Lectionary Year C
July 29, 2001
Luke 11:1-13

Distillation

Step V - Distillation

A. Summary of Salient Features

(JFC) This pericope gives us Jesus' ideas about prayer. It then moves us beyond the solitude experience of personal prayer out into the arena where people are hungry and without food, where they are at least on the road if not, in essence, homeless and needing shelter. Then it brings us back into the intimacies of family responsibilities and opportunities and their natural motivations to look out for the needs of others. "The theological 'center of gravity' of this text" is the God to whom the model prayer is addressed and who gives the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the major concern while the minor ones include the disciples, John and his teaching his disciples how to pray and the several lessons about petitions to be fulfilled.

B. Smoother Translation

(JFC) 1 And it happened that he was in a certain place praying. When he stopped, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples." 2 So he said to them, "When you pray say, 'Father, sanctified be your name; may your kingdom come; 3 give us bread sufficient for the day every day; 4 and forgive us our sins and forgive also those indebted unto us; and never lead us into temptation'." 5 And then he said to them, "Which of you having a friend will journey to someone in the middle of the night and find that he would say, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, 6 since the friend of mine has arrived from his journey to me and not I lack what is needed; 7 and that one from within answers saying, 'Never trouble me so; already the door has been shut and my children are with me in bed; so am I enable to arise and I give you what you need'." 8 I say to you (plural), "If then he gives to you and arises since he is a friend, through indeed boldness he did get up he will give to him a little of what he needs." 9 Also to you I say, "Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you; 10 for every one asking receives and anyone seeking finds and anyone asking to be accepted is open eyed. 11 But who among you being a father will have a child ask for a fish, and in place of a fish will give him anything evil? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, shall deliver a scorpion? 13 If then you, with propensities of evil yet knowing what is good to give would give to your children, how much more does our Father in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those asking for him.

C. Hermeneutical Bridge

(JFC) Robert A. Raines suggests that prayer, instead of leading God to intervene in problematic states of affairs, helps persuade us to be open to all individuals as Christ incognito. "Awareness that Christ lives in my neighbor, though unacknowledged by him, frees me from imperialism or proselytism. I am free to regard him as already loved and inhabited by Christ, a person from whom I may learn something new of Christ, one whom I am called to serve. . . Prayer is awareness of the potentiality for community which results from Christ's presence in every man and in me" (The Secular Congregation [Harper & Row, 1968], p. 118). With such awareness, although I am frequently reluctant to ask for assistance, this week's Gospel Lesson encourages and even instructs me to ask for help. Christian Community shows me I can expect for God to provide support for my needs from those living, growing and serving therein.

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