July 28, 2019 “Keep Pulling” – Luke 11:1-13

Luke 11:1-13
“Keep Pulling”
July 28, 2019 – Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

I’m in the habit of eating three meals a day. I’m in the habit of sleeping seven or eight hours a night. I’m in the habit of buckling my seatbelt when I get in a car. I’m in the habit of washing my hands before I eat. I’m in the habit of hugging my wife when we say good night.

I have all those habits because, as Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon say in their book on the Lord’s Prayer, “Some things in life are too important to be left to chance.”[1] Some things are too important for me to do only when I feel like doing them. Some things are so crucial to living a good life that I must make sure they happen. I make sure by letting them become habit.

As Hauerwas and Willimon point out, sometimes Protestant Christians worry about rote prayer. “I’m not really thinking about what I say. I just say the words by habit.”[2] But praying by habit, even praying the same words again and again, is not bad. It is a recognition that prayer is so important you don’t want to leave it to chance. A prayer that you pray over and over, every day, is not mere ritual. It can be the foundation of your life.

In Matthew chapter 6, when Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, He left some doubt as to whether He meant us to literally repeat its words. He said “This is how you should pray.” So perhaps the words He gave us there were a model from which we were to construct our own prayers. But maybe He did not intend us to actually say the same words He did.

However, Luke 11 erases any uncertainty about Jesus’ intention for the prayer He taught. In verse 2 He plainly directs, “When you pray, say, ‘Father…’” He meant for the words He gave us to be imitated, to be repeated, to be—dare we say it—a habit.

Many of us have been taught, and I include myself, to beware of anything that smacks of ritual. We seek a living, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We don’t want to descend into empty formalism that has no meaning. We remember the King James translation of Matthew 6:7 and think that Jesus warned us against “vain repetitions” in our praying. Even saying the Lord’s Prayer over and over may feel strange to us.

If you turn to Matthew 6:7 in a modern version, though, you will find that what Jesus really warned against was “babbling” or “heaping up many words.” It wasn’t repetition, it was long, rambling, supposedly “original” prayers aimed at eloquence rather than devotion that He eschewed. That’s exactly why He gave us these simple words to pray over and over.

Of course the Lord’s Prayer is not the only prayer you can memorize and pray. I talked about Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous “Serenity Prayer” a couple months ago. Another prayer attributed to St. Francis which begins, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,” is a good one. Eastern Orthodox Christians are taught to constantly pray the “Jesus Prayer,” “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” All of those are excellent prayers, worth learning and praying often.

Nonetheless, the words Jesus gave His disciples in answer to the request, “teach us to pray,” have a special place. When asked how to pray, He did not offer techniques. He did not explain a method. He gave them specific words and told them to pray them. I would like to take Him seriously. I want to pray His prayer more than all others.

That does not mean, of course, that all I need do is mumble out the words “Our Father who art in heaven,” etc. three or four times a day and I will be praying well. With my repetitions of Jesus’ model prayer I do need to pay attention to what I am actually saying, what requests I actually address to God when I say those words. I want to be aware of what it means practically for me to hold God’s name holy, to desire His kingdom, to depend on Him for my daily needs, to seek His forgiveness and to follow His guidance away from temptation. Praying the prayer may be a habit, but it doesn’t need to be rote.

We often overlook another aspect of the Lord’s Prayer. I have been speaking as if praying it is a private, solitary affair, as if our Lord gave instruction for what a prayer from each of us ought to be like. However, we need to hear His words with the right grammar. Verses 2-4 are all plural. The noun and verbs in “When you pray, say…” are not singular. He is not thinking of what each of us will do alone, but how we will pray collectively, as a body. Only a southern dialect of English can get it quite right, “When y’all pray, say…”

And of course, Jesus’ prayer itself is plural. We are not taught to pray for our individual needs alone, but to pray for our daily bread. We don’t ask God to forgive only the sins we commit singly, but to forgive our sins together—and in the same way we learn to forgive together those who sin against us. Alone I may have trouble forgiving someone, but together we can offer the kind of grace that God offers us.

One of the most important moments in worship today will be when we pray the Lord’s Prayer in unison. It is a great prayer to pray by yourself, but it comes alive as what Jesus meant it to be, a prayer we say together. Praying those words as a body means for a few moments we can be absolutely sure we are doing exactly what Jesus wanted us to do.

