Luke 11:1-13

Relating to God – Confidence

Luke 11:1-4  -  Jesus Teaches the Lord’s Prayer

Mary’s listening to Jesus opened the way for Luke to introduce the issue of prayer. In its essence prayer could be called, in the words of St Teresa of Avila, “lovingly relating to and frequently conversing alone with the one who loves us”.

Jesus himself had set the example, an example that Luke had explicitly referred to already on a number of occasions.

In suggesting the prayer for disciples, it may be better not see the prayer as a formula of words to be repeated regularly. Rather Jesus offered a series of statements that he hoped would become the subject of quiet meditation and eventually the spontaneous focus of the one praying. To give true meaning in depth to the prayer would require a lifetime of contemplation and action.

Jesus had previously referred to God as Father. The gender implications can easily distract. God has no gender. The Hebrew Scriptures had used feminine imagery for God but had never addressed God with feminine titles. Though God totally transcends human categories, human persons can think and imagine God only in human terms. That Jesus used a masculine title for God was not surprising, given the pervasive patriarchy of the time.

What did he intend to convey by addressing God as Father?

• Father conveyed the sense of a uniquely personal relationship.
• Father also conveyed the sense of source of life. In the understanding of the times, the father provided the living seed that would grow into the child. The mother’s womb provided the seedbed and nourished the life, but was not the source of life. (People had no knowledge of the existence or necessity of the mother’s ovum.)

The name of God referred to the unique essence of God. The name summed up the person. To hold holy God’s name was to recognise and give appropriate response to the utter specialness, sacredness and otherness of God. may your name be kept holy expressed the desire of the one praying to allow God to be God. A medieval author equivalently expressed the response as follows: “All that I am just as I am offered to all that God is, just as God is”. To reach that level of intimacy takes time. But it needs firstly to be genuinely desired.

By praying may your kingdom come, those praying would seek to align their will and their desire with the will and the desire of God. The desire in question was not a detached desire but expressed, on the part of those praying, a commitment to its fulfilment (while accepting all the time its nature as pure gift). Indeed, the use of the passive voice could refer to the hope that God would be the agent of the coming of the Kingdom.

Give us day by day the bread we need for the day  The request assumed both need and powerlessness. God is humanity’s ultimate source of nourishment. The prayer asked simply for enough, for bread for the day (daily) each day – as God had given the Chosen People the manna in the desert. The wish was expressed in the plural (us), and perhaps reflected as well a community prayer for table fellowship, and as such may have had Eucharistic overtones.

And forgive us our sins, as we too forgive everyone in debt to us. This is a further statement of need and personal powerlessness before God. Forgiveness is the gift of God, though it does not happen without the full consent of the sinner. It is a negative statement of the positive desire for oneness with God and the removal of what hinders that oneness. Forgiveness is not a detached declaration by God of the sinner’s release. It is the infusion of the forgiving love of God into the person’s depths. 

The phrase forgive us as we too forgive everyone in debt to us .. could be easily misread to mean that God’s forgiveness is dependent on the disciples’ practice of forgiveness. Not so. God always takes the initiative. Disciples can forgive only because they have been empowered by God’s own prior forgiveness. God’s forgiving love is essentially transforming, enabling love - as is all love. It is an irresistible flow of life that sweeps up the sinner, fills the sinner’s heart, and carries the sinner onwards with God into forgiveness of others, of everyone indebted to us. 

And do not bring us into temptation. The prayer proceeds from the disciple’s sense of utter weakness and emptiness. Before the mystery of evil mature disciples own their fragility and vulnerability, and from there cry to God for help. Human efforts at motivation give way to a confident cry for help.

The one who prays asks for no more. The prayer is an act of total surrender to God and to God’s providential goodness. Disciples pray it best as they open to the power of God’s Spirit within that lifts them above themselves. It is difficult to remain perfectly content with the prayer as it stands, to stay still, silent and trustfully confident despite the countless fears and desires that surge within – and to pray for no more.

Luke 11:5-13  -  Honour or Trust? – A Late Arrival

Though it has been frequently interpreted otherwise, the following teaching of Jesus endorsed and developed the importance of still, silent and trustful confidence before God in the face of restless anxious fears and restless desires.

There is no way that the listener from the time of Jesus could visualise the incident as described. Jesus was conjuring up an impossible scenario. Given the honour code of the period, hospitality to visitors was a non-negotiable element of collective honour.

The modern misinterpretation where "in order not to be shamed" is often rendered "because of his persistence" is a factor of poor translation. The word translated as persistence is an uncommon word. Literally it means the “negation of shame”, that is, the need to avoid shame. In line with the translation above, the word refers not to the action of the one asking for the loaves, but to the state of the sleeper: the sleeper’s need to avoid being shamed. 

The meaning of the story is that, even though friendship may not be sufficient to move the sleeper to respond, his need to avoid shame will secure his help. The application of the story is that God’s sense of honour is such that a reasonable request would never be refused. The disciple in genuine need can remain still, silent and trustful before God. 

Jesus’ further comment is to be seen in the context of the point made above. The point of the disciples’ asking, seeking and knocking is not to make an otherwise distracted God aware of their needs, but to alert themselves to their need and to an appropriate sense of confident expectation. God is not the one needing to be moved - they are! They need to open themselves to the goodness of a God who respects always their freedom.

The promises are open-ended and non-committal. What would be received? What would be found? What would the things open out to? The answer lay in what followed.

The expected answer was obviously No! On the other hand, if a child asked for a snake or a scorpion, no one would give them to the child.

God is more loving and wise than any human parent. God will not give disciples anything that they ask for, but God will give what expresses the fullness of God’s own goodness: the Holy Spirit of God.

Prayer to God may at times be for less than God’s Holy Spirit. Yet it is important that disciples pray from where they are, not from where they are not. They can relate to God only as the persons they really are. Often their prayer can reflect more their lack of trust in God’s providence than carefree confidence. God may not grant what they ask. But by asking, seeking and knocking they come in time to discover their deepest and truest heart desire. This prayer God does not refuse, because their deepest heart desires arise from their truest depths that draw life from the mystery of the creating God. Without their knowing it clearly, in truth their deepest heart desire is for the Spirit of God.

Next >> Luke 11:14-26