Speaking of praying and what we pray for, those of you who read my sermon last week are, I’m sure, relieved to see that this week there is not a prophet in sight!  No condemnation of action or inaction.  Just Jesus.  Talking about prayer, and persistence in prayer, and all the pretty, comforting New Testament stuff we like to hear.  Whew.  Back to the New Testament, where it’s safe and we’re secure.

 

But what, you may be asking having read Luke 11:1-13, has happened to the Lord’s Prayer?  You didn’t read it right.  There are whole phrases missing; it just sounds weird.  There’s no ‘who art in Heaven.’  No ‘thy will be done.’  No delivering us from evil.  No kingdom, no power, no glory.  Not even any ‘thee’ and ‘thy’.  What kind of Lord’s Prayer is this?  It’s like you broke it open and half the pieces fell out.  They just don’t make prayers like they used to.  Someone really should paste that thing back together.

 

Formula prayer was well-established in the first century.[i]  There were set prayers, for morning and evening, and all faithful Jews knew (and said) them.  Evidently John the Baptist had already been teaching his followers some of these traditional prayers. ^{cf. v1}  

 

I don’t know if the disciples were tired of what John had taught, or if they thought Jesus would have shorter prayers for them.  Maybe they were hoping for something easier to remember.  Maybe they thought Jesus could build some good PR and fend off critics by offering a new and inspired prayer for the community. 

 

Whatever the case, the disciples in Luke ask Jesus how to pray, and He breaks open what we now know as the Lord’s Prayer.  When he does, sitting there inside is not only a new way to speak to God, but a new understanding of God, and it  falls right out.

 

Luke fancies himself quite the historian, and always wants to be sure you know what was going on ‘in the moment.’  He doesn’t want your understanding of Jesus, your recollection of his teachings, to be misguided by any sort of frills, bells and whistles.  To Luke’s point of view, anything that distracts from the depth and purpose of the gospel at hand has to go.  Which you’d think would make Luke’s gospel the shortest, taking out all that extra flair.  But, you know how you cleaned out that closet to bring things in for the rummage sale, but next week will magically find a whole new closet-full of things right in its place?  Same principle with gospel-writing; Luke’s housecleaning just means he has room to tell you more. 

 

We have to remember that the gospel writers were picking up and telling the tale in retrospect.  It’s not like Luke sat down at the end of the day from following Jesus throughout Galilee and said, “Dear Diary, you’ll never believe what Jesus said to me today!”  It was decades later, well past Jesus’ death, when the gospel writers were gathering their memories, and the collective memory of the community, to tell and retell the stories of Christ’s life and ministry.  And just like Grandpa’s story about the fish he caught that summer, and Aunt Edith’s recollection of walking to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways, for miles … each time the gospel story, the good news of Jesus Christ, was told, each writer offered his own edge and perspective. 

 

First-century Christians were quickly losing faith and hope in a Savior who had promised to return for them, but hadn’t yet come.  Wanting to shore up their spirits and refurbish their hope, gospel writers wrote about Jesus and his teachings and the people around him.  Each time a gospel account was captured, the pages of the story fell open a little differently, and something different fell out.

 

Luke spends more time than the other gospels attending to the prayer life of Jesus.[ii]  If you look throughout the gospel according to Luke, three qualities mark Jesus’ prayer:

1)  Luke recalls for us that Jesus often set aside a time and a place for prayer. 

2)  He also says that when Jesus would pray, it was evident that the Spirit was upon him. 

3)  Jesus also prays at significant turning points.  Calling the disciples into sharing his ministry, he prays.  Before crowds or with just a few disciples, he prays.  In the garden, knowing he was near his end, Jesus prays.  As he is crucified and for those who crucify him, he prays.  Blessing the meal at the Passover feast, and the meal shared on the road to Emmaus, he prays.[iii]

Maybe there is something in there for us to learn.

 

When those home remodeling shows go in and get to work, they often find a wall, a staircase, a piece of furniture that, when stripped down to its original state is nearly unrecognizable.  The homeowner will say, “Why, I had no idea there were hardwood floors under three layers of linoleum!”  This prayer is much the same.  Once it’s whittled down, after you pare out all the familiar phrases from the more commonly used version in Matthew see ch. 6), scholars think that Luke’s version is probably the original.  It is at least the closest to the original state.

