The Prayer the Lord Taught Us

Text: Luke 11:1-13

Jesus was praying.

What was he saying? What was he thinking? He was praying in a certain place, it says. Did the place matter? Did he stand or kneel or sit in a special way? What did he do with his hands? His head?

The disciples want to know. Certainly no strangers to prayer, an important part of a faithful life in Palestine, yet they see or infer something in the way Jesus prays. Teach us to pray, Lord.

So Jesus recites to them what we now know as the Lord’s Prayer. It is not quite the same version we pray. There is another version in Matthew chapter 6 that is more like ours, a little longer, a little more familiar than Luke’s. And wordier.

This prayer is very old. And it is short. As concise as possible, essential, straightforward. Easy to remember, quick to say, suitable for all occasions. Martin Luther wrote that the Lord’s Prayer was one of the things all Christians should memorize and recite at least daily (he said that children “should be given neither food nor drink” until they do so). It is so familiar to us that we forget how odd it might have sounded.

First: Though people often say this prayer in private, it is a prayer prayed for all people together. Though we often mean it to be about each one of us, it is written in the plural—we, not I; give us, not give me. We thus speak it aloud whenever Christians assemble. It is a prayer for the people of God, yet adopted and implemented, so to speak, in the lives of individuals—you, me.

Second: The prayer is full of demands. This is not a shy prayer. The verbs are in the imperative. We are not begging God here. We are making a claim on God. Give us, forgive us.

The demands are simple and basic. This is a prayer about human need. To be fed, to be forgiven, to forgive others, to live a life without undue trials. (And also to know a holy presence and to hope for a godly world). There is nothing about a distant God out there or up there (at least not in this version), a god who is only vaguely interested in us. This is a prayer to God who knows what it is to be a person in the world.

Third: This God we can call father, parent. This does not imply by itself that God is good and compassionate—though that is so. It does imply a connection between God and us that is strong and direct. We are able to make these demands in this prayer because God, whom we can call our father, is as close to us as a parent would be. God is not some dispersed ethereal force, nor just a good idea, nor an inattentive creator. To open our address with “Father” indicates our own stance that the God to whom we pray will welcome our petitions as legitimate.

Our prayers are legitimate without condition. We do not have to adopt any special posture. We do not have to come to God in a special frame of mind. We do not need to be in a special spot. In the Lord’s Prayer, we do not have to thank or praise God or give fancy titles or add flattering adjectives to God’s name before we get down to business. This prayer is about us, not about God (except as we imagine God listening). God is not so insecure, Jesus seems to say, that we cannot just right off tell God what is on our mind, what we need.

That all works out because, Jesus explains, God desires to provide for us. Jesus tells us this by way of two stories. Both use a logic common in Jesus’ time: if something is true in the small it must be even more true in the large. An argument from lesser to greater.

A man approaches a friend. The time is inconvenient. The friend is annoyed. Give me some bread for my guest, the man says. Get lost, says the friend. Yet because of the man’s dogged persistence, the friend gives in. Jesus begins this story by saying in essence: Can you imagine such a thing? Can you imagine a friend, a friend, mine you, not some stranger, going against all the rules of hospitality, refusing to get up, no matter what a bother it is, and to not give the man some bread? And the words Jesus uses imply that the expected answer is: No! No way could that happen. It is a rhetorical question, a rhetorical story. If you cannot imagine one friend telling another to get lost, certainly God would not.

In the same manner, Jesus asks his disciples: which of you would give your child a snake if he or she asked for a fish, or a scorpion if asked for an egg? And in the same way, the expected answer is: No! None of us would. This is not a comment about the real behavior of some parents. The parent in the story is the disciple, the listener. “Which of you parents?” Nor does it imply that God gives us what we need, not what we want. The child is not denied what he or she asks for. As before, it is a rhetorical story of the same sort. If you who are just an ordinary person would not give poison when food is asked for, certainly God would not.

These verses are not about theology. They are not treatises about the existence of evil in the world. Or about whether prayer is effective. There will be other times for that. They are about praying. About how to pray. Teach us to pray, the disciples ask Jesus. This is a practical instruction, with illustrations.

