Lectionary 17C/ Proper 12

Luke 11:1-13

In today’s gospel, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray and he provides them with a very brief skeleton of a prayer that we recognize as the bones of the Lord’s prayer we pray in worship. But quickly he goes on to tell them a story and we know that the parables or stories that Jesus tells as he teaches use examples from everyday life to explain something about who God is.

Jesus reorients us so that the question is no longer “How do we pray?” which implies that there is a pattern or script that guarantees we can “get it right.” The better question is “Who is this God to whom we pray?”

A traditional reading of the parable casts God as the neighbor inside the house, and the disciples – including you and me – as the one who comes to the neighbor in the middle of the night. In an honor and shame culture like the one that existed in the first century, the unprepared host would have risked embarrassment if he could not provide for his guest. But the neighbor, too, if he had not eventually responded to the appeal for help would have been shamed for his failure. The best outcome for them both was what eventually happens in the parable: the neighbor rises and answers the need.

But, when I hear that interpretation of the text, I am uncomfortable with the idea that God is annoyed by our prayers and I bristle at the picture of God as one who has to be goaded or nagged into responding to us. I also object to the idea that God answers our prayers to prevent shame from falling on God. None of these images of God – annoyed, reticent, or prideful – is how I understand God to be.

Parables, particularly, invite us to wrestle with their meaning, so I invite you to join me in wrestling with this parable and what is says about who God is.

One possibility is that while we are drawn quickly into the story of the neighbors, we miss the way Jesus frames it because the NRSV translation of the Bible that we use in worship and another popular translation, the NIV, both translate verse 5 as “Suppose one of you has a friend….” When the Greek actually translates as, “Who out of you will have a friend….?”

It is a rhetorical question similar to those he asks later in verses 11 and 12. When Jesus asks, “Who among you?” the response would be a resounding, “No one!” In that way, Jesus leads us away from the stingy neighbor, and away from the father who gives a serpent instead of a fish or a scorpion instead of an egg, to the heavenly Father who gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask. (v. 13)

Another way of hearing the parable is offered by Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon. He suggests that our attention should be on the word translated here as “persistence”. Other translations call it “boldness”, “importunity” or even “impudence.” But the Greek translates as “shamelessness”. That transforms the image of the one knocking from someone who is incessantly nagging or begging to one who has surrendered. The one who has gone to the neighbor has surrendered any pretense of preparedness or control and placed himself at the mercy of the neighbor at whose door he stands, just as we stand before the cross, convicted by our sin and dependent upon God’s grace to rescue us. In this telling the parable becomes one of death and resurrection, and God becomes the one who meets us and restores us. We are called again and again to surrender ourselves – to die to our sinful nature, our desires and priorities – and live in new life with Christ.

Yet another way of hearing the parable is to re-imagine who we are and who God is in the story. What if, instead of being the person knocking at the door, you and I are the ones who are asleep in bed and awakened? What if it is God standing at the door, trying to get our attention and asking for us to respond to a needful person who has just appeared, raising us out of our sleep to feed the hungry traveler?

However you hear this parable, it is clear that when Jesus teaches about prayer he doesn’t demand that his disciples learn a particular form or script with specific words; instead, he urges us to pay attention to the relationship we have with the God who hears us. 

Let us pray…
Holy God,
Thank you for Your Son Jesus who reveals to us Your character – loving and generous, not reticent or stingy;
And thank you for forgiving us when we become self-centered, busy or aggravated;
By the good gift of Your Holy Spirit, empower us to pray, confident of your faithfulness, and respond to a world in need when you call us.
Amen.