 

Matthew has a little more polish to his version, and more petitions, more asking.  In Luke, the focus is on the simplicity of coming before God in prayer, and on making direct (and brief!) requests of God.  According to Luke, we have but three needs:  bread, forgiveness, and deliverance.[iv] 

 

If you want to look at both versions, there is Luke 11 and Matthew 6.  You’ll notice that Luke changes Matthew’s familiar “forgive us our debts” and replaces that word “debts” with “sins”.  Luke takes the metaphor – a ‘debt’ being the symbol for whatever needed to be erased, forgiven, paid in our behalf – and erases the symbol itself. 

 

For Luke, ‘sin’ says more about how we relate to God – or how we fail to relate to God, perhaps.  (In case you’re wondering, those of you from high church traditions got the ‘trespass’ version from the Middle European languages much, much later on.)  Most plainly and simply, in this prayer, it is not our symbolic debts but our actual and real sins for which we seek God’s forgiveness.

 

But here’s the thing about forgiveness.  It’s not just something we seek … it’s something we are asked for in return.  Traditional Jewish teachings said that the ability to forgive and the possibility of receiving forgiveness are inseparably linked.  In the book of Sirach – in the Apocrypha, those Jewish wisdom writings now often included in modern study Bibles – the instruction is clear:  You forgive your neighbor who has wronged you.  Then when you pray, your sin will be forgiven. 

 

The order is very clear, as is the intent.  Next time we quickly brush over and give thanks to God for grace and mercy, we should stop to recall this wisdom out of the Jewish heritage.  The “ability to forgive and to be forgiven is part of the same gift.”  It works both ways, and requires both to work:  “Mercy flows through the same channel.”[v]

One other big difference to note is that in Matthew, the Lord’s Prayer is followed by instructions on forgiving others.  That makes a lot of sense, especially given these ancient teachings.  In Luke, however, the instruction by Jesus in the content of this prayer is followed by the assurances that when we pray, God hears us.[vi]

We pray to be delivered from “the time of trial”.  ‘Lead me not into temptation,’ the saying goes, ‘I can find it by myself.’  Our prayer – the prayer Jesus taught the disciples to pray – is that we might be released from the bonds that keep us down, that hold us back.  Our prayer is that we might be freed from the grip of self-righteousness and false esteem.  Our prayer is that we would be delivered from that which gets in our way, which blocks our way in the path to God’s throne.  Anything that prevents our prayers, our faithfulness, our lives of service … these are things that have held us far too long.  In our prayer, it is these very things from which we shall be freed.

 

“As surely and as desperately as we need bread, we need forgiveness,”[vii] and this prayer reminds us that the key to both of these things rests in the hands of God.  Jesus assures us, as Luke tells it, that God hears our prayer, knows our need, and is already at work in our behalf to give us what we need.

 

You’ll notice I said what we need, not what we want.  As anyone with a favorite consumption can tell you – whether it’s shoes, or chocolate, or race cars, or sunshine – in our lives it isn’t about need, it is usually about want.  And as Jesus will tell you – that is exactly the wrong order.  When we pray, we are to come to God with the humble attitude of one who is truly needy, one who throws themselves at the feet of the Merciful One. 

 

It’s not a matter of sticking a coin in the slot, making your selection on the keypad, and getting the vending machine answer-to-prayer that you want.  It’s about placing yourself in the hands of God, and being persistent in seeking both God’s favor and God’s face.

 

A friend comes knocking in the middle of the night.  ‘Help me,’ he pleads.  ‘A friend has come to town and needs to stay with me, but I have no bread.  Can we have some of yours?’  It’s late and you are asleep.  In your first century life, your home is basically one large room, where the family lives its life during the day, and then rolls out its sleeping mats at night. 

 

To open the door, find the bread, and offer assistance will not only disturb your rest, but probably wake everyone inside.  According to first-century Jewish tradition, that’s just too bad.  Hospitality isn’t about your convenience; it is about answering the needs of another, putting someone else’s concern above your own.

