A sermon on Luke 11:1-13, preached at Park Avenue Christian Church, July 28, 2019.
Outdoor rock climbing is not something I’ve tried many times. But I remember my first experience vividly. Strapped into a harness, in shoes so tight they felt glued to my feet, a friend next to me called “Belay on!” my cue to start climbing. Once I had reached about ten or twelve feet off the ground, enough that a fall could potentially do serious damage, my body began to shake involuntarily. But as I climbed I knew that if I lost my grip I would not plunge to my death, because a thick rope, running through sturdy metal loops in my firmly strapped harness, carefully guided by a friend on the ground, would stop my fall. That belay system enabled me to take greater risks, as my companions on the ground, with a wider view of the rock in front of me, called up suggestions for where I could put my foot or wedge my hand. When at last, with a tremendous sigh of relief, I pulled myself over the top of the ledge, I was surprised to find that my hands and arms were bleeding: a number of minor cuts and scrapes that the adrenaline rush of the climb had made me oblivious to. Though my instinctive, animal brain had signaled to my body that I was in mortal peril, in fact the belay system ensured that nothing bad would happen to me, that I would make it to the top of the rock–relatively–unscathed. Because the harness held me, I could take greater risks.
In the context of safety, my friends, we can do great things.
Safety, of course, in certain times and contexts, is a privilege. The community for whom Luke originally wrote, likely knew what it meant to exist in conditions that were unsafe. Some of our best guesses at when Luke wrote his history place it somewhere near the end of the first century, after the fall of Jerusalem. We can imagine how they, a people under political oppression, would have felt hearing Luke’s two volume history–first, the gospel; and second, the book of Acts, which recounted the activities of the post-resurrection Jesus movement. We can imagine how their hearts were comforted and their mission fortified, as they were reminded how their beliefs and practices were rooted in the very lives of Jesus and his earliest disciples. And we can imagine the delight of recognition and sense of belonging to something greater they might have felt when they heard the text that is our passage for today, a prayer that may have already been familiar in the worship practices of their community.
Perhaps you had a similar experience of recognition and familiarity when you heard the passage read today, even though the version from Luke sounds a bit more staccato and bare-bones compared to what we are used to reciting in church each Sunday. That version comes from Matthew’s gospel, and Matthew most likely embellished it so it would flow off the tongue a bit more easily when used in the worship liturgy. But the content is basically the same:
Abba,
May your name be made holy.
May your reign come in.
Give us today the bread that we need.
Forgive us our sins
For we also forgive those indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.
As Luke tells it, after teaching his disciples this specific prayer, Jesus adds some commentary. First he tells a parable about a friend who came knocking late at night, requesting three loaves of bread that he could serve to another friend who had arrived from a journey. Though the friend inside the house is initially resistant, he eventually gives in and offers the knocking friend what he asked for. This parable is followed by a number of commands: “Ask, and it will be given to you; Seek, and you will find; Knock, and it will be opened to you.” Finally, Jesus compares God’s generosity to that of a good parent responding to the requests of a hungry child.
To be completely frank, the commentary portion of this reading seems extremely problematic to me. If it were up to me, I would probably just take it out of the Bible. Just take it out. Because it’s just too easy to read from it a teaching on prayer that is altogether unhelpful if not downright harmful. Ask and it shall be given to you? Since when?
Working as a hospital chaplain the last two years has not made me any more favorably disposed toward this text. I have simply sat with too many people who have cried out to God for things that were really, really important–like healing for a sick loved one who was too young to die, or relief from a debilitating depression, or a stable home to go back to once they were discharged from the hospital–only to have those prayers go “unanswered.”
It is too easy, as well, to transpose these experiences onto the parable of the knocking friend and the sleeping friend, and to conclude that, if we don’t get a response to our prayers, we just haven’t prayed hard enough. When the prayer vending machine doesn’t dispense what we ordered, just bang on it until something finally falls out!
I know prayer doesn’t work that way. And I suspect you have also learned, one way or another that prayer doesn’t work that way. And, we might safely assume that Jesus knew prayer didn’t work that way, too.
So maybe these teachings serve a different function. Since, for better or worse, I can’t have my way of simply redacting this part of our lesson, let’s take a deeper look at what Jesus might have meant, and at what the Spirit is saying to the Church today.
“Which one of you,” the parable begins, opening as a rhetorical question. Which of you could imagine showing up to your friend’s house late at night, asking for a moderate ration of food to set before a guest of yours who had arrived from a journey? And could you imagine yourself as the friend in bed with his children sleeping beside him, calling back to the one outside to stop bothering him? What strikes me, upon a closer reading of this parable, is how my perspective of privilege leads me to make assumptions about the motivations of the different characters in this story. It is easy for me to assume that the knocking friend didn’t have any food at home because he was surprised, unprepared. I mean, this is New York City! Does anybody cook at home? He was simply caught off guard by the sudden arrival of an unexpected visitor. But the text does not say this. It simply says that he had nothing. Many English translations tell us that he would eventually win his friend over because of his persistence, but the Greek word used here, anaideian, is more accurately translated as shamelessness. It was shame that might otherwise have led the first friend to keep his own door locked that night, to let his visitor believe that he wasn’t home, away on a journey of his own, in order to conceal his empty cupboards; it was shamelessness that led him instead to his neighbor’s door. For the sake of his guest, rather than be silenced by the shame of systemic economic conditions he did not create, the knocking friend made his needs known.