We are sometimes tempted to edit our own prayers. We think that what we pray for is too outrageous. Too impossible. Too deviant. Too trivial. Or too grand. So we do not pray for those things. We censor our own prayers, thinking God does not wish to hear them, or that certainly God would never grant them, or even that perhaps God cannot grant them.

But Jesus is telling the disciples to pray for what they want. To pray their deepest desires. To pray their shallowest whims. The heroic things and the stupidest. To ask God. Just talk to God. Do not try to be God’s gatekeeper of worthy prayers. You wish to receive, to find, to have doors opened. Therefore ask, search, knock. That is our job. In prayer, our only job. Do not remain silent.

The Lord’s Prayer is a rude prayer. It does not equivocate. It is not vague around the edges. It is not sycophantic. It does not consider or inquire about God’s will. It is a human prayer about human desires. All that is needed to pray the Lord’s Prayer is that we acknowledge the depths of our own need and be willing to reveal them to God.

The man in the story with the sleepy friend, we heard, was persistent. But the better word for it is “shameless.”

Pray for what you really want. The impossible, the minor, the weird, the honorable. Pray shamelessly. Pray for what you want.  

Restorative Justice

Text: Luke 10:38-42

In an informal poll regarding today’s reading from Luke conducted over the past two weeks, the results show that 90% of the people can’t stand Mary. Maybe you are one of them.

Why is that? Mostly they say that they are Marthas. That’s what they say. Not that they are like Martha, or that they understand Martha, or that in the same circumstances as the one in Luke’s story, they would do exactly as Martha did. They identify with Martha. A lot. That makes this a good story, when people have strong feelings about the protagonists. They see themselves as too busy, often distracted, knowing that they are missing some undefined better part but unable to do otherwise.

Jesus does not help the situation. Martha asks Jesus to intervene, and instead of siding with her, Jesus tells Martha that she is distracted, going all this way and that, as if she did not know that already, thank you. And he doesn’t say anything at all to Mary. He just makes some unhelpful—and maybe they think, dismissive—comment to Martha regarding Mary.

Their target is Mary. But really, Mary is hardly even in this story. Martha is a complicated character, while Mary never says a word. She has no depth. We do not know Mary.

In this story in Luke, Mary is a prop. Her presence advances the story and provides motive for Martha and a subject of conversation between Martha and Jesus. As the man by the side of the road is in the story of the Good Samaritan which we heard last week, and which immediately precedes today’s story in Luke. But today’s story is not about Mary, who does not advance it and hardly contributes to it. The story is about Martha.

Mary, we heard, has the better part. What part is that? What is the better part? We read into that phrase what we want, just as we read into the actions and words of Martha all sorts of characteristics, roles, and motives. What is the better part? Some say this means the contemplative life, others say the act of worship, still others say education, piety, adoration. No one says couch potato, but they could. It is all speculation. The Gospel is completely silent on this issue.

It is silent because it does not matter. Luke is not interested in what Mary does or does not do. Except only in the sense that she does something that affects Martha. Mary could be doing anything as long as Martha was unhappy about it and complained to Jesus about it. Luke’s silence is evidence.

Mary has, it says, the good part. Not the better part, as our Bible version has it. Not better than Martha’s, which is how we often read it.

And whatever it is, it cannot be taken from Mary. But whatever it is, Martha wants it taken from Mary.

She wants it taken away, whatever it is. Martha wants justice. She feels that something is happening here that is unjust. She is doing all the work and Mary isn’t. She is being the host and Mary isn’t. She is following the rules and Mary isn’t. There is an imbalance here. It is not fair. Not right.

Martha seeks judgment. We might at first think Jesus is agreeing to do that here. But there is no judgment. Jesus refuses to tell Martha (or Mary, either) what to do. He is merely telling them what they are doing. Jesus’ comments, as they often are, are descriptive, not proscriptive.

