The Good Gift

If you have been around Christian churches and Christian people for even a little while, you have probably heard a sermon on the Lord’s Prayer. Or read about it in a devotional. Or learned about it in a Bible study. Which is all good. This prayer is worth spending time thinking about and contemplating. And praying.

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” so he said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, may your name be revered as holy. May your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion? 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!” Luke 11:1-13 NRSVue

There are differences between Luke’s and Matthew’s version of this prayer. Matthew’s version is more familiar to most of us. And there are a variety of translations. Debts. Trespasses. Sins. Thy. Your. Try not to let that unsettle you. Rather than worrying about the exact words, let’s think about intention. Whether we say “hallowed” or “revered as holy” the idea and intention are the same.

Of the many, many things we could talk about in this prayer, I want to focus on just two.

“May your kingdom come”. Most of us add Matthew’s¹ “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This prayer for God’s kingdom to come is not a request, as some of us have been told, for the end of the world and its replacement by heaven. In the first century (and earlier) people believed that God lived and reigned in heaven and people lived on earth. Heaven and earth were sort of parallel realities. The expectation was that someday, God would also reign on earth. Heaven and Earth would be joined together as one reality, one kingdom, one world where all things are set right and all creation flourishes . To pray “your kingdom come” is to pray for God’s justice and peace come to earth.²

We live in a world that assumes and values individuality. Which is fine, we are all individuals. At the same time, none of us survives without other people. None of us became our individual selves without the care and support and influence of other people and our society. In this prayer, Jesus has us pray for all of us. We pray for “our” daily bread, not my daily bread. Our own needs are included, but we pray for food for all of us.

Jesus asks us to pray for forgiveness of “our” sins and for us to forgive “everyone indebted to us”. Again, our sin and our need to forgive are included, but our communal sin and need for forgiveness is also included. Our forgiveness of other people is not conditional on them forgiving us. Notice Luke’s language, “..forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” This way of forgiving takes down any cycle of reciprocity. Our forgiving is not dependent upon another’s actions- or lack of actions. There is no “out”, no excuse. We cannot avoid forgiveness because others aren’t sorry or haven’t changed their ways.³

And we ask for “us” to avoid the time of trial. We pray for ourselves, yes, and we pray for all of us to avoid trials. We are not to wish trials and suffering on anyone.

We pray that everyone has their daily bread and as we do so, we remember those that do not have what they need. We pray that our sins are forgiven, and we recognize that sin is both personal and communal. We are all enmeshed in a web of indebtedness. We forgive. We need to be forgiven. We are part of systems (more than one) that trap people (including ourselves) in sin and indebtedness. Forgiveness is between ourselves and God and also between ourselves and other people. We pray that no one suffers trials, and we remember those who currently are suffering.

This all sounds great in a blog post, or in a sermon, or a devotional. It is hard, very hard in real life. As Christians we don’t get to claim the moral high ground by saying, “I can never forgive them for….” We don’t get to justify ourselves or feel superior to someone who is now experiencing the consequences of their actions. “F* around and find out” is not a Christian position. Individually, politically, as a community, we cannot hold on to these thoughts and feelings. They may pop into our head, because we are human. But as Christians, we cannot cling to them.

While the Lord’s prayer is very personal, it also reminds us that what God is up to in the world is bigger than myself and my particular concerns. I matter to God. You matter to God. Our concerns matter to God. And also, God’s work in the world is always more than we can imagine. The Lord’s prayer reminds us of the scope of the world’s needs. It calls on us to figure out how we participate in God’s response.

***********

After giving the disciples the example of the Lord’s prayer, Jesus tells two little stories about prayer, assuring the disciples and us that God answers our prayers. We misunderstand these stories if we turn them into metaphors.⁴ If we imagine God is the sleeping neighbor, we have made God reluctant to hear and respond to our prayers. If we think God gives better gifts than we do, we may turn God into a divine Santa or indulgent parent. These stories are not about how to pray.⁵ In the first century there was a convention of making a point by using comparisons from the lesser to the greater. Using comparisons from the lesser to the greater, these stories tell us about prayer. Jesus tells stories of a regular person, a neighbor or a parent answering a request, and by comparison, the great and good God will answer our requests.

In the first story, the person who knocks on the sleeping friend’s door is not waking them up because they want a midnight snack. Someone has come to them in the middle of the night and is hungry. Their request of the sleeping friend is on behalf of a hungry person. We might imagine that this midnight visitor was unexpected, otherwise the person would have had food for the visitor. The sleeping person grumbles, but they help their friend who feeds the hungry person. If we turn this story into a metaphor we end up with a grumbling, cranky God who makes excuses for not answering prayer and only responds because we are persistent and won’t go away. I think a better explanation is that if your neighbor will get up in the middle of the night for you, to help you feed a hungry person, how much more will God respond to your request?

The same logic applies to the second story about parents giving their children food. As a parent you don’t give your children bad food. You don’t play tricks on them. You understand what your children need and you give it to them. In fact you are able to give your children, not just necessary things, but good gifts. How much more does God know what we need? How much more will God give us good gifts?

Then here’s the surprise. The good gift we need isn’t bread or fish or an egg, as important as food is for life. The good gift isn’t a new car, or wealth. The good gift we are to ask for and that God will give is the Holy Spirit. Life in and with the Holy Spirit is an ongoing process. And so we ask, and search, and knock, and God answers, gives and opens life in the Spirit for us.

Jesus does not reduce prayer to a formula or an exchange defined by special words and rules. Prayer as Jesus teaches us is relational. It involves God and the Holy Spirit, and us and everyone else. Food for all, safety for all, forgiveness for all. Mutual care and support between myself and God and everyone and the Spirit. The Lord’s prayer is short. It is easy to memorize and say. And it takes a lifetime of praying it to begin to understand and to pray well.

1. Matthew 6:9-13 ↩︎
2. I was first introduced to this idea by the writing of N. T. Wright. He talks and writes about this in many of his books and videos. ↩︎
3. Green, Joel B, The Gospel of Luke, Eerdmans,1997, page 443. Forgiveness and repentance is more complex than this.We have explored forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation, in more depth, but not exhaustively, in earlier blog posts. ↩︎
4. A metaphor is “A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metaphor ↩︎
5. For example, the story of the sleeping neighbor often is presented as teaching us to persevere in prayer. But that may not be the best understanding. The Greek word that is often translated as “persevere” normally means ” shamelessness”. Who is the shameless one in the story? And is shamelessness here, a negative or positive attribute? See the discussions in Green, p448 ( footnote 46) and Culpepper, R. Alan “The Gospel of Luke” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, vol IX, Abingdon Press; 1995 page 236. It’s difficult to translate well into English. ↩︎