“Don’t cause me trouble,” the sleeping friend answers from within. “The door is already locked, my children are asleep with me in bed, and I’m unable to get up and give you anything.” Many critical commentaries will point out that, in the cultural context of Jesus’ listeners, it was obvious that the sleeping friend was behaving badly. Hospitality in ancient Palestinian society was a key virtue. But maybe we are too quick to downplay what is being demanded of him. First of all, we don’t know how old his children are, but my friends who have small children can attest that sometimes getting them down to bed in the first place is no small feat. And, as with the first friend, we ask ourselves what assumptions are we making about his economic means? The use of the word “shamelessness,” in this context, is somewhat ambiguous: it could be referring to either the knocking friend, or the one inside the house. If the one inside gives up the three loaves of bread, will his sleeping children have anything to eat when they wake up? Is it for the sake of avoiding shame that they give up, this day, their daily bread?
Given the multiple issues that arise when we read this as a teaching on how to approach God in prayer, a more likely goal of these teachings is to say something about how God approaches us. This is not further instruction on how to pray, but an image of the character and disposition of the one who hears our prayers.
“How much more…” Jesus says, as he concludes his teaching. If our friends and our parents, operating out of inevitably limited means, still know how to provide for us when we need them, how much more is God willing and able to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. Though human beings often operate out of a fixed economy, even our best intentions toward our loved ones–even our children!–contingent on the resources available to us, God has no such limitations. When we pray, we can be confident that the God who hears us is already always leaning toward us in a posture of abounding love and generosity, ready to offer back God’s very own Spirit.
And why does this matter? Why does Jesus want his disciples to know that God’s posture towards us is one of generosity and abundance? I think it has to do with the fact that the way we are listened to transforms us. The influential twentieth-century psychologist Carl Rogers argued that personal transformation and growth occurred most effectively in an environment of “unconditional positive regard,” where a person felt entirely safe and unthreatened by the judgment of another. In such an environment, a person could find the freedom to become more truly self-actualized, more truly at home with the person they were created to be. In a context of safety, we can accomplish great things.
We often imagine prayer as going from our mouths to God’s ears. But here I propose a model of prayer that goes from God’s ears to our mouths. From God’s ears, to our lives and actions and interactions with one another. It is as though, to paraphrase the words of feminist theologian, Nelle Morton, we are “heard into being.” Knowing ourselves in the context of a God who loves us, we can do great things.
It’s when we are grounded in this kind of security and assurance of spiritual abundance that we are able to pray this well-known prayer, and maybe it has become such a routine feature of our worship that Luke’s less familiar-sounding version invites us to investigate it anew. Because if this prayer rolls too easily off our lips, then we probably aren’t listening to the words that are coming out of our mouths. The prayer that Jesus instructs his followers to pray is a communal prayer, asking not for God to fill my needs, but for the needs of all in the community to be filled. Not just for God to forgive my sins, but for an economy of mercy to prevail in all our dealings with one another. In short, it is a prayer that requires something those who pray it.
And I thought the Lord’s Prayer was the easy, unthreatening part of this text.
The description of an economy of mercy in the Lord’s Prayer mirrors what is described in the gathered community of the Book of Acts. In Acts, we read that when the Holy Spirit is given to the people, things start to look…different. The economic and social structures that divide people begin to be dismantled. Linguistic hierarchies are broken down so that people from all nations are empowered to hear the good news in their own language; economic hierarchies are broken down as those who have extra give it away to those in need, and everyone has enough to eat.
I know it sounds like some kind of pie-in-the-sky, utopian, unrealistic ideal. A mountain too lofty to scale. But we are harnessed in, church. God is never going to loosen God’s grip on us.
So I ask you, what might we be invited to loosen our grip on today? What resources are we being invited to share? I’m not suggesting that anyone should dig into a well that is already empty. For those of us who have an overactive tendency to take responsibility for others, maybe the most daring act of generosity we can exercise is generosity towards ourselves, of taking the risk of giving up our perfectionism and asking others for help. Or if money is not something you have in excess, what creative resources might you have to contribute? Is it possible that the most valuable asset you have to share is your own voice? Your own story? However you look at it, between those here in this room and those listening online, there is no shortage of wealth in this church today. May the Spirit of God move and inspire us to let that wealth loose upon the world, so that we may truly, with our head, heart, and actions, pray as Jesus taught us to pray.
Amen.
