Luke 11:4-13

     The form of the prayer that Jesus uses in Luke’s account ends with the request about temptation and Jesus goes on to tell a story. He begins by posing a question. Who of them who has a friend will go to that friend at midnight to ask for bread to feed a guest? And the friend refuses because of the hour and his family, but if you persist he will give what is asked for simply to avoid the persistence.
     It is an odd story. Posing he question in that way almost makes it sound as if there are two layers to the story. Who will dare go to a friend at midnight? Especially for bread? One might go for an emergency--the house on fire, a grave illness, word of an enemy approaching...but who would bother a neighbor otherwise?
     But, if one did have the audacity to trouble a neighbor for such a request, the normal response will be a rejection. It’s late. You’re bothering me and the family. Go away. But persistence will still gain the result.
     So, Jesus says, I tell you, Ask and it will be given you...
     One author says that the message here is that in prayer, the important thing is not to give up. Then he goes on to speak of what a loving earthly father will do. It certainly won’t be to give something evil and dangerous to a child. And if faulty humans can do that much, how much more will God?
     So Jesus begins with the question--who has a friend to whom you can go at midnight? Concluding as he does with the story of the father, we are led to the answer of the question. There is one friend to whom a midnight visit can be made without fear of rejection. Still Jesus seems to be recognizing the reality of the fact that prayer is not like going shopping at a store. If “answers” are not immediately apparent, that isn’t a cue to quit, but instead to persist. Knock, and keep knocking.
     The conundrum of prayer will likely continue to exercise the minds of the faithful in every generation. At Monterey United Methodist Church we print a long list of prayer concerns in our Sunday bulletin and newsletter. With it, we include the statement that you don’t have to understand prayer in order to practice it.
     Jesus doesn’t try to explain prayer, nor the mystery of either answered and unanswered prayer. His message is to persist with the knowledge of God’s loving nature.

What in prayer is the biggest challenge for you?
What would you tell someone struggling with the subject of prayer?

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Luke 11:4 - Lead us not into temptation...

     Asking God “lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil” to use the traditional phrasing, leaves open the question, “Does God ever lead us into temptation?” That is, does God tempt us, especially does God tempt us to do wrong?
      Some might suggest that God might do so as the test is to find out whether or not we will succumb. Yet God surely already knows how the individual will respond to temptation. It would be a pretty brutal test, with many failures, if the only purpose was for the individual in question to learn how he or she will respond to temptation. And for something to be tempting, it must be attractive and enticing. If God, literally, leads us into temptation, then God is cast into the role of making evil and wrongdoing attractive and enticing.
      In Jewish Literature, a prayer for retiring says "Bring me not into the power of sin, iniquity, temptation, or contempt; and let the good impulse have dominion over me, but not the evil impulse. In the Jewish Prayer Book it reads "Lead us not into sin or temptation..." let not the evil inclination have sway over us."
      The ecumenical version of the Lord’s Prayer is “save us from the time of trial.” “Lead us not into temptation” can be seen as simply another way of saying the same thing.
      The early church fathers understood this part of the prayer to mean: "Do not allow us to fall into temptation." In some of the ancient liturgies it reads: "Do not let us succumb to temptation." One wonders if this question was raised in the early church, for the book of James makes it clear that we are the responsible ones in temptation. "No one, when tempted, should say, "I am being tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. But one is tempted by one's own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin."
       In other words, we can't blame anyone else when we are tempted and when we sin. It's all our own fault. However, honesty requires us to recognize that, if God does not bring temptation or trials, God also does not prevent them. If God is all powerful, whatever happens is at least allowed to happen. To say anything else is to say that God is not God, that there is a power greater than God.
       "Lead us not into temptation," or "save us from the time of trial," both include that acknowledgement, that God is God. God has allowed us to be tempted or rather has allowed us to tempt ourselves. God has allowed us to sin, perhaps in the same way we have to let children make mistakes, or else they will never become mature adults. In fact, the book of James also implies this.
      The African Bible Commentary makes the point that to pray to be saved from temptation is a warning against any smug assumption that we are holy or virtuous. That without God’s help we would all fail the trial of temptation.
     Phillips Brooks wrote: Oh, do not pray for easy lives! Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come in you by the grace of God.
      To be delivered from evil will depend upon the individual’s understanding of evil. Is it personified? Is it human? How much of it is inside and how much found in the people and circumstances around us?
      Praying to be delivered from evil may mean to be delivered from the tendency toward evil and wrong choices in our own selves. It may also be to be delivered from the evil choices made by others.

