FINDINGS IV By Harry T. Cook

 

 

 

 

 

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 broker. An interesting equation in which x plus y equal justice.

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 being 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 CE 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 CE 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 Markan 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 many Jesus Jews lived during the last third of the first century CE.
 
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.
 
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 becomes one's special friend as quiet 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.

 

Copyright 2013 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.

 

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