Martha wants to restore the balance by making Mary suffer as much as she, Martha, has suffered. She wants Mary to do what Martha is doing. She wants to take something away from Mary—the good part that Mary has and that Jesus identifies.

That should not surprise us. That is often how we ourselves view justice. As a way of equalizing or compensating one hurt with another. Doing justice becomes making sure that all suffer equally. We think that justice is done if you pay for your crime.

But a just system is not one that counters one evil with another. Two wrongs don’t make a right, children rightly say. The balance scales we use to symbolize justice are there to remind us that a thumb on the scale is injustice. They do not encourage us in retribution to balance the harm others do to us with harm to them.

Rather, justice is healing, a restoration of what was broken. Each case is different; that is how healing works. It is not that there are Marthas, but this particular Martha. Martha seeks revenge but Jesus offers healing. Martha, Martha, he calls her, as God calls a prophet, from one life to another.

You can think about this story in Luke as a proverb, telling us how to behave (a tips-for-life sort of thing). That one way is better than another. Do not be distracted. It is not good for you or others. Don’t be crabby. Don’t triangulate. Be quieted in your life. Words of wisdom, as proverbs are.

Or you can think of it as a parable, like the parable of the Good Samaritan, presenting us as parables do with a shocking situation (host complains about sister to guest) and exaggerated emotions. And making us think carefully about how it will be in the kingdom of God.

But this story is not just Mary, Martha, and some guy—as it could be if it were a proverb or a parable. It is Mary, Martha, and Jesus. The Bible is a book that tells us about God, through poems and proverbs and parables and prophets and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As with the story of the Good Samaritan, Luke puts this particular story in this very spot for a reason. The words of Jesus here tell us something that Luke wants us to know about God. They tell us about what justice is not and what it is. They tell us that God welcomes our demands for justice and hears them as pleas for healing.

Careless Grace

Text: Luke 10:25-37

We bring a lot of baggage to this reading in Luke. That is how it is with scripture. Reading scripture is a conversation between you and the text. The text stays the same. You change a lot. You come with your history, your worries and hopes that depend on current circumstances, the events of the day both global and local. It is no doubt a good thing that this is so. Otherwise, what is the point?

But when we read a familiar story like this one, the conversation can be a little stilted. This story in Luke is certainly one of the best-known stories in the New Testament, and many of us have heard it since we were children. So when we come upon it, we hardly even need to listen to it. It is like your grandfather telling the same joke over and over. Still funny, but we know the punchline. So it does not have the impact it once did. Maybe it is kind of boring, even.

This story is usually known as the Good Samaritan. That is a little misleading, as the word “good” never appears in it. It is not really about his goodness. Some people call it the Merciful Samaritan. That is better, because he is merciful—the text does say that. But there is a lot going on in the story, so we could call it “The Man Who Was Left to Die,” or “The Way to Eternal Life,” or “A Lawyer Learns a Lesson.”

The story is often portrayed as a triumph of grace over law. The lawyer who occasions the story, and the men who pass by the wounded man, are all official students of the law. And the Samaritan is an outsider who acts from kindness.

But compassion for others is a part of the law. That is why we read Leviticus today. We heard a few of a long list of laws. These are the laws given via Moses to the Israelites. There are a lot of them. In Leviticus: 247. Plus many more in Deuteronomy. They all come from God. “I am the Lord your God,” they all end. And one of them is “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The point is that loving your neighbor as yourself is just as much law as the other statutes.

The laws are a part of God’s grace. They provide guidance and comfort in a world of suffering and fear. They are one embodiment of grace. The lawyer is not trying to get out of obeying the law. He is trying to escape the graceful part of it, the part which I’m sure he finds annoying. What he wants is an interpretation that lets him off the hook.

He wants to justify himself, it says. Justify means judge. He wants someone to judge him based on his adherence to some very specific actions. He wants, perhaps, for Jesus to say: it is OK if you do these particular things with these particular people and it is OK if you don’t do these things with these other people. It is OK. You are a good person. God will think you are good person.

