Knock Til the Door Opens - Lectionary Reflection on Persistent Prayer for Pentecost 7C - Proper 12 (Luke 11)


Thankful (1894) -  Henry Ossawa Tanner


Luke 11:1-13 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

11 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.” 2 He said to them, “When you pray, say: 
Father, hallowed be your name.
    Your kingdom come.
3     Give us each day our daily bread.
4     And forgive us our sins,
        for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
    And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

 5 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; 6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ 7 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.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. 
9 “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 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!”

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              If you know the TV show Big Bang Theory, then you will know about Sheldon Cooper's habit of knocking on doors, while calling out the person's name, until the person on the other side of the door (usually Penny) opens the door to see what Sheldon wants. Is that the way it is with God? Must we continue knocking until God gets annoyed enough to answer the door? Well, is that not the message of the parable Jesus tells as part of his message on prayer? I'll leave it up to you to answer that question, with, of course, Sheldon and Penny in mind! 
 
            The question of the hour has to do with the way in which we pray. What is the proper demeanor for approaching God in prayer? What words should we use? What rituals work well? That's the question on the mind of the disciples as they approach Jesus, asking him to do for them, what John the Baptist did for his disciples. So Jesus responded by giving them a pattern for their prayers. What we have here is Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer. Many Christians recite a version of this prayer least weekly in their worship services. It's so commonplace that we may not even reflect too deeply on the words we speak. That's one of the reasons I wrote a book about the meaning of this prayer, which I titled Ultimate Allegiance. That’s because I concluded that the Lord’s Prayer is the Christian version of a pledge of allegiance to God. 

          In this passage from Luke, the prayer pattern is followed by a series of sayings that speak to the importance of persistence in prayer as well as to God’s faithfulness to answer those prayers. As for the prayer itself, Luke's version is different from the version found in the Gospel of Matthew.  It's a more abridged version of what we find in Matthew (Matthew 6:9-13). Even Matthew's version is different from what we usually say on a Sunday morning, at least in Protestant circles.

           As you examine Luke's version did you notice that in this version of the prayer, we're instructed to ask God to forgive our sins (not trespasses or debts)? While we pray that our sins might be forgiven, the second part of that request does involve debts. We pray God forgives our sins as we forgive the debts owed to us. So, in this prayer, we ask that God’s kingdom or realm would come, and in making this request we align ourselves with God’s purposes. We also declare our trust in God for our daily sustenance and seek forgiveness for our sins, along with a request that God would keep us from experiencing the time of trial. Regarding the last request, I’m not sure that Jesus meant that we should ask God to keep us from experiencing suffering. Much more likely Jesus is speaking of the day of judgment. That is, the request is set in an apocalyptic scenario.  

                 To further develop his teaching on prayer, Jesus tells a story (parable). In this parable, Jesus talks about persistence, and why we should be persistent in our prayers. The reason why we should be persistent is that God is faithful, so don't give up if it appears God isn't answering. Just remember that if human parents give good gifts to their children, then won't God do the same?  Indeed, to those who ask, God will provide the Holy Spirit.

                When we read a parable like this, it's easy to read it with a bit of cynicism. After all, many a charlatan has used just these verses in offering to unsuspecting persons a gospel of prosperity. Just have faith and God will give you whatever you ask! That message has destroyed the faith of many. Now, I don't think Jesus was a prosperity preacher, so I won't let the fact that some have abused the text keep me from hearing its message. As we listen for that message, what should we make of Jesus' call to persistent prayer, especially in times of trouble? 

                 As Jesus tells the story, a person knocks on a neighbor's door in the middle of the night seeking bread to serve to a late-night visitor. If you have to ask your neighbor for bread in the middle of the night it's obvious you weren't expecting them. If you knew they were coming you could have gone to the market earlier in the day. But in this case, the visitor has shown up, and the cupboard is bare.  Since you have to be hospitable to the visitor, you're going to have to ask your neighbor for help. After all, the markets would be closed at that time of day. Remember that 24-hour grocery stores are a modern invention, and even today not every neighborhood has one! Having told the story, now Jesus gets to the moral of the story. He tells the disciples that even if the friend didn’t get out of bed out of friendship (after all the door is locked and everyone is in bed), this friend (or should we say former friend) will get out of bed and go to the pantry to find some bread to share so that the neighbor will quit knocking (cue Sheldon who is standing at Penny's door knocking). The message is: keep knocking, because eventually, God, like the annoyed neighbor, will respond if for no other reason, to stop the noise. 

           If we read this flatly, then the message appears to be: If you nag God you'll get what you want. I'm not sure that's what Jesus intended. It sure doesn't offer us a very attractive vision of God. While I understand the importance of the principle of hospitality and even the need for persistence, if, again, we read this flatly and literally, then God doesn't come off very well. Does God answer prayers just to shut us up? That's not the way I understand the message of Jesus! While we might interpret this as a command to pray without ceasing, I'm not sure that's the message either. 

              From this statement, we move on to the declaration on the part of Jesus that has been used to fortify the prosperity gospel message: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” This is rather assertive but is in line with the call to persistence. Keep at it. Don’t try to be pious. If you want something from God, then ask for it. As Douglas John Hall puts it:
Prayer is not meek, contrived, and merely “religious” act; it is the act of human beings who know how hard it is to be human. Real prayer cannot be faked. It’s only prerequisites are sufficient self-knowledge to recognize the depths of our need, and enough humility to ask for help [Feasting on the Word, p. 290]
Being humble enough to ask for help—we sometimes have a problem with asking for help. To ask for help is to make yourself vulnerable. But if you’re able, then maybe you can ask, seek, knock. Then the door will be opened and you will receive that which you desire. But does that really mean that if we pray persistently we'll get whatever we ask? That's probably the wrong question to ask!

             A better question, even though we're encouraged to pray with boldness, is to ask what it is we desire from God? Is it wealth beyond measure? Remember what happened to King Midas! What about fame? That's not always what it's cracked up to be, just ask any famous person. If we look at the prayer that Jesus taught the disciples, the focus is on basic necessities (food), forgiveness, and protection (either from temptation or judgment). And as the final statement in the passage declares: The gift we seek is the Holy Spirit. 

             When it comes to persistent prayer, Jesus suggests that we focus on asking that God would send the Holy Spirit. What more could we ask? Yes, we need food. We need forgiveness. We need deliverance. But most of all we need that which will enable us to be in an ongoing relationship with God, and that is the presence of the Holy Spirit. We are the body of Christ, because the Spirit dwells within, linking us together with Christ and thus with God, whose name we declare to be hallowed. This is the one to whom we have pledged our allegiance. Indeed, this allegiance stands above all other allegiances. In an age of religious nationalism, when many across the globe, including the United States, seek power for the sake of power in the name of God so they might impose their vision of God on the world/nation, this is an important word. Political power, while at times useful, becomes dangerous when we think we have the corner on God's will for the world. If I understand correctly the message of Jesus, then our pledge of ultimate allegiance to God's realm is a call not to power over others, but to humbly love and serve our neighbors. That requires the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit. So, let us pray that God's realm would come into our midst, and as we do then we acknowledge the holiness of God's name.

  
Image Attribution - Tanner, Henry Ossawa, 1859-1937. Thankful, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56998 [retrieved July 17, 2022]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Thankful_Poor,_1894._Henry_Ossawa_Tanner.jpg.

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