Year C

Luke 11:1-13

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Path of Faithfulness

There are Sunday’s when I look at the readings for the day and wonder how all three passages work together. Sometimes I can find a common theme and sometimes not. The closest I could come for today is that all the texts have something to do with being faithful to God or not being faithful to God. We could say we are either on the right path with God or off the path which can bring consequences as we read in the OT text today. God had charted a course for the Israelites on Mount Sinai when Moses was given the covenant that established a special relationship between them and God. God required their faithfulness. Yet, when they became settled in Canaan, they were constantly lured off course by the local deities and their alluring promises, as the words in the hymn, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, captures so well “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love, these words capture the Israelites reality, our human reality.

A calamity, the prophet Hosea, the first of the twelve minor prophets who was active during the latter half of the eight century BC, sees coming just around the corner due to Israel’s infidelity toward their God. God’s relationship to Israel in this text is described in terms of the covenant of marriage. The covenant with Israel called for justice, mercy, love, devotion and faithfulness to God, fidality. In their place, were injustice, indifference, eroticism, and infidelity. Hosea develops the analogy between his marriage to a prostitute and Israel’s marriage to God. Israel has been unfaithful, and God declares that Israel’s children are not God’s children. The relationship is scandalous, but will continue because God is faithful.

Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, was raising the red flag that they were off course because the gospel was being distorted by false teachers who were disrupting the people. The church at this point we learn from Paul’s letter to Philemon, was meeting at Philemon’s house. These house churches encouraged a family-like style but their was also potential for divisions to arise. He warns the congregation to resist allowing divisions and warns them that there were traveling preachers who were teaching alternate versions of the gospel or what appeared to be an early form of Gnosticism, the belief that salvation comes from attaining a special, intuitive knowledge of God or a secretive knowledge as the key to salvation.

Paul’s response was to urge the congregation to remember that they were baptized into Christ, died with him, and are raised with him. That their continued walk of faith is not dependent upon themselves or their rituals of devotion, but rather on God’s grace and the way of Jesus Christ who reveals the nature of the faithfulness they are called to show. He reveals the right course with God and how to remain faithful because our lives are filled with things and choices that can draw us away from God. Christ shows us how to persevere in our faith and how to pray for strength, guidance, and wisdom. Christ not only showed us how to pray but he gave us a prayer, the Lord’s Prayer that charts a course for the church and for us individually.

Luke portrays Jesus at prayer more than any of the other gospel writers. He offers three parables on prayer, one of which is in today’s text. It is only in Luke’s gospel that Jesus’ disciples after watching his prayer life ask him to teach them to pray. Jesus responds to the question by offering what we now know as the Lord’s Prayer. Luke’s wording of this prayer is much shorter and simpler than Matthew’s version and probably closer to the original words of Jesus. In the early church, there were at least two traditions of the Lord’s Prayer being prayed, but as time went on the church chose to follow Matthew’s version probably because it is longer and more developed. The prayer’s format and subject matter closely resemble other ancient Jewish prayers.

Jesus gave his disciples then and now words to address God, words to praise God, and only then, words to petition God. In many different languages, this prayer is said by millions of people not only on Sunday’s but everyday. It is a prayer that continues to unite the people of God. The Daughters of the King here will soon be starting a study of the Lord’s Prayer. More details to come in the August newsletter. Jesus not only taught his disciples how to pray, he also taught that faith and discipleship require persistence, which includes more than simply asking. To illustrate, he tells the funny story of the irritating friend to encourage the disciples to bombard God, to tell God everything, to talk to God constantly, to involve God in every part of their lives. As we pester God, as the persistent friend did to the sleepy householder, by asking, searching, and knocking, we learn more about God, and about ourselves in relation to God.

Each instruction Jesus gives disciples, he invites them to enter into a relationship with God through him and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus invites us to chart the right course because faithfulness is about having our priorities straight. It is about knowing that God comes first, before all else. And when we ask, seek God and knock on God’s door, God will answer, “If you 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?” God is ever more faithful than we are. Because of this, we have the assurance of God’s steadfast love toward us-even when we fail. This assurance is an enormous encouragement to continue to pray to God, to persevere in faith to stay on the right course.