The lawyer might, as it seems, be trying to escape some obligation. But he might just want to know what to do. How can he do the right thing if he does not know exactly what the right thing is?

But really. We all do know what to do, don’t we? It is built into us. Loving our neighbor as we love ourselves does not strike us as radical. That is because it makes a lot of sense to human beings. That does not mean it is easy.

Why do we admire the Samaritan in the story Jesus tells (which is a kind of parable) and disdain the two others who walked on by without stopping? Mostly it is because he helps someone who needs help. It makes the story much more dramatic that he does so at his own risk. The Samaritans and the Jews were enemies, at each other as only feuding cousins can be. The Samaritan is in the wrong neighborhood, which makes it dangerous for him. And then he stops to help a Jew. So he would be hated by the Jews for what he is and hated by his fellow Samaritans for what he does.

Yet his compassion—built in compassion, I’d say—compels him to care for a person who lies suffering by the road. We are amazed at the priest and the Levite because they did not.

The Samaritan is merciful, it says, but a more modern way of saying it is that the Samaritan is kind. That kindness is sometimes called Common Grace, meaning grace that is given to all people. People in common, or common people, meaning you do not have to be special to get it. The sun rises on the evil and on the good, and God sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous, it says in Matthew. This unconditional favor is gospel. The Samaritan is filled with Common Grace.

The thing is, we all are. When we focus, as the lawyer seems to, on the exact boundaries of grace, we make things more complicated than they need to be. We can applaud in general the rule of law and ponder who by rights gets what and debate what makes things fair or just. But if we ourselves were in the ditch by the side of the road, beaten and near dying, we would not do that. We would see in an instant and would all agree that the interpretation by the passersby—that their interpretation of the law of God somehow and amazingly does not compel them to love us as themselves.

One way to think about this is to ask: who owns us? If it is primarily the rules, then it is important most of all to be precise. That is what lawyers and scribes—who were the lawyers in Jesus time—are supposed to do. The law—not just the law from Moses but any law—the law makes distinctions. Is this thing or action the thing or action described by such and such a law? If so, one thing happens. If not, another. The law justifies our actions. We are judged by the law. Since we live in a complicated, fluid, and only-human world, making these distinctions is never ending and a lot of work. Plus, the stakes are high—life and death sometimes—so it is even harder. It is important to get it right. The lawyer in the story, living according to this scheme, is right to ask Jesus to be more specific. He wishes to survive. He wishes to reach God.

But if it is primarily gospel, then it is important most of all to be kind. Suffering compels our compassion. In the moment the rest simply does not matter. No rule, no matter how precise—or even no matter how otherwise good—no rule trumps kindness.

The lawyer wishes to be free. He sees better definitions and more exact measurements as the way to get there. “But who is my neighbor?” he asks. For whom can I defer the kindness within me for one reason or another? We make countless good arguments for hesitating, or refusing, to offer help to people in need. What reasons are good enough?

But Jesus will not tell him. Instead, Jesus tells a story. The lawyer like everyone else can see who in the story is doing what should be done. By every thing that can be measured, the Samaritan is the wrong person doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. A foreign law breaker. But even the lawyer admits that it is not time for those measurements. Who is neighborly? Jesus asks. There is only one answer.

It is hard to know who we are in this story. Sometimes we might be the passersby, sometimes the man suffering in the ditch, sometimes the innkeeper, watching, amazed. It is a parable, not an allegory. But for the lawyer the interpretation is precise: if you want the kind of life you seek, be the one who showed kindness.

Go Humbly

Text: Luke 10:1–11, 17–20

Marshal McLuhan, a thoughtful philosopher of modern culture, wrote that the medium is the message. The delivery vehicle of the message conveys the message at least as much if not more than the content. At the time, this was a radical idea. That was fifty years ago. Now everyone knows this; the idea goes without saying. But it is not really a new idea. In the story we just heard in the Gospel of Luke, the point is at least as much about the messengers—the medium—as it is the news they bring.

