FINDINGS II
Proper
12 - C - July 25, 2010
Genesis 18: 20-32 and Luke 11:
1-13
Jesus was praying as was his wont, and after he was
finished, one of his disciples asked him to teach him and his fellow disciples
to pray, as John (the Baptizer) had taught his. So Jesus said, "Pray like this: say,
'Father, your name is holy. May your rule take hold. Give us what we need.
Forgive what we do wrong as we forgive those who have done us wrong. Do not put
us on trial.'" He said further, "Suppose you go to your friend late at night
and ask him to lend you three loaves of bread because company arrived late at
your house. You know he's going to tell you to go away, telling you that the
door is locked and everybody is in bed. But you know that, if you stand there
long enough, he will get out of bed and give you what you asked for. So you ask
about praying. Ask, and you will be given it. Search, and you will find it.
Knock on the door, and it will be opened to you. If your child asked for a fish, would you give him a snake?
Or an egg, would you give him a scorpion? Well, then, why would your Father in
heaven not give you the Holy Spirit to anyone who asks?" (Translated and
paraphrased by Harry T. Cook)
 By Harry T. Cook
7/19/10
RUBRIC
Prayer, as an activity, is generally associated with piety and
the pious. Its practice is thought to be a virtue connected with humility. In
most religions, the pray-er is expected to present himself in a certain
posture, e.g. kneeling or prostrate or hands and arms lifted in petition. In
both the Genesis reading, which is the familiar negotiation between Abraham and
Yahweh over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the so-called institution of
"the Lord's prayer" the activity seems far less an expression of piety than of moral
and practical demand, though generally veiled in salaamic deference.
In some ways, the Sodom-Gomorrah negotiation is one of the
most humorous passages in the Bible. Yahweh's patience level is tested again
and again as Abraham whittles down to the absolute number of righteous ones in
the threatened cities to a minyan (a count in Hebrew but usually meaning 10).
Abraham asks for what he wants and gets it. Mercy was Yahweh's to give; it was
Abraham's to receive. An interesting equation in which x plus y equal justice.
WORKSHOP
The type of prayer in which Jesus is depicted as having regularly
engaged seems to have been of the meditative sort -- a kind of inner musing,
seeking solace and guidance with a clearer head, not so much as a "let this cup
pass from me" type of petition. Taking that into consideration suggests that
Luke's Jesus taught his disciples to pray in yet another way: in a series of
imperatives.
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as conceived of by Jews
from the beginning demanded human attention, which, because one could not "see"
Yahweh on the pain of death, had to be given remotely through the medium of prayer,
i.e., by the remote address of the unseen and perceived deity by human beings.
Long before Luke (or Mark or Matthew) sat down to write their narratives,
Judaism had a well-established tradition of formal prayers. Presumably the
disciples knew of that tradition.
What apparently they had witnessed, as Luke tells the story,
was Jesus absorbed from time to time in meditative solitude. Was that presumed
to have been John the Baptizer's practice, as well? Did the unnamed disciple
who asked Jesus to teach him and his fellows to pray know how and what the
Baptizer's following had been taught? And were both the prayer patterns used by
John and Jesus departures from the norm of established, formal prayers?
In the request, the use of the form of address "Lord"
strongly suggests a post-crucifixion setting because "Lord" as used in New
Testament writing is the name or title for Jesus used by later first century
C.E. Jesus Jews by which they meant "the resurrected one."
In any event, according to Luke's Jesus, the addressee of
the prayer is to be "abba," a familiar and somewhat intimate form for "male
parent." The prescribed form of the prayer, since the spokes-disciple asked,
was to be as follows: the affirmation of the promise that the hallowed deity's
rule will eventually dawn, the requests for daily bread and the absolution of
the stain of wrongdoing dependent in some way upon granting the same absolution
to those who have affronted the pray-er. Matthew's version uses "debts" instead
of "sins" or "trespasses." "Debts" is closer to a first century C.E.
Palestinian understanding of remission. Matthew puts it in our sense of the
past tense: "As we have forgiven our debtors."
It is interesting to observe that the Marcan parallel (11:
25-26) to Luke 11: 1-4 and Matthew 6: 9-13) refers only to forgiveness: "And
whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have a thing against another." For
Mark, that forgiveness is requisite "so that your Father . . . may forgive
you."
The final petition is that the pray-er may not be put to the
test, i.e., should not be faced with the necessity of choosing faithfulness and
dying for it. Don't forget the perilous conditions under which most Jesus Jews
lived during the last third of the first century C.E.
As if perhaps to illustrate the efficacy of prayer, Luke
spins out of a parable of persistence an object lesson that is unique to
According to Luke (11: 5-8). The story is that a traveler journeying by night,
perhaps to avoid the heat of the day, arrives at a person's house and begs
entry. The householder has no bread to put before the weary traveler, the code
of Mediterranean hospitality nevertheless requiring it. So the householder goes
next door to a friend's house and importunes him who has long since retired
with the setting sun and is asleep with his family gathered to him. The
would-be host to the traveler asks for bread. The neighbor does not wish to be
disturbed, but after enduring persistent requests, he gives in.
The pattern for that kind of persistence derives from the
legend of Abraham's bargaining with Yahweh for Sodom and Gomorrah.
The midrash on the parable (11: 9-13) depicts the
persistence of prayer in terms of action: ask, search, knock. Luke borrows these
verses from the Q document, and they have a parallel at Matthew 7: 1-11.
Matthew features bread and stone, fish and serpent, good thing and good gifts,
while Luke has fish and serpent, egg and scorpion, good gifts and the Holy
Spirit. -- It is to be assumed that since this passage comes in the series
involving discipleship one could petition only for those things deemed
necessary to that discipleship.
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
In the sense Luke's Jesus talks about prayer, it can never
effectively be a "to whom it may concern" affair. One is not to fling out the
random petition to the stars. Prayer insofar as the gospels' Jesus appeared to
understand it began with an intimate address to "abba," father. For the
Christian deist or agnostic, that makes prayer a difficult matter. If no "abba"
waiting with listening ear can be conceived of, prayer may die upon the lips of
the would-be prayer-er.
That is when silence become's one special friend and quite
human initiative presents itself as the only option. The Benedictines say "ora
et labora" -- pray and work. For some Benedictines I have known, their work has
become their prayer and vice versa. If there is no "abba" or if one cannot
conceive of such, the only real-time alternative to prayer is work -- working
for what one might otherwise pray.
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