Week 8 | Sunday, July 24, 2022
Luke 11:1-13
Week 8 PDF version
1 | begin
Pray the Lord’s Prayer.
2 | explore
Journal on your own about your experiences or share with a group:
Tell your story about when or how you learned to pray. Who has been a helpful teacher for you? What was one of your earliest prayers?
Tell your story about a time when you struggled to pray. What was that experience like for you? What did you do?
3 | read
Read Luke 11:1–13. Then read the passage again, slowly.
4 | engage
Prayer carries a lot of baggage for many Christians. We never do enough of it. We don’t do it with the right words or gestures or props or method. We expect too much or too little. We run into gates and gatekeepers galore, as if prayer were a secret code to which only the expert few have gained full access.
In this week’s gospel reading, Jesus’s disciples ask him for a lesson in prayer. For readers accustomed to gatekept prayer, this scene in Luke 11 might initially sound like another set of obstacles to surmount to reach God. But what Jesus says can teach us how to take apart some gates and make our way toward prayers that give us life.
What immediately stands out about the prayers Jesus tells them to say is how they are deeply connected to their first-century reality as Jews in Palestine dominated by Rome. Acknowledging the divine name like their ancestors before them connects them with the God of Israel as well as with their people. Invoking God’s kingdom challenges Roman rule over them with hope in God’s just, life-giving ordering of the world. Asking for “daily bread” evokes the struggle that the majority of Jews in Palestine faced to survive at or below the poverty line with inadequate food. And forgiving one another’s debts runs counter to the first-century Roman tax burdens that put a lot of people into debt and often took their land from them—their main source of income, housing, and food (11:2–4, NRSVUE). [1]
Jesus’s instructions indicate that the disciples can bring the situations affecting their lives and their communities to God in prayer. Politics, economics, and social injustices are not topics to avoid; neither are hunger and basic survival. All of these concerns matter to YHWH, and all are invited into the disciples’ prayers.
Jesus’s words also underscore that Rome’s kingdom is not God’s kingdom and Rome’s claims to power are not ultimate. In the face of oppressive domination that can wreak havoc in virtually every corner of people’s lives, remembering and praying for God’s kingdom can be like a breath of fresh air or a guiding star. It denies the empire power to control them and enables them to envision a different order in which none goes hungry and the indebted are set free.
The prayer is not just about envisioning, though. Jesus’s instructions suggest that praying is inseparable from acting to incarnate the kingdom of God here and now. When Jesus talks about forgiveness in verse 4, he points to an ongoing practice of forgiving other people for the debts they might owe as integral to praying for God’s forgiveness. When Jesus tells the parable about persistent asking in verses 5–8, he frames it within a practice of hospitality for someone in need of a safe place to stay and food to eat. These connections between prayer and communal practices seem less about completing a checklist of actions before approaching God in prayer and more about an empowering synergy that can be found in living and praying into God’s kingdom. Prayer is part of incarnating God’s kingdom, and incarnating God’s kingdom is part of prayer.
The same can be true for us today too. Jesus’s lesson in prayer illuminates that prayer is not about jumping through hoops to reach God or separating faith from political, economic, and social realities. It’s not about getting what you want from God or completing a checklist. It is much bigger than these. Prayer is giving voice to liberation. Prayer is words and actions enfleshed for new creation. Prayer is an invitation to hope, resist oppression, and cultivate life with one another that proclaims God’s kingdom here and now and still to come.
5 | respond
Journal on your own or talk with a group about these questions:
1. What gates and gatekeepers have you encountered in prayer practices?
2. What stands out to you in Luke 11:1–13? What do the political, social, and economic dimensions of Jesus’s prayer illuminate for you?
3. What does it mean for prayer and incarnating God’s kingdom to be part of one another? Have you ever witnessed an empowering synergy between these practices?
4. How might prayer help you give voice to liberation or enflesh new creation this week? What will prayer look like for you?
6 | practice
Take a few minutes this week to do one of these activities:
Pray to Remember
Offer a prayer that helps you remember who God has been and how God has been present for you and your community.
Pray to Proclaim Liberation
Offer a prayer that helps you hope in God’s kingdom and give voice to liberation among people and non-human creatures where you live.
References & Credits
1. See Ekkehard W. Stegemann and Wolfgang Stegemann, The Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century, trans. O. C. Dean, Jr. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 80-85, 88-93, 99-100, 110-13, 133-36.
Header image of “Stream” is by Radek Jedynak on Unsplash at this link
Image of “Sunset” is by Omar Roque on Unsplash at this link
Image of “Microphone” is by Daniel Robert Dinu on Unsplash at this link
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
The scripture readings come from the Revised Common Lectionary lessons for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost in Year C, which can be found at the Episcopal Church Lectionary Page here
