How Much More?

Luke 11:1-13
July 24, 2022
William G. Carter

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” 

And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. 

“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give 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!”

 

The twelve disciples see Jesus praying. They wait for him to say Amen, and ask, “Lord, can you teach us to do that? Teach us to pray!”

It’s a striking request, for a couple of reasons. According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus kept praying. On the day of his baptism, he was praying when the heavens opened, and the dove came down (3:21). Many mornings, he slipped away from the crowds to pray (5:16). The night before he selected the first twelve disciples, he went up on a mountain and spent all night praying (6:12).

One time, in the middle of a prayer, he looked up at the twelve and asked, “Who do people say that I am?” And then he told them how he would suffer, die, and be raised (9:13). Shortly after that, he took three of them up a high mountain where his appearance changed – his clothes were dazzling white, his face was transfigured – and it happened, says Luke, while Jesus was praying (9:29).

He was always praying – and the twelve said, “Teach us to do that.” They wanted something of what he had. They knew he could teach them.

But it’s a striking request because they already had a prayer book. These men were Jews and they had the Psalms. They committed those prayers to memory. They recited them in their liturgies. The Psalms offer prayers for every occasion: when you rise to begin your day, when you lie down to hand over the night to God. If you need help with an enemy, the Psalms have a prayer for that. If you wish to thank God for safe passage through the mountains, or an abundant harvest, or the success of a childbirth, the Jews already had the prayers. They knew the life of faith is filled with prayers, prayers for every possible occasion.

But these twelve still wanted to know how to pray. “Teach us,” they said to the Master. “teach us to pray.”

Fortunately for us, the Gospel of Luke offers three brief lessons on prayer. The first, as we heard, is that Jesus offers a model for our prayer. We know it, we’ve heard it, we’ve prayed it – and we will pray it again in this service. You may have noticed that this is a shortened version of what we call the Lord’s Prayer. Today we have Luke’s version, so let’s walk through it.  

Begin by saying, “Father, Abba, Daddy.” We can address God with affection. Then, “Hallowed be your name.” Hallowed is Holy, apart from us, guarded and distinct. God can be addressed with affection, but God is holy and completely Other. We speak to the God who knows us all too well and we offer respect. 

“Your kingdom come.” That is the heart of the prayer. It’s the request for heaven and earth to be one. We pray that the God who rules over solar systems and goldfinches would come to rule over the situations that we know: the broken hearts, the wounded bones, the fierce injustices. We want the God who rules over everything to rule over us. It’s an enormous request.

Yet prayer is also specific: “Give us each day the bread we need for today.” He is reminding us of the old story of manna in the wilderness. God sends food from heaven for the Israelites who wander in the wilderness. It comes every day, twice on the day before the Sabbath. Yet it cannot be hoarded or else it rots. It is only bread for today. We need it. We don’t have it. We ask God for it.

“And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” Luke takes the edge off Matthew’s version of the prayer. In Matthew, we ask for forgiveness conditioned by our ability to forgive. Recall: “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” But in Luke, Jesus assumes we are already forgiving others, in the name of a God we ask to forgive us.

“And do not bring us to the time of trial.” That sounds ominous, as if the Father to whom we pray is the One who can also test us. It reminds us of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. After he is baptized, the Spirit of God hurls him into the wild places where he is tested by the Devil. God sends him to confront evil on its own turf. That is going to be a decisive test! Do we want God to test us? Jesus says, “Pray you are delivered from the test.”

Here is a model for prayer, says Jesus. This is lesson number one. With simple words, with direct speech, focusing on the life and death issues before us every day, always praying for God to come and rule over us and our lives.

This brings us to the second lesson. It’s not enough to memorize the words and mumble them on occasion. We must mean what we say. Infuse them with faith, hope, and love!

Like my great aunt Charlotte, who confronted me outside of a funeral home. I was in preacher school at the time, and we had just endured a cold, sterile memorial service for her mother – my great-grandmother – led by a minister who never knew the deceased. Aunt Charlotte said, “If I ever catch you reading a prayer out of a book, I’m going to wring your neck.” I don't know if she was a violent Methodist, but she made an impression.  Her point: prayer is serious. You must engage. You mean what you say. You don’t phone it in.

Maybe that’s why Jesus tells a quirky little parable. A friend has come to visit and both of you need some food. What if you knocked on a neighbor’s door to ask, “Can I get borrow some food for my guest and my family?” Is he going to say, “Go away, I’m sleeping.” Of course not. He is a Middle Easterner. He lives by generous hospitality. He won’t turn you down – especially if you keep knocking, keep asking.

