Proper 12C, 24 July.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Hosea 1:2-10. Children of the living God.
Colossians 2:6-19. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit.
Luke 11:1-13. Because of his [lack of shame or honor].

O God of dignity, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

I love that our hand fans proclaim that Emmanuel Church is prayer conditioned on a very hot day when our Gospel lesson is about Jesus’ teaching about how to pray. His answer to the disciples’ request to teach them to pray, the way John taught his disciples, is: ask, search, knock. Claim your honor and your dignity. Notice, though, that what is being sought is learning to pray, and what is being offered in Jesus’ response and words of assurance is a holy spirit, a spirit of holiness. In the original text, there is no definite article, and there are no capital letters. (This is long before the theological idea of Trinity got codified.) If you ask for a spirit of holiness, if you search for a spirit of holiness, if you knock on doors asserting your right to enter into a spirit of holiness, it will be given to you; it will be opened for you.

This is the only time in all of the Gospels that the disciples ask to be taught something. They don’t ask to be taught how to behave better. They don’t ask to be taught to think more clearly or accurately about God. They’re not asking to believe something. They’re not asking for a systematic theology. They’re not seeking better strategic plans,  stronger managerial skills, or more-effective organizing tactics. “Teach us to pray,” they say. Now my strong hunch is that they already knew some prayers. My strong hunch is that they were looking for something deeper, better, maybe more satisfying and effective. They saw Jesus praying, and they wanted some of what he had, a spirit of holiness. What does that mean? Holy means dedicated or devoted to the Divine. Spirit means life force, breath, essence, animation, inspiration. A holy spirit is an essential dedication, animated by devotion to the Holy One. A spirit of holiness is an inspiration to Love more boldly, more faithfully, more courageously–that is, from the heart. 

What Jesus taught them is simple and direct. It’s essentially Jewish, with lines similar to the Kaddish and to ideas found in Hebrew Scripture and in teachings of other first-century Jews. None of the words or ideas is elaborate or innovative. I think Jesus is saying that there’s nothing magic about the words of prayer, there’s nothing new under the sun. Jesus taught his disciples to declare the blessing or hallowing of God’s name; to declare the nearness of God’s rule of Love, realm of mercy, reign of grace; to declare the justice and compassion that are so close; to declare that the most basic needs of all can be met in the commonwealth of the Divine. 

What comes next has caused centuries of debate among biblical scholars, because the line give us each day our daily bread has an untranslatable word: epiousios. (One used to need access to a theological library to figure these things out, but now it’s all there on Wikipedia!) [1] Give us each day our ?? bread. It might have been Martin Luther who decided the word for daily should go there, but there’s wide scholarly agreement that the Greek word epiousios is definitely not the word for daily. Trouble is, the word epiousios doesn’t appear anywhere else in the Bible (except in the parallel version Jesus’ prayer in the Gospel of Matthew). Nor does the word seem to appear anywhere else in Greek literature. The most literal translation is probably something like over-substantial or super-substantial. What does that mean? People who parse the word that way generally interpret it as bread that doesn’t run out, or a large amount of bread, an abundance, literally bread for tomorrow, or figuratively bread for the messianic feast. In other words, give us much more than daily subsistence: today give us tomorrow’s bread, so much bread that we’ll never be hungry, the kind of bread that doesn’t go bad or run out. Pray for more than just today’s bread. It’s about more than surviving; it’s about thriving.

What does this prayer mean when it is prayed by people who are among the minority of the world’s population that is overfed and wasting food, when the majority of the world’s population is underfed or starving. (Even in Massachusetts, one-quarter of children don’t get enough to eat.) If we’re honest when we are praying this Lord’s prayer, that will mean that we live on less so that others will have plenty, of bread and other resources. That’s hard for people who are accustomed to privilege; for us equality can feel like deprivation. Fortunately for us, what comes next is a request for forgiveness, although the way it’s phrased might bring us up short. (It does to me.)

