, some
divine being outside of the good earth, but one who cares for the economic
maintenance and well-being of the whole household. God is immersed in us, and, in particular our
lives together.
And then the author
of Luke uses a number of allusions to major stories in Hebrew Scripture as a
way of showing Jesus in the center of the Jewish tradition.
“May your name be
revered as holy.” That is an allusion
all the way back to Moses on the mountain, in Exodus chapter 3. Moses asks for the name of God. In the ancient world, naming was a way of
having power over something. And God
draws a hard boundary, to say, “I am what I am, Moses. I’m un-nameable. You can’t domesticate me.” God remains wild and free.
“May
your kingdom come” is the next line, a reference all the way back to I Samuel 8
when the people demanded that the prophet Samuel appoint them a king. God bristled and reminded the Jewish people
that a king and his children would do nothing but take and take and take from the
community till and the nation’s resources.
I Samuel 8 was a warning which reminded the Jewish people that loyalty
and allegiance to any king or sovereign other than God went against God’s
desired will for them. God had
established them as a tribal confederacy.
That is what they were to remain serving each other as neighbors. If not, if God relented and they appointed a
king, they, as a people, would eventually lose the community wealth that came
from loving and sharing with their neighbor.
That
warning foreshadows exactly what happened.
A king is appointed. And soon all
the wealth and resource in the world are funneled directly to the king. To protest, Israel splits off into two
nations, decrying how Solomon has led the people back into slavery.
I almost cannot read
the next line of the Lord’s Prayer, wondering what these words might mean
prayed by a Palestinian child. “Give us
this day our daily bread,” was a return to life in the wilderness in Exodus 16
and how the Jewish people were know God as a generous provider, how they were
to be in receiving God’s gifts. Not as people who should hoard or accumulate
the manna God provided but to collect this divine gift respecting the community
and gathering for what provided for them each day. God promises to provide, to be enough for
their daily needs.
Further in Luke’s
version of the Lord’s Prayer, “sins” and “debts” become one in the same. Making sin and debt one remind the people
that large amounts of debt across a society reflected estrangement from the
community God wished or willed for a people.
Large debt pushed people into slavery and drove the people off the land,
land as a promise. And land established covenant
with God to live vital and fruitful lives.
Within Jewish
traditions were safeguard after safeguard to do away with debt and the return
of land that culminated in what was called the Year of Jubilee when total debt
was wiped clean, people were released, and the land was returned to the
original owners. These practices made
sure their families would not spend year after year, generation after
generation without the ability to live vital and fruitful lives. Jubilee was about knowing that families can
end up in ruts with no grace, no space for life and vitality. All of that is detailed in Leviticus 25 and
Deuteronomy 15.
So I mean to tell
you, be careful in praying the Lord’s Prayer,
you just may be assenting to the whole re-structuring of society so that the
most poor and vulnerable are loved as your neighbors.
And, finally, in
Luke, the prayer ends with “do not bring us to the time of testing.” This once again returns to the story of God
providing food for the people in Exodus 16:4, the manna in just the right
amount, praying that they will not test the goodness of God by taking more than
their share, hoarding the manna on a given day thinking that God would not
provide. Please, O God, do not let us
doubt your goodness and test it. Almost as a double reminder of God’s goodness,
the people were supposed to collect double before the Sabbath so that they
could rest, play, and celebrate on the Sabbath.
You are free! Acknowledge God’s
goodness and stop acting like slaves.[1]
The Lord’s Prayer is
a reminder to the Jewish people of God’s strong stand against those things that
might rob them of their thriving and well-being. The prayer returns to strong Jewish roots in
Hebrew Scripture that also remind anyone who says the prayer that God seeks the
thriving and well-being of the whole community.
Now that may seem
foreign to us as people who have led pretty comfortable lives compared to the
rest of the world. But remember who Jesus
is teaching how to pray. These are First-Century
Jews who are occupied by the Roman Empire, heavily persecuted and oppressed—peasants
(farmers who have lost their land and end up in trade jobs like carpentry),
fisherfolk who don’t even own their own nets or boats, the sick and the diseased
and deformed--probably as a result of the extreme poverty, tax collectors and
prostitutes considered outcasts as collaborators and people without
resource. Why would any of them think
that God is good? They look all around
them and think that life is pretty bleak.
For these people the
prayer is revolutionary because the prayer indicates not only that God is good
and wants their thriving, but also, God is not happy with the way the world
is.
