Luke 11:1-13 (NRSV Updated Edition)
He 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.” So he said to them, “When you pray, say:
May 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 out of friendship, 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 to 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 asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asked for an egg, would 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!”
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"Prayer is a gift from a loving God who truly does care about what we desire and invites us to share those desires. God wants us to ask and promises to answer. The talking part of prayer is generally the easier part, however. Our desires - or what we think we desire - is usually up-front for us and easy to ask for. It's the listening part that is perhaps more difficult. What is God's answer? Even more pertinent ... : What is God's desire?
"Jesus taught us to pray ... : Our Father in heaven, may we get your name right, honoring your reputation. Your culture come. Your loving desire be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the bread we need today (not hoarding tomorrow's bread, too). Forgive us our sins so that we might give up our desires for vengeance and live in the light of forgiveness with others. Save us from the trials of being made the victim, and deliver us from such evils when they come upon us. Amen
"We imitate Christ in praying this prayer as the model prayer. But what I want to ask is: is prayer itself the central means by which we listen to God's desire and learn to model God? Was this the crux of Jesus' prayer life? And now we, his disciples, model his prayer life as the means by which we, too, can become obedient to God's desire?"
- Paul Nuechterlein, from "Reflections and Questions" on Luke 11:1-13 (link in comments below)
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"This week our Gospel continues directly on from last week. Last week, we had Martha and Mary, and here we have Jesus on prayer [...] 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. So it's interesting that Jesus was doing something by example, that he didn't start off by telling his disciples to pray. It was their desire to imitate him that led them to ask. And that's always the first thing we'll see with the prayer: his insistence is about asking. It's very very strong, even stronger in Luke's Gospel than it is in Matthew's. So the first thing is, his presence doing something produces in them a desire to be in some way like him and to do what he's doing. [...]
"So then Jesus does speak to them. And again, we're so used to thinking, 'this is Jesus teaching about prayer,' but what we fail to notice is that he says very little. It's very very scarce what he actually says about prayer. “When you pray, say: Father.” In Luke's Gospel, it isn't even 'Our Father who art in heaven,' as it says in Matthew. It is just: Father. In other words, the whole thing starts from the resting place, a place of complete confidence in one who is doing something, which brings something into being, from whom all desire can come. That's the starting place: a very simple word: Father.
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2FBg0T8isE)
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"[I]magine yourself as highly malleable, being stretched between two force fields, two patterns of desire. What the “Our Father” is doing is inducting you into a pattern of desire within which you may be found, one which will enable you to inhabit the “being stretched” which is how the desire of the Other other brings into being the daughter or son who is learning to pray.
[...]
"[Your will be done, on earth as in heaven.] So, may Your pattern of desire be achieved, here in our midst, amongst all these things that we are so often quick to reject, to despise, to tire of, be bored of, made to despair by. Your pattern of desire which already has and is a huge rejoicing and delight, a huge benevolence and peaceful longing, a real reality upon which our small reality rests, and from which it so often seeks to cut itself off, incapable of perceiving itself as the symptom of so much glory. May we be taken onto the inside of this pattern of desire.
[...]
"[Rescue us from evil.] The pattern of desire into which we are being inducted by the Lord's Prayer recognizes evil, but only as that from which people can be delivered. Rather than its being a thing in itself, it is only known in its being left behind to curve down on itself, never to be given oxygen by being dignified with a concentrated gaze. But the real force in the universe is not evil, but love, and love really does want to rescue us, to bring us out of our tendency to enclose ourselves in smaller and smaller spaces, to bring us into being."
- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, Essay 9: “Prayer,” pp. 427-33
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"[T]he difference between a fish or something doing them good, or an egg, and those beasts is very very obvious. But in terms of our pattern of desire - are we so clear about that? Are we so clear that the Father is the sort of person who actually wants us to have good things? I think we sometimes think that maybe he's giving me a scorpion because it's good for me, or a snake because it'll whip me into action? Don't we moralize the bad image we have of the One who wants to give us? Then we find it really difficult to actually believe that God does want things that are good for us.
"So it's our insistence in actually learning to imagine the goodness that he wants for us, and carrying on wanting it, that is central to what God wants for us. This is why we must pray. And Jesus makes this point: “If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children” - in other words, you know how to screw each other up, you know how to have dysfunctional family relations, you know all these things, and yet even you can distinguish between good gifts and bad gifts of your children - “how much more will the heavenly Father give Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”
"Holy Spirit - what is that? This is the pattern of desire that is, if you like, opened up by the desirability of what is good that actually enables us to imitate what is going to do good for us, and which then strengthens our longing and our wanting so that we can carry on insisting until we are turned around and find ourselves actually possessed by what it is like to be God towards all things that are and discover ourselves, owning it, receiving it, having 'knocked' for it, finding it.
"So this element which St Luke gives that the heavenly Father is giving, not 'the good things' [as in Matthew 7:11] to those of who is asking, but gives Holy Spirit. Rather than as a compensation, think of it as that what is wanted is the pattern of desire. That's what Jesus asks us to receive through prayer: to learn and to enter into the pattern of desire which runs us in such a way that we will not be hurt, that we will not be subjected to cruel self-moralisations, that our longings will be satisfied and will be enabled to carry on wanting more and more because that is what the Creator longs to give us."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2FBg0T8isE)
[Source of quotes from Paul Nuechterlein and James Alison's Jesus the Forgiving Victim, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper12c/]
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