Luke 11.1-13

Pentecost Seven (Revised Common Lectionary) | 07.24.22 | Luke 11.1-13 | Carl A. Voges |

The Passage

Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 

And he said to them, ”Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed.  I cannot get up and give you anything’?

I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.  And I tell you, ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 

What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him 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?                                 [English Standard Version]

 “And you, who were dead in your trespasses…God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses…”                                                             [Colossians 2.13]

  In the Name of Christ + Jesus our Lord

This morning it is humbling and strengthening to see Jesus teach his followers how to pray as well as to back up such teaching with a parable to encourage those same followers to be persistent and constant in their conversations with the LORD God.  With the ways in which our lives have spun out since a new virus tore into this world back in March, 2020, a number of the Lord’s people have discovered the vitality and necessity of exercising the Church’s prayers in the morning, at noon or in the evening.  It is quite helpful, then, for us to be schooled by our Lord as he teaches his disciples how they, along with us, are to pray.

Before stepping into the opening verses of Luke 11, however, we notice how the world’s underpinnings of prayer differ considerably from the biblical foundations.  In this culture there are individuals who believe that prayer has a power of its own.  They think it is a reality that we surface when there is a need for it.  There are times for this occurrence when coaches in different sports use the Lord’s Prayer to motivate their teams.  There are also congregations with scant or distorted beliefs in the Church’s Sacraments of Baptism, Forgiveness and Eucharist.  Their teachings reflect the view that prayer is like a Sacrament.

All such understandings get exposed as wrong and empty as our Lord presses into our lives with this passage from Luke and teaches us again of the prayer life of his followers.  Biblical and Lutheran foundations have taught us that prayer is a gift from the LORD God to his rescued people.  Thus, prayer is the conversation of persons, born again in Baptism, who are drawn into the Life of the Holy Trinity.  Prayer is a reality marked by asking, searching and knocking for the Life of our Lord; it is not an asking, searching or knocking for what we want or what the world tells us we need.

As we focus on the Lord’s Prayer this morning, let us look biblically and intently at its five phrases, fleshing them out with insights given us by Martin Luther in his Large and Small Catechisms.

  Prayer opens with the address, “Father”

Jesus used an everyday Aramaic word for his Father, “Abba.”  No Jew in his day would address the LORD God that way (the Lord is too holy and we are too sinful for his Name to be spoken by us).  But Jesus addresses the LORD God in this fashion because of the relationship that exists between him and the Father.  Baptism brought us into that relationship as well, enabling us (in a startling way) to address the LORD God as Father.  Martin Luther pointed out that we can speak to him as children to a loving Father

Born as the world’s children can leave us alone and miserable.  This is why the Father’s adoption of us in Baptism through his Son and his Spirit is so overwhelming and freeing.  Such adoption, such rescue, brings us into the family created by the Father, redeemed by the Son and sustained by the Holy Spirit.

         Prayer opens with a first phrase, “hallowed be your name”

In this phrase we ask the Father that the eternal reality of his Life, his Name, be present in our lives now (such presence is found most clearly and fully in the Scriptures and Sacraments).  To make the Lord’s Name holy is to give it a power and place that the world hopes to achieve by concentrating on itself.  Our entire life lies in that hands of the Father.  His Name becomes holy as we live it and teach it.

We deprive the Lord’s Name of its holiness when we distort him or exchange him for another god.  Because of the Lord’s redeeming, sustaining and creating activity, we no longer run away from him, cursing the darkness which covers our self-absorbed lives, but we submit to his merciful embrace of us.

    Second phrase, “Your kingdom come”

Through this phrase we again ask that the reality of the Father’s Life be present in our

lives now (such a presence reflects from the Scriptures and the Sacraments).  The LORD God presses his Life into the world so he can save its people.  The LORD God also powers his people to reflect his salvation.  Praying this phrase means we are participating in the Life of the Holy Trinity, that we are confronting the power and presence of evil as the Father’s daughters and sons.

