Abba! Father, Hallowed Be Your Name
In Jesus’ day, travelers often journeyed
late in the evening to avoid the heat of the midday sun. In today’s parable, a
traveler arrives close to midnight. The late arrival put the householder in an embarrassing
situation. He had no bread so he could
not fulfill the sacred obligations of hospitality. Late as it was, he went
out to borrow from a friend. The friend’s door was shut. In this part of the
world, the door was opened in the
morning and remained open all day, for there was little privacy. But if the
door was shut, that was a definite sign that the householder did not wish to be
disturbed. But the seeking householder knocked, and kept on knocking.
The poorer Palestinian house had just one
room with only one little window. One-third of the room was a raised platform
where the whole family slept on mats, not beds. Families were large and they
slept close together for warmth. It was also the custom to bring all the animals
into the house at night. Imagine the commotion if you got up in the middle of
the night to answer the door (babies crying, dogs barking, sheep bleating,
cocks crowing)!
Is there any wonder that the man who was
in bed did not want to rise? But the determined borrower knocked on with
shameless persistence until at last the householder, knowing that by this time
the whole family was disturbed anyway, arose and gave him what he needed.
“That
story,” Jesus said, “will tell you
about prayer.”But there is substantial
disagreement about what that story tells us about prayer. Some believe this
story tells us to be persistent in prayer, that Jesus is encouraging an
insistent asking, a search that refuses to give up. This interpretation focuses
verse 8, I tell you, though he will not
get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his
importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs. In other words, if
you don’t get an answer right away, you’ve got to keep trying. To the extent
that this means our prayer shouldn’t be
just routine or formal praying, going through the motions as a daily or weekly
task this is certainly true.
Persistence is also required if your focus is
on seeking the Holy Spirit. The action of the Holy Spirit is gradual; it
happens over a long period of time. Because spiritual growth takes a lifetime,
we should keep praying to God. We ought to beg and beg God for the Holy Spirit
to come into us and work change upon our hearts. Note, we beg not for God to
fill our specific requests but for God to send the Holy Spirit into our hearts.
We beg not for experiences of the Holy Spirit, which are rare, but for changes
in wisdom and understanding and in our capacity to love and care for others. But, importantly, we are not to take God’s
silence as a sign of rejection. When we pray, we are to pray with the assurance
that we are God’s beloved children. It’s
certainly true that persistence is what’s needed if we seek the change of heart
brought by the Holy Spirit.
It’s also true that the Holy Spirit is
what this whole fast-paced, ever-changing world needs. I truly believe the only
remedy for our current situation is the slow and persistent work of the Holy
Spirit to bring changes from the inside, so that we can become catalysts for
change for the good on the outside. So that we can bring God’s love and hope to
people who really need community. Persistence
is what’s needed if we focus is
intercessory prayer, prayer that pours God’s love out onto others.
Tom
Wright, suggests,
There is a
battle going on a fight with the powers of darkness and those who have glimpsed
the light are called to struggle in prayer, to pray with passion—for peace, for
reconciliation, for wisdom, for a thousand things for the world and the church,
perhaps a hundred or two for one’s own family, friends and neighbours, and
perhaps a dozen or two for oneself.
There are, of course, too many things to
pray about. That’s why it’s important to be disciplined and regular. If you
leave it to the whim of the moment you’ll never be a true intercessor, somebody
through whose prayers God’s love is poured out into the world.[1]
I really like
that ratio (a thousand/to a hundred/to a dozen) between prayers for the world,
prayers for those you care for and prayers for yourself. I also like the
emphasis on discipline and regularity as well as energy, passion, and
commitment.
Someone
has said that the Lord’s Prayer has two great uses in our private prayers. If
we use it at the beginning of our devotions it awakens all kinds of holy
desires which lead us on into the right pathways of prayer. If we use it at the
end of our devotions it sums up all we ought to pray for in the presence of
God.
The Lord’s
prayer begins by calling God Father.
Actually the word was abba, better
translated as papa or daddy. It reflects the familiarity, the intimacy of
Jesus’ relationship with God, a relationship which Jesus came to restore
between God and us.
The name Abba Father also identifies who
we are. We are children of God. The
Gospel promises that no matter how powerful our earthly names, they do not
define us. What defines us is the name given to us by God alone: the name of beloved child of God. We discover who we are by hearing once again
whose we are, to whom we belong. We who call ourselves Christians are
marked with the cross of Christ and named a beloved child of God forever.
Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer we
are reminded of this gift of identity (as a child of God). That no matter where
we go, God will be with us. That no matter what we may do, God is for us and
will not abandon us.
That first word, Abba Father, also tells us that in prayer we are not coming to
someone out of whom gifts have to be unwillingly extracted, but to a father who
delights to supply his children’s needs. It’s important to focus on the last
verse of our Gospel reading, 13If
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!"
The
lesson of this parable is not that we must batter at God’s door until we
finally compel him to give us what we want, until we coerce an unwilling
God to answer. Jesus is trying to say just the opposite: If an unwilling
householder can be coerced by a friend’s shameless persistence into giving him
what he needs, how much more will God
who is a loving Father supply all
his children’s needs.
This does not free us from commitment to
prayer. Prayer is our personal connection with God. Deeper than mere words, in
prayer we open our hearts and hope for answers. But it does mean that we are
not wringing gifts from an unwilling God, but going to one who knows our needs
better than we know them ourselves and whose heart towards us is the heart of
generous love. If we do not receive what we pray for, it is not because God
grudgingly refuses to give it but because he has some better thing for us.
There is no such thing as unanswered prayer. The answer given may not be the
answer we desired or expected; but even when it is a refusal, it is the answer
of the love and wisdom of God.
[1] Wright,
Tom (2004) Luke for Everyone, Louisville,
KY: Westminster John Knox Press, p.134
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