Even together we still have trouble praying. I know. I read a little article on prayer by Ben Patterson. Though he is a spiritual leader, though he’s written books on prayer, he still finds it hard. He says it’s as if he is missing some religious gene that would make it easy for him to find delight in praying.[3]

I know what Patterson means. A few minutes and I am tired of praying. I cannot keep focused. My mind wanders. I want to read something or get up and check my e-mail. Praying in a group doesn’t necessarily help me. When I was a teenager I joined the men’s prayer circle during our church’s Wednesday evening prayer meetings. All I remember is agony. My leg would fall asleep and begin to ache as, one after another, those gray-haired fellows droned on. I would wiggle. I would sneak glances around the room. I would do everything but really pray. It was just too hard. It still is sometimes.

So when Jesus taught us to pray, He offered more than words to repeat. He gave us motivation to pray. In the rest of this passage, He told a story and offered analogies which bolster our confidence in the effectiveness of prayer. Jesus not only taught us what to say, He gave us an excellent reason for saying it.

As we take up Jesus’ story in verses 5 to 8, the parable about a friend coming at midnight to beg for bread, we run into another translation problem. It’s just one word, but it’s a big problem. The word is translated “persistence” in verse 8 in the NRSV from which I read, the Greek word, anaideia. The problem is that it’s a very old, but pretty lousy translation. It completely changes the point of the parable.

Jesus did tell a parable to encourage us to be persistent, to persevere in prayer, but this is not it. That parable is another odd little story about a widow and an unjust judge. You can find it at the beginning of Luke 18. This parable does not say the friend at midnight is persistent. It says he is shameless. He is rude. He came at a ridiculous time with a ridiculous request.

Because of that mistaken translation, “persistence,” we let ourselves picture all sorts of things not really in the parable. There is no mention of knocking on the door (that’s down in verse 9, not part of the story). Jesus definitely did not say the friend knocked or even asked more than once. What He did say is that it was terribly inconvenient for the one in the house.

Ordinary homes in those days were one room. It’s the middle of the night. A heavy wooden door is shut and locked with a bolt through iron rings. The head of the household sleeps on a mat on the floor with his whole family sleeping around him. To answer this request he will have to get up, step over and around his wife and children, find the cupboard, get bread and finally unbolt and open the door. It is a major pain in the rear. The guy outside may be a friend, but at the moment he is shameless. He’s a jerk. Yet, Jesus points out, anyone of you, anyone of us, would get up and give him what he asks.

I still read the comics in the newspaper. Recently in Sally Forth, her husband Ted asks a friend if they can borrow a motor home. The joke is that it’s a ridiculous request. He is asking someone who is not at all a close friend, and Ted is well-meaning bumbler who is pretty likely to crash or trash the RV. Yet the friend gives in anyway. Off go the Forths in the motor home, knocking down their mailbox as they pull out of the driveway.

That’s how it is, says the parable. Any of us, confronted by a friend with a stupid, rude request, will very likely comply, perhaps ungraciously, granting that request. “Would any of you not do that?” Jesus asked. The assumed answer is “No, we would all do that.” The big point then waits a few more verses and finally appears in verse 13. If even evil, ungracious, ticked off human beings will help out their shameless, inconsiderate buddies, “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

Verses 9 to 13, like the Lord’s Prayer we began with, also appear in Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount. Verses 9 and 10 use a triple series of metaphors for prayer which have become ingrained in our Christian language and imagination. We are told to “Ask,” “Seek,” “Knock,” along with the promise that all those actions will be blessed. We will “receive” and “find” and have the “door opened” for us.

Jesus’ theology of prayer really opens up in verses 11 and 12. The pictures switch from friendship and action metaphors to family ties, to love of parents for children. Jesus again asks, “Is there anyone among you” this time of those who are parents, “who would deny a reasonable request from your child?” If he asks for a fish, will you give him a snake? If she asks for an egg, will you give her a scorpion? My 32-year-old daughter was home with us week before last and one morning asked for a couple of scrambled eggs. And I made them with a big smile on my face, happy to be cooking breakfast for her again.

As I said, the point of all of this teaching which follows the Lord’s prayer is just what it says in verse 13, “If 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!” In Matthew 7:11, Jesus says, “how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

If we, imperfect and sinful as we are, will get up to answer even stupid and rude requests, if we, imperfect and sinful as we are, will be kind and give to those we love, then how much more may we expect a good, loving, gracious Father in heaven to do the same, to give to those who ask Him for the very best He has to give. Our motivation to pray, the theology which stands behind all prayer, is just this then, that God is our Father, a good and loving parent who wants to give good things to His children.

