17th Sunday of the Year
Gospel of Luke 11: 1-13
It is typical for the disciples of any religious leader to ask their leader how they should pray. When Jesus responds to his disciples in this regard it is different to other leaders. The context, in which the request ‘Lord teach us to pray’ is made, is one of the extreme reverence which the Jewish people regard God. It is such that it will not permit even the utterance of God’s holy name.
Jesus begins by addressing God as ‘Father’. This caused outrage among the Jews – that, anyone would dare to be so intimate with God! It was worse. The Hebrew word that He used would have been even more familiar: ‘Abba’ would be our equivalent of a child’s ‘Dada’! By using ‘Father’ Jesus intended to emphasise the close relationship that we might have with God.
Christian Prayer is all about relationship. When we know God and relate to God words are hardly necessary and when we address God we enter into God’s presence and awestruck so that we automatically cry out ‘Holy’. In God’s presence, God is aware of our being, of our needs, of our dependence.
Again, as we ask for all that we need we are made aware that all that we need has already been given us. God gives to us without our having to ask and the words and the prayer help us to greater realisation of our dependence: “Ask and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you”.
In this same context, the Lord then teaches his disciples about forgiveness. This is a new concept for the Jews of the time. They saw what we call sins as merely debts that they owed to God and certainly did not consider that they had any obligation to forgive others. In the context of this new relationship with God, a close, intimate reliant relationship with the Father, Jesus directs his disciples towards imitation of that same loving Father. “Be compassionate as your heavenly Father is compassionate. Don’t judge and you will not be judged. Don’t condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:36-38)
Being people who imitate the Father, people of mercy and compassion and forgiveness will indeed make us holy as God is holy and will lead us away from sin and harm and anything that is not of God.
So, over these past three weeks we have been learning with the disciples on their journey to Jerusalem about the three special works which support our life in Christ: action, listening to the Word of God and prayer. Prayer for the disciple is always the Prayer of Praise. When we praise God we express our awe at who God is, we dare to relate to God as Abba, we trust God for all that we need and Bless God’s Holy Name. Above all we cry out ‘Holy, Holy, Holy Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done in Heaven and on Earth’. Amen