The hidden prayer

(THis is a long one but liked it because is addresses the, often struggled over, issue of prayer not by looking at how we can get what we want or be successful at it but just looking at what Jesus meant it to be and demonstrated.)

The Hidden Prayer
Luke 11: 1-13

By Erika Izquierdo, Peru


Now a day we find that mystical experiences are in vogue. We are not at all surprised anymore to see the gurus, of different oriental religions, successfully calling their followers to prayer in the midst of overcrowded agendas. People have a thirst for silence, for contemplation, but more than anything for disconnecting themselves. In this age of prefabrication, artificiality, appearances, where what matters is the external image because the content is non-existent, is it very easy to “camouflage” our lack of commitment to the world with what appears to be a fervent spiritual practice.

This spiritual fever is spilling into even our Christian communities. Today there are tons of suggestions for how to pray “effectively.” For Christians it is no longer enough to talk to God, we want to see “results.” For this reason some of our contemporary “teachers” fill the Christian bookstores with fundamental tips that teach us how to get what we want through prayer. For these “teachers”, it is essential to pray “specifically” for what we want, to visualize it, proclaim it and well, they say this never fails, to end by quoting one of those Bible verses that puts God “in check;” like the one that appears in Luke 11:10 for example: “because he who asks, will receive…”.

In the same way, in Jesus’ time the oppression that the people of Israel were under made them cry out fervently to God for change. However, this was a nation that was accustomed to praying with a series of significant, historical rituals through which they remembered God’s intervention. Prayer was a fundamental part of Jewish life. In fact, prayer in itself was no longer a novelty nor was it the privilege of a few; prayer was very common and available to everyone. Despite this, it is surprising to see how the way in which Jesus prayed was actually attractive to his disciple. This festive Jesus, full of life, who knows how to fully enjoy it and who, well, is not exactly an ascetic like John, is a reference on how to pray.

Luke does not tell us exactly how he prayed, the only thing he points out is that Jesus was praying separately from the group and that when he finished one of his disciples approached him asking for teaching. Obviously the way in which Jesus prayed had to be different, and very suggestive, in order for the disciple to have been motivated to ask Jesus to teach them. What first catches our attention is that, contrary to what religions teach us, this passage does not stop to show Jesus describing a specific posture that the body must assume during prayer. Instead, this text shows us that the Master was more concerned with showing his disciples the content of a conversation with God.

The first phrase of this prayer has to do with God’s introduction to us. When we start a conversation we must never lose sight of the one with whom we are sustaining that conversation. This is why the beginning of our prayer talks about God’s identity and character. Jesus starts out by saying: Our Father. This is a very particular way of understanding the relationship that we are able to establish with God; a relationship of love and care that flows from Him toward us. And just as no father is subject to the will of his child, we must not forget that in addition to love, with this affirmation, we are also declaring our respect for who He is. In the same way, it is very gratifying to know that, as children, we have the great potential of becoming like this Father who is entirely good and just.

When Jesus points out that God is in heaven, he is not referring to the concept of place that we understand today. Neither is the heaven of which Jesus speaks found on the map that Dante Alighieri produced during the Middle Ages. He is referring to the cosmos, to the universe that is everything and of which God is the author and omnipresent inhabitant. To recognize that God is in heaven, as it has just been described, is to understand his sovereignty. When Jesus talks about the name of the Father being hallowed, he is proclaiming God’s authenticity and supremacy. Hallowed, or holy, means “set apart,” therefore to hallow God’s name means to set him apart from others who would pretend to be gods. It means to isolate him from any kind of comparison. In addition, in Jewish culture, the meaning of a name determined the identity of that being, therefore “to hallow” his name is also to preserve that which He is.

That God’s kingdom should come never ceases to amaze us at first glance. It is all the more astonishing when we have the idea that the kingdom of God is a place to which one has to go. To ask for it to come therefore seems very odd if we believe that the kingdom is a location to which we believers will go after dying. But we can see that this is not the case when we read carefully the infinite number of parables and definitions that Jesus gives to describe the kingdom during his ministry. The kingdom is the “kingship” or the “reign” of God, and where God reigns there can be relationships of justice and well being established for all people and all creation. Therefore, the kingdom is not a place, nor is it a physical location; it is rather a perfect condition of fullness of life. That is God’s very good will for all of us, and that is why we should not limit its execution.

Up to this point we have the introduction of the main character with whom we speak when we pray. The second part of this prayer has to do with presenting ourselves before God. What a different introduction from the one God makes to us! First of all we must recognize before Him, and ourselves, that we are needy beings, with an infinite number of problems and concerns. Foremost among these is one that Jesus, who is poor like the majority of those who live on this earth, knows well: it is the fear of hunger, our concern for our need to sustain ourselves with daily food; bread that is ours, but that can be taken from us by the selfishness and greed that prevail in the world.