Jesus sends out thirty-five pairs (or maybe thirty-six; it depends on which source you use)—pairs of apostles, sent out into the towns. Their mission is clear and explicit. They are to depend on the hospitality of others. They take only the clothes on their backs.

But more important, they offer a kind of hospitality of their own. They make no judgments. They come only when invited. They eat what is put in front of them, sharing whatever the family eats, whether or not they like it. They heal the people who come to them. They make no demands, they have no interest in exploiting the good will of their hosts. They do not try to find the best accommodations. They are content with what there is and what comes their way. Besides all that, they announce good news about the nearness of God’s kingdom. Of which their actions are examples.

What they do not do is berate people, convince people, try to sign them up for something, make them join something. They carry with them a kind of power invested in them by Jesus—an apostolic authority, you could say. But that authority is not to boss folks around or manipulate them or to enlist them. Nor does it demand that people respect them or even pay attention. The authority gives them the power to heal people and the courage to freely reside with people without disapproving of them and the willingness to be vulnerable and take risks. All great gifts.

The disciples are sent to prepare the way; they are not the way itself. It is not about them. They are not proud. They represent Jesus and the new world that he brings. A new way of being. At best, they are the signs of that world. Signals. They therefore do not rejoice in their own good fortunes or the thrill of power. They are happy that have been given the power to heal people, freeing them from the demons that inhabit and control them. The disciples can walk among snakes and scorpions. But Jesus cautions them. They are not to rejoice in their own ability to accomplish great things. They are known in heaven—not meaning that they will get their just rewards someday, but rather that God knows them and their deeds already. They are quiet saints. Servants, as it says elsewhere, and as Apostle Paul often writes.

These 70 (or 72) disciples are humble, modest, and obedient. These are tough words for us. Even though they sound nice, we rarely long to be humble, modest, or obedient. We do not aspire to these things, nor admire them in our social models. They sound weak, for one thing.

These are words that describe relationships in which we are equal to others, or even in which others are greater than we. They are not about relationships in which we excel, dominate, prevail, control, or determine. They are words which seem to call us to deny our selves. Something Jesus talks about at length elsewhere. Approvingly.

Compassion, central to the Christian life, grows from humility, modesty, and obedience. To be compassionate requires a recognition of the suffering of others. To empathize. To recognize that the suffering of someone else is no less than our suffering is. That all people suffer exactly as we do. We have no special authority therefore to inflict suffering on others. And we do have special obligation to relieve the suffering of others.

Saying that the disciples are saints does not imply that they are special in some innate way. Humility, modesty, and obedience are not character traits—inborn, immutable, unattainable abilities. They are skills. As skills, they can be taught—that’s what Jesus did and does. As skills, they improve with practice. They are important and effective even when you do them poorly.

This story appears only in Luke. Of the four Gospel writers, Luke is the most interested in the mission of the early church. And of the four, Luke is also the most interested in social and economic justice. The Magnificat of Mary is in Luke, at the very beginning. The good news that she feels carrying Jesus is the prospect of the restoration of the kingdom of God. Things will be ordered differently; better—less vertical, more horizontal. The peace that the disciples offer, and the announcement they bring to the towns, is shalom—the peace of things that are now out of kilter being once more in line with God’s intent.

Perhaps what the disciples do seems trivial, or only marginally effective. But what they do is the message of Christianity. When people are most moved by Christianity, it is because they sometimes see in Christians generosity, compassion, and persistence in the face of fear. What we do as Christians is the message.

The disciples—who as always stand for us—are getting lessons in humility, modesty, and obedience. They take great risks. They come back overjoyed. They are coached in their tasks. They are not required to find their own way to follow Jesus. They are given instruction and guidance.

Their mission is not to make more Christians. It is to heal and offer modest hospitality to all. And to talk about a new world.

We in this age are in the middle of a moral crisis. People feel they have authority to inflict suffering on others. They do not feel a special obligation to relieve the suffering of others. This is not a new crisis, but it seems to me more urgent. Our arrogance and self-satisfaction are not safe.

Jesus announces a new way. But the message will be heard only if it is lived out in the lives of the messengers.