Luke 11:1-13 Commentary

This rich collection of Jesus’s teaching on prayer is made all the more significant given the passage that we looked at last Sunday. At Martha and Mary’s house, Jesus encouraged the women to sit at his feet and choose the better portion, being with God. Now, Jesus describes a practice of being with God in prayer.

In comparison to Matthew’s version of this prayer, Luke’s Jesus leaves out a few lines but does not change the overall gist of the prayer: we are still being taught to pray to God for God’s Kingdom to be fully realized.

In fact, the way Luke sets up the teaching makes this even more clear than Matthew does. The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, “as John taught his disciples.” In other words, the disciples are asking their rabbi to do something quite common among rabbis and their disciples. Having a prayer set by your rabbi that you could recite repeatedly becomes part of the identity your rabbi shapes for you; it becomes part of the way that you follow and take on the character or ‘school’ of your rabbi. The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray so that they can become more like him.

And embedded in this prayer we see how God wants us to live in the name of the Lord. Each petition of the prayer is pointed outwards from the one praying even while requiring something from them. To hallow God’s name, to make it holy, is to live with honour and integrity in God’s name. For God’s Kingdom to come, we must be within it. To live in trust that God will provide our daily bread requires us to avoid the selfish grabs or hoarding that come when we are consumed with worry (whether we realize that we are controlled by our worry or not). The fullness of being forgiven is only truly known or recognized by being forgiving to others. And praying to not be brought into the time of trial requires us to be people who are steadfastly following Jesus where he might lead; only then do we know the sobering reality of the hardships a life lived with and for him might bring.

As if this weren’t enough, Jesus adds on two stories to fill out the outward commitment and trust for God his prayer embodies. The first story is about the midnight houseguest pits decorum against need. As many scholars will point out, most modern translation choices to use the word “persistence” does not catch the actual meaning of the word Jesus uses. Jesus says that the man goes to his neighbour “shamelessly.” He is less concerned about inappropriately waking his neighbour up than he is about the person who has come to him and has a clear and present need. Jesus says that the reluctant neighbour will (eventually) respond because of the commitment to actively voicing the need. The bottom line: when it comes to advocating for others, we are to be bold and throw social norms or expectations to the wind. We are here and are meant to live and act for one another’s good. This is how God’s Kingdom comes and God’s name is hallowed.

Then Jesus reiterates that we can trust the one we pray to, especially when we are praying on behalf of others. When we ask for the needs of others, it will be given, when we search for the means to meet the needs for others, it will be found, when we knock on doors, they will be opened because God gives us the Holy Spirit as we pursue and join in the answer to our prayers.

This is a hard one to accept outright in times like these. Many of us are finding that our concerns and prayers for the poor are not bearing fruit in the current political climate. What are we to do when human free will and sinfulness keep obstructing the work we do with the Spirit to be part of God’s kingdom good? Is God less trustworthy? For now, my personal approach has been to add more people in need to my prayer list. Alongside the literal poor, I’m now also praying for the morally impoverished leaders- political, economic, and social- who reject the call to the common good. I’m praying that they will be brought into Jesus’s discipleship and learn to live and lead in the way this prayer describes.

Textual Point

Justo González believes that this prayer was inspired by the one in Proverbs 30.8b-9: “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food that I need, or I shall be full, and deny you, and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or I shall be poor, and steal, and profane the name of my God.” For González, the connection points to the name of the Lord, its power and our representation of it. He writes, “This is not a list of petitions. It is a single, ardent call for the kingdom in which God’s name is hallowed, and in which all have what they need.” (Belief series commentary on Luke)

Illustration Idea

Speaking of that Proverbs prayer and the message of the Lord’s prayer… My husband and I have endeavoured into the home buying world, which has meant a lot of budget talk: what can we afford, what would we like, etc. During one of these conversations while driving to a house viewing, he said to me, “I prayed to God back when I was in college that prayer that is in Proverbs—the one about not having too little so that I would be tempted to curse God or too much so that I would forget about him.” I semi-jokingly responded, “I wish I would have known that when we were dating…” But since he told me that, and I readjusted my expectations, every single one of our cost estimates on the projected budget have been nearly accurate to the dollar: I am seeing this prayer and its corresponding human commitment play out in real time. God’s Kingdom is coming in the lifestyle my family lives as God gives us our daily bread—no more, no less, and with a little bit of stress here and there as trust might be the hardest posture for me to keep towards God.