Are you there, God?

July 28, 2019 * Luke 11:1-13

Today’s Gospel Lesson from Luke is a pretty familiar one; the Lukan “Lord’s Prayer” occupies the first few verses in this chapter, followed by a parable.

So what does all of this mean?

We begin with the disciples asking Jesus for instruction:  teach us to pray. 

Prayer was not foreign to the disciples, nor to Jesus.  Luke’s Gospel, more so than the other three, is more focused on prayer and has the most instances of Jesus praying.  The request here is “teach us to pray”.  It has been said that there are no atheists in foxholes, meaning prayer is native to humanity under stress; I tend to agree with this, with the caveat that there actually is a right and wrong way to pray (not as much in method, but in heart).  The model prayer here is noticeably different from the Matthean version of this prayer we say every Sunday…there’s nothing added or different, it’s just considerably shorter…by half, which makes us pause and look at the contents:

There is the adoration (Father, hallowed be your name).  I do want to take a moment and talk about something here…and that’s the use of the pronoun “Father”.  While we are used to addressing God as “Father” and “He”, we should be cautious when humanizing God…because the proper pronoun for God is, God.  The use of the term here of “Father” comes from the word “Abba”, which means father as a parent (not father as exclusively male).  Why does this matter?  While you may have (had) a great and wonderful relationship with your father, there are many who don’t/didn’t.  For many, addressing God as “male” or “Father” is painful…at some point in our lives, God has also been “Mother”, “Friend”, “Brother”, “Sister”….  Don’t fall into the trap of allowing this adoration to dictate the “maleness” of God; instead allow this to be to you what is meant to be…a loving, nurturing parent.  Look past the gender, and look toward the intimacy.  We end this part with the proclamation “may your name be kept holy” and may your rule be now.

Then we move into the supplications:  first, give us this day our daily bread.  The most direct and literal translation of this from the Greek is “provide for us what is necessary and required”.  That is followed by a confession, and another supplication to aide us in extending to others the same reconciliation we ask of God. 

Then comes the line that is surrounded in much debate: “And do not bring us to time of trial”, or deliver us from evil, as we know it.  This is such a troubling passage theologically that Pope Francis recently approved a wording change to reflect “do not let us fall into temptation”.  The word temptation (or “trial” here in the Lukan prayer) doesn’t mean what we think it means or in a way that we use it as Western thinkers in the 21^st Century.  The Greek here that is brought over as temptation is more accurately the opposite of preservation; which would make this phrase reflect “preserve us” or “lead us away from the things that would violate our preservation”.  It’s just that “temptation” was the closest the early scholars could get (it’s interesting to know that there are many Biblical phrases and teachings that aren’t and can’t be fully expressed in English, either because the original forms of the writing have no English translation, or we can’t know what the original means and have simply deduced a meaning based on context). 

So here we are taught to address God with adoration, we are to make our supplications (or requests) known to God, we are to seek reconciliation with God and others, and we are to ask God to preserve us.  Easy enough; right?

Well that leaves me with a lot of questions that are still unanswered….

The first part of this year I was car shopping, and I prayed that God would find me a nice car at a price I could afford, or I prayed for my payments to be manageable (specifically, I prayed for a 2019 Range Rover HSE with a base price of $105,000 for around $350 a month).  We all know that didn’t happen.  When I was young I would pray to be taller.  I’ve prayed for houses to sell and prayed cars would just get me where I needed to go.  I’ve prayed for acceptance, and friendship, and all sorts of things.  Sometimes my prayers were answered, sometimes they weren’t. 

Truth be told, I wasn’t asking for things that I needed (although at the time I probably would have argued that with you)…I was praying for the things I wanted.  Whether or not my prayers were answered seemed more akin to a game of chance, or left up to some mysterious formula that I had yet cracked.  So I’m at peace with driving a Kia instead of a Range Rover and am at peace because it’s reasonable to say I received what I needed instead of what I wanted.

But, we pray for other things, too.  What about when we’ve been laid off from our job unexpectedly (or fired), and haven’t been able to find another one.  Try as we might, we’ve missed making our house payment for a month…then two…and six months have gone by and foreclosure has started.  We pray to God for help…for preservation…for, something; something that never comes. 

What about your mom, or dad, who is fighting to live against cancer, against Alzheimer’s, against any number of diseases that threaten human life.  You pray…you pray with all your might, with every fiber of your being that they be delivered from this, because you need them.  Or, maybe it’s you that’s in this battle…and you’re crying out to God to live.  Jesus told his disciples “ask and it will be given, search and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened”.  We’re asking and we’ve been asking! 

Where are you, God?  Where were you when my marriage was failing?  Where were you when my mother or father were dying?  Where were you in the miscarriage?  Where were you?  Where were you in these horrible things that nearly destroyed us?

God was there, is here, and will be there.

But because we didn’t get what we felt God should give us or do for us, we as humankind need to reason it out and justify it…so we do.  Perhaps God allowed your parent, or child, or sibling die because “God needed another angel”, or “they had completed their mission”.  Maybe your suffering is preparing you for something harder that’s to come.  Even worse, “God is testing you with this suffering”, or “You’re going through this bad thing – this bad thing that God has brought on you – because God knows you can stand it, and someone, somewhere, will benefit from it. 

This, friends, is what we refer to as “theodicy”…and there’s your theology term of the day.

God does not bring us to what God won’t bring us through, because God does not do bad things to us.  God doesn’t take our loved ones because God needs more angels (because angels are created beings to begin with…when you and I transition to the Church Triumphant, it will not be as angels).  God isn’t heaping suffering upon you for any reason; God doesn’t deal in suffering. 

So, then, why doesn’t God grant our supplications?  The thing is, God does.  Our requests should be for what we need for preservation, and we have been given that.  The Holy Spirit.  Everything we need for our earthly walk in discipleship. 

We struggle with this because of our inherent priorities.  We need to be first, we need to be right, we need us.  We love us.  Even when we are the most aware of it, we remain self-absorbed.  That’s the crux of the brokenness of humanity.  So much that Rick Warren sold Six Million copies of a book that begins with the sentence “It’s not about you” (The Purpose Driven Life, p 17).

So should we continue to bring our needs, and our wants to God?  Yes; we absolutely should!  Go back to the beginning of this passage.  We are called to refer to God as “parent”…those of you who are parents, you know this bond, you know this intimacy.  There’s nothing more important, nothing you cherish more than your relationship with your children…and part of that is you want (and need) to be a part of their wants, and needs, and every facet of their lives; if you, as a good parent want this, imagine the desires of the One who is greater….