Today in Luke’s Gospel (Lk 11:1-13) we hear how Jesus taught his his disciples to pray – the prayer we use every week at mass, and on many other occasions, privately and publicly. This prayer is also given in Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 6:5-15), with slightly different words, but in a very different context. Matthew is focused on the practical advice Jesus is giving about praying, and more generally about behaving with restraint – don’t make a big public fuss when you pray or give alms or whatever. Luke however seems to be directing our attention elsewhere. He continues with stories about persistence.
We do need to persist in our prayers. That is also clear from the account of Abraham arguing with God (Gn 18:20-32). This account is really quite comical, with God as the grumpy old man being pushed further and further, saying “oh well, alright then…” each time. The writer of Genesis doesn’t usually present God in this way – the God of creation, the master of the Universe, the Lord of all. Here we are given a perspective that it is ok to argue with God, perhaps more importantly, that prayer is a conversation, a dialog, not an incantation or some set of magic words.
This may be why Luke places Jesus’ reply to the disciple who said “Lord, teach us to pray” in the context he does. Jesus isn’t just giving us some form of words to use, he’s showing us how prayer grows out of a relationship. We might be quite justified in being irritated with the neighbor who wakes us to ask a favor in the middle of the night, but we work through these things, even to the extent of getting up if the neighbor persists enough. This is a real relationship, warts and all!
Jesus goes on to make the well-known comment “Ask and you shall receive”. But again it’s placed in the context of real relationships between people who care for each other – parents and children. What our Father is promising is the Holy Spirit, in other words, His presence with us. Jesus isn’t telling us we can behave like the kid in the candy store who can pick out whatever she wants. We might be tempted to think the world could or should be like that – but we know it really isn’t.
Luke starts this story with Jesus praying. The implication is that Jesus’ advice on how to pray is based on his own experience. His prayer was an embodiment of his intimate relationship with the Father. He wants us to experience that relationship also. He is teaching us how to build that relationship through our dialog with our Father. Real relationships involve a lot of back and forth, which may not be comical at all, but in the end we trust that our Father does care for us – more than we can possibly imagine.