      The prayer to be saved from failing in temptation has been considered controversial for another reason. Was this also the prayer of Jesus? That is, did he ask God for strength against temptation? The movie, The Last Temptation of Christ” raised a firestorm of debate, as though to be tempted is in itself somehow sinful or embarrassing.  Yet the book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin. (Hebrews 4:15)  Hebrews makes a definite distinction here between the temptation and the sin. Everyone is tempted, not everyone gives in to temptation.
      Again in the book of James, we read, "Happy the man who remains steadfast under trial, for having passed that test he will receive for his prize the gift of life promised to those who love God." Another translation says, "the crown of life." Not that we earn grace or love from God, nor does anyone ever resist all temptation, but James recognized that temptation conquered leads to a more abundant life.

What would it mean to you to say that Jesus was tempted by the same things that tempt us?
Do you prefer “Lead us not into temptation” or “save us from the time of trial”?
What do you personally mean in asking to be delivered from evil?

Luke 11:3

     Sorry, everyone, for the late post. 


     After teaching his disciples to pray for their daily bread, Luke tells us that Jesus taught them to ask forgiveness for their sins, linking it to the way they forgave those who sinned against them. In traditional renderings of the Lord’s prayer, the phrase is stated in two ways. “Forgive us or trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Some denominations say, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors - the phrasing used in the musical rendition as well. The more modern ecumenical version states simply, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.
     In Matthew 6:9-13, we also hear how Jesus taught people to pray, this time taught as part of the Sermon on the Mount. This is where debts rather than trespasses or sins is used. Both variations have significant meaning. Trespasses or sins would include the harm we have done, and the harm directed at us. Debts would refer to the good we should have done and the good that someone might have failed to render toward us.
     Jesus definitely links what we ask for with our own willingness to offer the same to others. It is not a situation of quid pro quo--that is, Jesus wasn’t saying we can earn what we ask for, or deserve it. But he was concerned with spiritual health, and he knew that to ask for forgiveness without being willing to extend it to others, is to miss the meaning and power of grace. A commonly used image in past years in reference is the Dead Sea. Water flows into it, but not out. The salt has therefore built up and it can no longer sustain life. To ask for forgiveness without giving it is likened to asking to receive without giving.
     Jesus doesn’t want us to live a life that circles only into ourselves. God didn’t make us for that kind of life. God made us for community and love and mutual support.
     The prayer of Jesus thereby seeks to turn out hearts to our neighbor, even our enemy. To forgive sins is to resolve conflict. In the version Jesus taught the people, we are reminded of the good we are supposed to do, and that which others are called to do as well. If the prayer for bread symbolizes talking with God about all that we need, perhaps the prayer for forgiveness is also about our service and discipleship.

What do you find hardest to forgive?
What good might you have done, yet failed to accomplish?

Luke 11:3

     Give us this day our daily bread.
     This request that Jesus taught his disciples to make is a reminder of the fact that God cares about our physical needs and that Jesus didn’t expect his followers to be unaware of that. The world and life in it is good; after all, God created it.
     The prayer Jesus taught may be understood as outline, or brief mentions of whole categories. Daily bread can be seen as representing all that is needed for the needs of physical life. Luther, according to one scholar said that to pray for daily bread was to pray for that which is needed to have and enjoy one’s daily bread. And, at the same time, it is to pray against everything that interferes with enjoying it.
      As we pray for daily bread, perhaps we are praying for the storekeeper who brings the bread or flour, for the truck driver who delivers it, the miller who grinds it, the farmer who grows the wheat, the fields lying under the sky.
     Of course, this study is being written in a land of abundance. Many people in this world of abundance are often more worried about how their daily bread is affecting their waistlines, than they are about having it in the first place. In the United Methodist Women’s study, Food and Faith, from a few years ago, it was pointed out that simplicity of eating was most common through most of human history. For special occasions humans feasted, but the rest of the time, fare was simple, even sparse. But in today’s affluent societies, “feasting” happens every day and we have lost the understanding of it, having to amp up what we have continuously in order to have the sensation of feasting.

What does this say in a world in which there are still people whose daily bread is seriously in question? Should this portion of the prayer call upon us to look at the difference between need and want?
How often are the two confused in this society?