Martin Luther recognized that this phrase is always pushing the Lord’s Life against the world’s life.  The latter’s life, generated and maintained by the unholy trio of sin, Satan and death offers false identities, deceptive securities and damnable meanings for life (remember, too, that all such offerings conclude in death)!

The Father’s Life, by contrast, offers a genuine and real Life, one that spills out from the workings of his Word, a working that gathers his people together!  Martin Luther alerted us to the reality that the Lord’s Kingdom is not to be automatically equated with his churches in the world, but to remember that his Kingdom is always the dominant reality in them.

    Third phrase, “Give us each day our daily bread”

The Aramaic word for “bread,” literally means, “our future bread, give us today.”  In both his Small and LargeCatechisms, Martin Luther does an excellent job of detailing how such bread, surfacing first in the Lord’s Supper, then spills over into our daily lives.  Thus, the bread is not only Christ Jesus and his Word, it is also life’s daily needs.

The Lord wants us to recognize the origin of the blessings we receive along with his gracious and merciful attitude toward the people he baptizes.  The phrase also reminds us of how the bread of daily life can become an idol, squeezing and hammering us when it is separated from the Life of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Fourth phrase, “Forgive us our sins for we forgive everyone who is indebted to us”

Because of Baptism, the Lord’s Forgiveness now drenches our lives.  What he gives us shows up in our relationships with him and one another.  The world attempts to warp that by having all the relationships coming into our lives on a one-way basis, urging us to seek every advantage we can, while tearing apart every relationship there is if it is not satisfactory to us.

Forgiveness makes genuine Life possible again after sin has torn it apart.  The word for “sin” can be translated “debts;” after all, sins are liabilities, not assets!  The Lord meets our failed obligations with his forgiving love.  The phrase grants Forgiveness to those who have done us wrong.  The Father does this openly so we become more aware of his love.  This also is necessary to confront the despair that spills out from our failures.  For stubborn situations, Martin Luther offered this comment, “Anyone who feels unable to forgive, let him ask for the grace that he can forgive.”

         Fifth phrase, “Lead us not into temptation”

The word, “temptation,” refers to the testing of our faith in the LORD God.  Such a description is used twenty-one times in the New Testament and, in twenty of those uses, including this one, it carries that meaning.

Temptations are the product of sin, Satan and death working their life into our own.  They are always attempting to persuade us to leave the Lord’s Life behind us.  They always stir us to return to the life they gave us at birth.  They hammer us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  Martin Luther commented that this unholy trio comes at us from three sources: our own sinful desires, the world with its self-centered life and the devil with his lies.  As a result, our faith in the LORD God will be tested, sometimes severely.

There are two kinds of temptation: that which keeps us from living out our baptismal intentions and that which encourages us to pursue what we want.  The words, “lead us not,” ask that we be preserved from breaking down in those tests.  Note that the request does not ask for the tests to never come up, but that we be held together during them!

Martin Luther also noted that temptation follows Forgiveness and that it occurs because we carry burdens for others.  We recognize that all people are trapped by self-absorption.  We battle temptation through the surrender of self, through the willingness to sacrifice one’s self.

[The lack of the familiar ending to this Prayer?  The phrase, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.” surfaced in the Church’s worship life well after Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection and ascension (somewhere in the 100s AD).]

To sum these five phrases up, then, prayer is conversation with the Holy Trinity – it is conversation to the Father, in the Son’s Name, through the Holy Spirit!  Such conversation, originating in Baptism, becomes the dominant reality in our lives.  Yes, we will stumble in our attempts to converse with the LORD God, but that does not prevent us from taking part in them!

With all the tearing apart generated by human nature’s attitudes and actions, it is our conversations with the Holy Trinity that become primary!  While a number of us have renewed the exercise of the Church’s prayers in the morning, at noon or in the evening for the past two and a half years, we now see that such prayers have their origins in the Prayer that our Lord gives us today.   May we remember continually that his conversations with us and we with him are constantly streaming out from the holy places of his Scriptures and Sacraments!

Now may the peace of the Lord God, which is beyond all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through Christ + Jesus our Lord

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Pr. Carl A. Voges, Columbia, SC; carl.voges4@icloud.com