The Lord very wisely gave us all four Gospels. Just like Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer helps us hear it just a little differently, a little more freshly than the familiar words from Matthew, Luke’s version of this theology of prayer helps us get this right. As I said, according to Matthew Jesus promised that our heavenly Father would give us “good things.” And we might hear that as some sort of blank check for prayer. Ask for any silly or even perverse thing your heart desires and God will give it to you. But that can’t be true.

I’m happy to scramble eggs when my daughter asks for them or give her almost any kind of help I have within my power. But if she asked me for an assault rifle or a rock of crack cocaine, I’d tell her no. If a rude neighbor rang our doorbell at midnight asking for some food to feed out of town guests who just arrived, I’d probably give him spaghetti noodles and a jar of sauce. We respond to requests for good things. God likewise responds to us when you and I ask for good things, for things He really wants us to have. So Luke is there to flesh that out and say that what God wants to give us most is the Holy Spirit.

God may say no to some of our prayers. He may not give us the prosperity we hope for. He may not heal our bodies. He may not save a marriage. He may ignore all sorts of requests for things we think we need. However, there is one gift He will never fail to give, the one thing He hopes we will always ask for, the one Good Thing above all good things. God will give us Himself.

That is what the gift of the Holy Spirit means, you know. God gave Himself for us in the life, death and rising of His Son Jesus. He continues to give us Himself by Jesus living in us through His Spirit. God’s best, most complete gift to us is His living presence in us and around us. It is His presence that we ask for by praying. It is our Lord’s presence that we hope to enjoy forever when this life is over. It’s the greatest gift of all. Praying is the way to receive that gift, to come into the presence of our Lord and receive Him into our hearts and lives.

I like to take my float tube up to Gold Lake and drift across it fly-fishing for trout. But the edges are full of fallen trees and branches. One of the inevitable parts of fishing there is getting my line snagged. I try to deal with it in several ways. I shake the rod back and forth hoping to wiggle the hook loose. Or a neat trick is a roll cast, making my fly-line loop across the water and pull the hook out opposite the way it went in.

But when nothing else works, all I can do is pull on the line. Sometimes it comes loose, hallelujah! Sometimes it breaks off. I reel it in and tie on a new fly. Now and then, though, something moves. For a moment I imagine the branch or log came loose and is floating toward me. Then I realize what is really happening. I am drawing my float tube, my whole self toward the snag. I am moving, not the log. Patiently pulling on the line and kicking in that direction, I move close enough that I may be able to reach into the water and take my fly loose by hand.

Prayer is pulling on the line to draw close to God. When we’ve drawn near enough we’ll be able to reach out our hands and be filled with that wonderful gift He really wants to give us. In absolute love, when we are close enough, He will give us Himself.

The Lord’s Prayer is a great line, a strong line. It will hook you deep into the being of God and into the grace of His Son Jesus. When we pray it, we will get closer all the time. Repeating it is real prayer. It connects us to our Lord in a way that won’t break loose.

Hauerwas and Willimon end their book on the Lord’s Prayer with a story about one of them visiting his mother in a nursing home. It was time for a worship service. The congregation was a preacher’s nightmare. They were all old, nearly deaf, many of them not quite sure where they were. The preacher preached with all his heart… no response. The preacher sang with enthusiasm… no response. But then, they write, “the minister said, ‘Let us pray, ‘Our Father…’ Suddenly everyone joined in. There was a congregation.”[4]

I learned the truth of that nursing home story before I ever read that book. When people learn it young and say it often, the Lord’s Prayer is one of the last things forgotten. I visit some sweet old soul who does not remember her children’s names or even her own. But when I start to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” her lips begin to move and the words just flow out, drawing that beloved child of God closer to Him, giving her once again that good gift of God Himself, filling her with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus gave us this prayer. He gave you all this prayer. He gave us the prayer so that as we learn to say, “Our Father,” we could learn to be His children. Then we receive that good and perfect Gift our Father wants His children to have, the gift of His own dear presence. May God make us His children today as we unite together as a congregation to pray, to pray as He taught us and for the reason He taught us. He is good.

Amen.

[1] Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer and Christian Life (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), p. 18.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Christianity Today, August, 2001.

[4] Ibid., p. 110.