To return to the
start of the Lord’s Prayer, Caesar is on the throne, the one declared king, who
rules the Fatherland with an iron fist and takes and takes and takes and
declares himself Divine. Caesar
Augustus, right in the name, says that he is the one to be worshipped. His name is to be hallowed. Right away, Jesus is reminding these Jewish
sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins that the prayer is seeking
transformation.
Biblical scholar
Ched Myers says that the prayer and the Scripture following define prayer as “the
fierce persistence for justice.”[2] For example, the prayer understands that God’s
great want and wish is that all might have daily bread. If that is not happening, the world must
change.
The Scripture
passages that follow make it clear that among neighbors in the village, they
must make it so. A friend arrives at a
neighbor’s house in the middle of the night, indicating how serious this request
is. In ancient times, it was often
considered too dangerous to travel at night. That the friend would come knocking at night
tells us this is dire need.
But it is also the
most inconvenient for someone who is in bed with his children, just having gotten
those darn children asleep! And now the
neighbor is threatening to wake them if he has to get up. Jesus makes it clear that the neighbor does
not get up to fetch bread for the friend out of their friendship. The neighbor gets up to retrieve bread
because the friend is shamelessly persistent. The friend is shamelessly
persistent.
And there is a wider
ethic at place. The reason the friend is
asking for bread in the first place is because they have had a friend visit
them. What the village requires, in
providing daily bread, is hospitality first.
In hospitality, the friend is at his neighbor’s door . . . knocking and
not going away. In shameless persistence,
the friend seeks a mutuality and reciprocity from their neighbor. That was part of the covenantal behavior,
even in the dead of night, you were to extend to your neighbor.
Jesus makes it
clear. Again, this does not happen
because of friendship. This happens
because of shameless persistence. Jesus
is reminding all those hearing that their covenantal responsibility as Jews is
to make sure through hospitality, mutuality, reciprocity, and shameless persistence
that everyone has their daily bread.
In praying the Lord’s
prayer, we pray not only to a good God but we are seeking to institute a
village, a community that shares in mutuality, reciprocity, and hospitality
with one another. Jesus is using primary
themes from Hebrew Scripture, or the Old Testament, to remind his listeners of
God’s goodness and their call as a people to be good to each other. Pretty dangerous, right?
Sheez, Mike, now you’ve
ruined the Lord’s prayer for me! Now I’ll
never be able to pray it without knowing that God would want that all people have
daily bread.
To reinforce, Jesus helps
his listeners to remember that God’s door is never closed. Jesus encourages the shameless persistence of
people in prayer.
Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion?
God is not some genie in a lamp trying
to trick you when you ask for your needs to be met. You know, you wish for world peace and the
genie carves up a chunk of your yard or takes a rock and gives it to you. Now you have world p…i…e…c…e.
Jesus
wants us to know. God is good. And the Lord’s Prayer is a reminder of
that. But in saying the Lord’s Prayer
today, we will have to ask ourselves if we want to be that good as communicated
to our neighbor, our village, our community, and our good earth.
When
we begin, we ask for an overthrow of every king and plutocrat, those who would
forever take from the community till. We
commit ourselves to liberate the hungry in remembering a God who wants that all
have their daily bread. We commit
ourselves to creating a world where debt does not rob people of their
livelihood. And we are active in seeking
to wipe out that debt so that all might live long on the land.
We
do not put God to the test by hoarding the resources for our solely our own livelihood,
just for our own household. Rather, we
take what is enough, doubly so in preparation for the Sabbath when God would
want our rest, play, and celebration.
The
Lord’s Prayer tells us not only who God is as good but also who God wants us to
be in shameless persistence. So this
Sunday consider the words, consider that by praying them, you are asking for a
re-structuring of the world as presently ordered, that daily bread is God’s
will and intent for all. God’s door is
forever open. Ask. Seek.
Knock. In shameless persistence,
on behalf of you and your friend, neighbor, visitor, on behalf of others. And in doing so, what you are saying is that
God is good. God is good . . . all the
time. God is good all the time. Praise God!
Amen.
[1]
Much of this is taken from Ched Myers, “The Prayer as Manifesto and Covenant
(Lk 11:1-13),” Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, https://bcmonline.org/2025/07/25/the-prayer-as-manifesto-and-covenant-lk-111-13/
and his new book, Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke's Jesus
and Sabbath Economics (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2025).
[2] Ibid.
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