 

While Jesus teaches words for prayer, he also speaks words of challenge.  Suppose it’s you?  In the honor code of the first century, to refuse someone hospitality – to turn away a person in need of shelter or a meal – would bring shame to you and to your household.  At the same time, if you refuse to help someone who comes to you, particularly if they need your help in order to help someone else and you refuse them - if you refuse them, the shame comes anyway. But this time it is on you. 

 

The implication, I hope, is clear.  If one of you would get up from a sound sleep in a comfortable home and willingly help one who genuinely seeks your response, how much more then will God work to answer you when you sincerely come in prayer?  And substitutes just aren’t good enough, as the end of the passage suggests. 

 

If a child asks for food, will you give them something that looks like food but won’t actually feed them?  There are certainly good and faithful neighbors in our lives, who will answer the door when we knock, who will give us what we need – perhaps you, in fact, are the good and faithful neighbor.  Doesn’t it seem that “God is even more trustworthy” than that?[viii]

In case the example in question isn’t clear enough, Jesus goes that extra teaching mile and really lays it out. Ask and it will be given you.  Seek and you will find.  Knock and it will be opened before you (see vs. 9).  Ask, seek, and knock.  Straightforward and clear, not symbolic and implied like one neighbor waking another in the night.  This tells us what we can do, and what we get for the effort.  Ask, seek, knock.

 

But.  This isn’t a matter of blank slate prayer.  You don’t just get a blank page and start writing up your order like it’s the blue plate special.  I’ll have a little bit more patience with my family, plus that brand new job at the better salary, and while you’re at it, could you do something about my thighs?  Thank you very much.  Here’s your tip.

 

Perhaps this is another of those scriptures where we’ve put so many coats of paint and finish over it, we just glide our eyes across it and move on, assuming it’s all set and we don’t need to touch on it, or touch it up, anymore.  Maybe we’ve forgotten what it actually looks like underneath.

 

How do we pray? 

 

Do we have a ‘certain place,’ like Jesus tries to find?  Do we have a room in our house – or room in our schedule – or in our head – for something that puts God before us?  More importantly, do we seek that focus which puts us most intimately before God?

 

Do we sense the Spirit moving on us when we pray?  Do we even think to invite the Spirit in?  And if we ask God’s spirit to be present, do we get our own noise out of the way?  Do we open ourselves to what the Spirit might have in store, or are we too busy telling God how we would like things to go?

 

Do we know what to do at those significant turning points in our lives?  Do we try to make every day significant, every relationship count, every opportunity one worth taking?  Do we knock at the door of the neighbor across the street, around the corner, across the globe and offer to help when they are in need?  Can we move out of the way of the light of Christ and let it finally shine through us instead?

 

In Luke’s gospel, the disciples come to Jesus and ask how to pray.  He teaches them to pray, but as any excellent teacher knows, just answering the question isn’t enough.  You have to empower the student to do something with what they’ve learned.  The disciples ask for a lesson on prayer, but they receive a lesson on the very heart and nature of God.

 

And as disciples these many centuries later, we learn something too.  We are moved most toward prayer amid “the awareness of our need, and our absolute dependence on God.”  These two things are at the heart of true and honest prayer – knowing we should be there, and knowing we will be received.

 

When the Israelites returned from exile, they were disappointed in what they found.  A temple in ruin, a community shattered, a relationship with God strained by a change of location, a re-creation of ritual, and a quickly vanishing comfort.[ix]  Knowing that they have been crushed before but seem to survive every time, the psalmist prays:  “Restore us again, O God of our salvation … Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.” (Ps 85:4 & 7)

 

We come before God because we know we will be received.  And more than received, we know we will be heard.  And even more than heard, we know – for it has happened before, and when we peel the layers of time and trial away, we know it will happen again – we know we will be redeemed.  The focus in the psalm is not on the merit of humanity but on the graciousness of God. 

 

Not a membership class goes by that someone doesn’t mention the prayer ministry of this church.  Men’s and women’s prayer breakfasts, staff and elders in regular rotation, cards and letters and calls of concern.  The focus of this ministry, like the focus of the psalm, is not on the gifts, or talents, or merits of the people praying.  The focus is on the grace of God, and the honor of being asked to extend that grace to someone else.

 

“When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name.” (v2)

 

“At least because of his persistence, he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” (v8)

 

“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” (v10)

 

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