With this, Jesus leans over the pulpit to wink and say, “Isn’t God much more generous than your sleepy hospitable neighbor?”

Here’s the lesson: prayer is asking. By definition, prayer requests what we do not have. So it’s more than rote words. It’s persistence. It’s persevering in matters of great urgency, not flailing at thin superficialities. Prayer is swimming from the shallow end of our need to the depths of God’s great mysteries. Because we really don’t know how to pray. Even if we have the words.

Remember the apostle Paul - schooled as a rabbi, trained in scripture, experienced in the grace of God. He confesses in one of his letters, “We don’t know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26). He knows he’s in over his head. We ask for bread from a God who directs the comets and plants the sequoia trees. We ask for justice when we are inadvertently perpetuating injustice.

Sometimes prayer gets twisted out of shape when we make it all about us.  “Lord, give me this. Lord, give me that.” Prayer is not about getting what we want – it is asking for what God wishes to give us. This is a very important lesson.

We don’t pray to hit the Mega Millions lottery; that’s begging for magic. Rather, God desires to rule over us, so we pray thy kingdom come! God grants us life and desires that we flourish, so we pray for bread – for ourselves and for others.

We might secretly want an enemy to be punished; it looks like they deserve it. Yet God wants us to stop fighting and live in peace, so we pray forgive us our sins. That includes the sin of being incapable of forgiving others, and the inability of forgiving ourselves. We pray for what God wants to give us. Nothing more, nothing less. Prayer is asking, searching, knocking, all in the present tense. Here ends the second lesson.

There’s one more lesson for today. It sneaks up on us. If we’re going to ask for what God wants to provide, it’s important to know what kind of God we have. So Jesus pushes this to extremity. He says, “What father gives a snake to a son who asks for a fish?” The answer: no father. And then, “What father gives a scorpion to the daughter who asks for an omelet?” Same answer: no parent would ever do that, not if the parent loves the child. Not if the parent gave that child life.

And God is even better than that.

This is where the third lesson sneaks in. When the Gospel of Matthew reports this section of Jesus’ teaching, here’s what he says, “How much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask!” (7:11) But did you hear Luke tell us what those “good things” are that God provides for those who ask? He specifies: “how much more will your Father in heaven give you the Holy Spirit.” 

Wow. You thought you could pray for a new Mercedes and a cruise to Tahiti. What you get instead is the presence of God. The Spirit. The invisible Peace and Love of the Risen Christ.

This is the open secret of prayer. We can ask for this, beg for that, make all our requests – and what does God give us? God gives us himself. God comes to us as we pray. And the invitation is to enter the dominion of God’s love that lies at the center of all things.

I think of the business executive who loved to go deer hunting. It was the alternative to the stress and strain of the kind of job he had. He climbed into his tree stand before dawn, opened his thermos of coffee, sit and watch the forest wake up. A twelve-point buck sauntered by, so he sat there, admiring the rack, and never squeezed the trigger.

What was that all about? Paid for the license, climbed the tree, never took a shot. His answer, “I go for the peace. It helps me. It’s just like a prayer.”

How much more will a loving God  provide when you pray? God will give you the Holy Spirit. God will give his very Breath and Life to you.

Did you ever hear the prayer of Howard Thurman, the Quaker mystic? If Martin Luther King Jr. was the voice of civil rights, Howard Thurman was its soul. One of his prayers goes like this:

Open unto me, light for my darkness.     

Open unto me, courage for my fear

Open unto me, hope for my despair.       

Open unto me, peace for my turmoil

Open unto me, joy for my sorrow.                      

Open unto me, strength for my weakness

Open unto me, wisdom for my confusion.          

Open unto me, forgiveness for my sins

Open unto me, tenderness for my toughness.      

Open unto me, love for my hates

Open unto me, Thy Self for myself.        

Lord, Lord, open unto me.

So we pray. If absolutely necessary, we can use words. It would be enough to sit in stillness, watch the forest wake up at dawn, and welcome the Peace that we did not create. We open our arms to receive what God most deeply wants us to have. And if we ask for it, it’s because God has already offered it.

Prayer is the life-blood of our relationship with God. It circulates through asking and receiving, acting and reflecting, speaking and silencing, all the while filling us with the life of eternity – which is the Presence of God.

Of all the gifts God wishes for us, that is the greatest. And I pray it for you. All of you. All of us. 

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.