Nevertheless, as Jesus already mentioned once in the desert, man shall not live on bread alone. It is necessary for him to restore his relationships, all his relationships. Jesus reveals to us that this restoration is not automatic; one can only ask for forgiveness when one has learned how to forgive. God places a condition here. That is, if we have not assimilated the fact that we must forgive others, we will never be able to conceive, let alone experience, the forgiveness that God offers us. If we have not learned this fundamental lesson, it will be very difficult for us to be able to be a part of his kingdom. To not fall into temptation, is not the equivalent of some dark game of God’s, through which He seeks to have fun with our inability to evade the sinful stimulants that come our way. God is not a trickster. When we cry out to him to lead us not into temptation, what we are asking is for his protection so that we may make it without falling through those situations of human degradation that we walk every day. Jesus also knows that our human sense of self-preservation would never upset God; that is why, in that same vein, he encourages us to ask God to “deliver us from evil.”

At this point we could conclude that the prayer is finished. It would seem that the only thing missing is an ‘Amen’. Nevertheless, Jesus has not finished his teaching on prayer. The text goes on to show that Jesus turns the teaching tone, which until now has characterized the prayer, into a huge question, which he situates in the context of everyday life. The Master does this with his characteristic humour using a detailed description of a situation that could happen to any of his fellow countrymen.

The situation has to do with Jewish hospitality. According to it, if someone came to your house to ask for shelter, you had to give it to him “no matter what time it was.” Not only did you have to give this person lodging but you also had to protect him; and well, this also implied feeding him. The situation that Jesus describes within his questions tells us of three characters: the owner of the house, the friend who has arrived from far away and the probable neighbour to whom the owner of the house goes to ask for food at midnight. Jesus identifies the owner of the house with he who is praying. And as it is not difficult for us to imagine, the disgruntled neighbour is God, our Father, who if for no other reason than because we have bothered him so much, will in the end open the door and give us the provision we have asked of him. But, for whom is the bread?

Whoever arrives at a Jewish home at midnight does not do so for frivolous reasons. It has to be someone who has arrived from a trip after traversing a dangerous and desolate road in the darkness. A person who has completed such a journey is exhausted, full of fear, dust and hunger. Jesus says that this traveller was a “friend” of the owner of the house, one whom he feels obligated to protect even though he does not have the resources to sustain even himself. For a Jewish person not to have even one piece of bread in the house was a sign of severe poverty, not just a matter of carelessly forgetting to stock provisions. Bread was something people ate daily in those days. To not have bread, meant that the owner of the house was going through a difficult time.

But this man, even in the midst of his own economic crisis, was able to recognize and try to meet the need of another. He was even willing to bother his neighbour at midnight in order to ask him for some provision that he might offer this tired traveller. It is here that Jesus urges his disciples to be like this man when they pray, and it is in this context that we find that encouraging phrase “ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Interestingly enough this verse is not about asking for oneself, but about asking, even in the midst of personal scarcity, for he who is also in need. This is the third part of our prayer, and the determining one; to know who God is and to recognize our own needs is not enough, we must also look after “others.”

The prayer that Jesus taught us is not limited to a conversation with God about ourselves. Jesus knows how confining it can be to perceive our relationship with the Father in this manner. In this way our God is very different from other gods; the purpose of our identity as his children does not merely rest in our relationship with Him, but also in our relationships with other people, and even more so with those who are in need. This is the third part of the prayer that none of us has learned to pray; in it Jesus invites us, despite our own personal poverty, to diligently care for the needs of another and not just ourselves. The sincerity of such a petition is what gives Jesus authority to proclaim that the Father will hear our prayer and that when we seek him and call for him, He will come to our aide.

Jesus concludes by saying that God is not a politician in the middle of a campaign, who promises everything but in the end does not deliver. The Father does not respond to the needs of people with cheap imitations, He would never answer a prayer fraudulently. He is not a swindler who gives dangerous imitations in return for what we ask on others’ behalf. For this reason He will never give us a snake when we ask for a fish, nor stone when we ask for bread, much less a scorpion when we ask for an egg. God is not a phoney who plays with our hunger. It is in this entire context of praying for the needs of others that the Lord says that the Father will send his Holy Spirit to anyone who asks. To have the Holy Spirit in our lives is to give testimony to his fruits, all of which are related to fellowship; that is, to relationships between human beings. The promise that god will give his Holy Spirit to those of us who ask it of him has to do with the unified, diligent and compassionate relationships that we sustain with others. In other words, in the end, “to pray for another” with real concern shows that the Holy Spirit is in our midst.

The novel lesson of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples that day was that praying is not merely talking, rather it is an attitude of life by which we demonstrate that conversation with God transforms us and humanizes us, thereby inviting us to try to diligently care for the needs of others, even in the midst of our own poverty. Our Father is the promoter of mercy among human beings. He is the God of those moments of fullness of love when we reach out a hand to another, as an advance on that which is certain.