I’m always hoping that God will do a better job of forgiving me and my sins than the job I do of forgiving others who owe me one (or who owe me a lot). But that is a quid pro quo way of hearing these words. New Testament scholar Alan Culpepper writes that what Jesus was getting at was an idea already established in Jewish teaching, which linked giving and receiving of forgiveness. [2] Forgiveness requires an open circuit. Mercy flows through the same channel: one who will not forgive cannot receive forgiveness, because it is all part of the same gift. Pray for an open channel; and finally, pray for deliverance. Pray that we will be saved from ourselves and from others. Pray that we might be spared from whatever would be too great to bear and for mercy at the end.

Luke follows this teaching about how to pray with a subversive and funny parable illustration. The story Jesus tells about a grumpy man who won’t open the door to give his neighbor bread is absurd. It would make his disciples laugh. It’s as funny as someone ringing a doorbell, who then hears a voice from inside yell, “Go away, there’s nobody here.” In Jesus’ time, no one in their right mind would deny bread to a nighttime traveler or the friend of a nighttime traveler, and they all knew it. It was a pain, but it had to do with life and death, and it had to do with honor: the honor of the individual, the honor of the family, and the honor of the whole village. In this case, we lose something in the translation into English of a word that means with no shame (in other words, honor) into the word persistence. [3]

It’s not the persistence of the person knocking that results in the gift of bread, it’s the without shame or the honor or dignity of the person who has been awakened which will cause him to rise to give his friend what is needed. There is no example of the Greek word anaideia meaning persistence in ancient literature. The peculiar (and I’d say distorted) theology that results from this parable seeming like a lesson about persistence in prayer, makes God seem like a reluctant grouch, who answers our requests to get some relief from our constant nagging. And it makes anyone who hasn’t received what he or she has been asking for into someone who must not have been asking often enough or crying out loudly enough. That kind of theology makes me so mad, because it oppresses the very ones Jesus sought to liberate. David Buttrick, in his book about parables, writes: “The notion that, repeatedly, we must bang on the doors of heaven if we are to catch God’s attention is hardly an appropriate theology of prayer.” [4] Surely Jesus is not teaching his disciples about how to badger the Divine. Nor is prayer calling God’s attention to something or someone where God is not already present. Rather, prayer brings us into a deeper relationship with the Divine and makes us more open to responding to the needs of others, as a way to honor our dignity and theirs.

It seems to me that Jesus is teaching his disciples a practice that reminds us just who and Whose we are. This kind of prayer reminds us that the spirit of God, realm of God is in us and among us. In asking, you will have it; in seeking, you will find it; and in knocking, it will open. It’s already in you; it’s already among you. Prayer, according to Jesus, is to be liberative, just, loving, compassionate, and redemptive (because God knows we all need liberation, justice, love, compassion, and redemption). According to Jesus, this is how we are when we are God’s people. This is how we act. This is our stance. Prayer is not a transaction, it is a posture. [5] Prayer is an open posture of the kind of humility, vulnerability, and bravery that come from acknowledging our weakness. As Sören Kierkegaard wrote, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes [the one] who prays.” [6] Pray for a spirit of holiness and hold fast to the reconciling Love of Jesus Christ. Claim it for our community. Claim it for our whole world.

1. See the Wikipedia entry for the Greek word epiousios.
2. Alan Culpepper in “Luke,” The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), v. 9, p. 235.
3. The problem doesn’t occur, as far as I can tell, in the Latin Vulgate, which uses inprobitatem: meaning lack of probity; depraved or wicked, or in German, unverschämten. It seems like an idea introduced in the English Reformation (King James Version).
4. David Buttrick, Speaking Parables: A Homiletic Guide (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), p. 186.
5. Thanks to my lovely wife, Joy Howard, for reminding me of this all the time!
6. Sören Kierkegaard. The Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing (NY: Harper, 1938, translation of 1845 Danish edition). Available online from Religion Online.