Jesus stories for Saturday
The Good Book Club
Saturday, March 3 -> Luke 11:1-13
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.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
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 because he is his friend, 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 asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will 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!’
THOUGHTS FOR SATURDAY. Some scholars might say Luke got the Lord's Prayer from Sayings Gospel Q (who doesn’t know about Q is invited and welcome to my adult sunday school class). Others might say Luke had access to Matthew’s gospel. IDK and neither do any of them, but I’m going with the Q hypothesis. Luke and Matthew (chapter 6) get the Lord’s Prayer (the Our Father) from the same independent source, Q. Matthew adds the closing doxology and we twenty-one centuries later use Matthew’s version liturgically for the most part.
Luke and Matthew are written in Greek (the notion that Matthew was written in Hebrew or Aramaic is rubbish, Mt & Lk have total in common with Mark’s Greek, and Matthew lifts OT quotations straight from the LXX, the Septuagint, the Greek language Hebrew bible), and both Matthew's and Luke’s NT Greek has Jesus here addressing God as Πάτερ, Pater. Some of my old Navy friends now call me “Padre,” Spanish for the Greek Πάτερ although I was not a Navy chaplain. But Jesus actually praying may call God אַבָּא which sounds Ah-Ba, which is not so formal as Pater, Father (another word altogether), but means Daddy. Daddy. Can you imagine calling God "Daddy"? I don’t even refer to my own father that way. אַבָּא
And the great parable of the friend at midnight. It isn’t “anthropos” that in other places the politically sanitized NRSV renders not "man" but “friend,” but here the man says, Φίλε, Friend, maybe even “dear friend” or “beloved friend” because phile is one of four common Greek words for "love," I need three loaves of bread. But here's the point: The parable does not say if you are the man locked up inside and sleep, get up and give your Φίλε the bread. It’s from the other side of the locked door. It says if your friend doesn’t answer the door, keep knocking and banging and shouting and eventually he’ll get up and give you the damn bread to get rid of you so he can go back to sleep. My NT professor at seminary insisted that the parable does not say that God is the locked up and sleeping neighbor who doesn’t want to be bothered with you; but the hard experience of many praying fervently and desperately is that my professor was wrong, even that nobody is home. How does this affect the faith of the faithful? Have you been there? I remember a sermon nearly twenty years ago at an especially agonizing time, when I asked my congregation, "Will the faith of Tom Weller survive the death of William Hall?" Have you been there too?
