Self-Sufficiently Dead or Shamelessly Alive?

"...even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs." (Luke 11:8)

This is a disturbing story for the parable appears to hold up PERSISTENCE as the key to answered prayer.  There is something to be said for disciplined, regular, persistent prayer. The problem is persistence in prayer doesn't work anywhere near often enough to be held up as the prerequisite for God to answer our prayers. I totally reject the shallow platitude that when persistence doesn't work, it means our prayers weren't persistent enough, hard enough, long enough, or sincere enough!  Tell that to somebody who's asked, sought, and knocked in prayer until their knuckles bled and their spirits were drained, and even so, the child died! "Pastor, I prayed and prayed and prayed, and still my child died.” I have heard many tragic versions of that gut wrenching cry.

This idea that God will respond simply because we go on persistently repeating the same prayers over and over again, is a dangerous kind of thinking, even contrary to Jesus' own teachings. For example, in Matthew 6:7 Jesus says,

"When you are praying do not heap up empty phrases... thinking you will be heard because of your many words. Do not... be like that for your Father knows what you need before you even ask."

When the disciple asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus gave them a prayer only 38 words long, with no instructions to repeat it dozens of times to make it effective!

So what do we do with this parable? Does it create more confusion than clarity? Do we blindly accept this idea that God only answers persistent prayer, while knowing that it's flat out contradictory to other things Jesus taught?

I love the parables precisely because they are hard!  The temptation is to over-simplify by reducing them to convenient little morals, wringing all the mystery out of them.  But the meaning of the parables is not always obvious, not always crystal clear. Even Jesus himself acknowledged that the meaning of a parable is not always what it first appears to be.

In Luke 8 he said to his disciples,
"To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables so that in looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand."

That too is a difficult saying, but I believe Jesus in part means that if you desire to understanding the secrets of the Kingdom of God then you are going to have to LOOK with more than your eyes, and LISTEN with more than your ears.  The secrets of the kingdom of God are not always so obvious.

In other words, in order to even to begin to understand the parables of Jesus, we have to look past the surface and dig deeper into them; turn them inside out and upside down.  

We read a parable like this one, and because of who we are we prefer to think that the efficacy of prayer lies all within us. In all of our proud self-sufficiency we would like to think that there must something that we can do to make God responsive to our needs. There must be something we can do to earn and merit God's gracious actions, and what it appears to be in this story (on the surface) is persistence. We over-simplify by hanging onto this persistence idea, and we measure all other prayer by that standard. If our prayers aren't answered then we weren't persistent enough, sincere enough, have faith enough, or do whatever enough!  We desperately hang on to that idea in the face of all the evidence to contrary, because we want to believe that we are ultimately still in control - even in control of God! We want God in our lives alright, but on our own self-sufficient terms. So prayer in that scenario is reduced to a kind of manipulation game with a rather capricious God!  Intuitively we suspect it is not true.  But, we desire to stay in control so badly, we delude ourselves into thinking we can badger God into catering to our needs.

Let's look at this parable once more, only this time with a deeper, inside-out, upside-down look.

FIRST, Jesus asks the disciples to imagine that they have a friend who is at home in bed asleep at midnight.  In other words he has them imagine as the figure of God a person who is deep in the experience of the nearest thing to death that there is in this life, namely the daily expiration of sleep -- that radically uncontrollable lost state in which all reasonable responses to life are suspended.

SECOND, he invites them to imagine that they break in upon this death of God with a veritable battering ram of their reasonable requests. He gives them a whole rigmarole of plausible arguments with which to persuade their "dead" friend to rise to life and help them. They need three loaves. They don't want to be embarrassed by their empty cupboards. They need to feed their hungry guest; they would have come sooner, but their guest has only just arrived. They would have, of course, raided their own pantry, but alas this was not their shopping day so they are fresh out of everything. The dead sleeper is their only hope!

THIRD, look at the way Jesus actually puts it, "I tell you, even if he will not get up and give you the bread because he is his friend, because of his persistence he will get up and give him what he needs."  I must clarify two things.  1.  The word for “get up” in Greek is the same word Luke uses later on for Jesus’ resurrection. (Luke 24:5)  2. The Greek word translated “persistence” also means “shamelessness.”   So the verse can also be translated, “I tell you, even if he will not rise and give you the bread because he is your friend, because of his shamelessness he will rise and give him whatever he needs.”

The whole meaning of the parable is changed.  This has nothing to do with persistence.  The deeper point now is that the Lord "rises from death" not because we have badgered him with our reasonable requests, but rather because we have come to him "shamelessly."  What does it mean to come shamelessly?  It means to come in humility confessing you can't supply for your own needs; it means to come with empty hands, recognizing that all of your wonderful self-sufficiency cannot really fill you, does not equip you to really love your neighbors or bring you joy and peace. All of your wonderful self-sufficiency still leaves you with a hungry hole in your soul and your neighbor hungry as well.

The only thing that we can bring to God is our naked, humble shameless admission that without God we are dead, hungry and unfilled; the only thing that we can bring to God is the honest truth that without God we can only live a facsimile of life - not the real McCoy.

As long as we hang on to our proud self-sufficiency and think we can storm heaven's gates with our reasonable requests and our pietistic resumes, God might as well be dead!

But when we see this parable inside-out, we see it as an invitation to bring our deaths... our emptiness... our powerlessness...... our brokenness... our fear... our sinfulness - to Calvary - that awesome and mysterious place of the death of God's Son.  It is only then, in our shameless emptiness that the risen Christ can embrace us, and he will raise us up to new life, fill us with himself, so much so that we may even find ourselves empowered and filled to begin to live a life like his!  The bottom line on this parable is just this: By ourselves, left to ourselves we are self-sufficiently dead; but in Christ we are shamelessly alive!

Jesus clinches the whole thing by saying,
"What father among you will give a child a snake when he asks for a fish, or a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then being 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?"

It's hyperbole – reverse exaggeration! Jesus is saying that if you and I, who are fallen and sinful, can do good things for our children, how much more will the heavenly Father give us something that not all the self-sufficiency in the world can even come close to giving; the risen Jesus Christ living within you through the power of the Holy Spirit.

You see this passage is far more than pious sop about persistence. This is nothing less than a proclamation of the very heart of the Gospel; that by ourselves, even in our magnificent self-sufficiency, we are dead and can only be made truly alive by the life in Jesus Christ!

"The Lord's Prayer," in this context, is not meant to be taken as a litany of persistence with which we badger God to get a response. Rather the Lord's Prayer is a marvelous expression of praise and acknowledgment of the mystery of the Kingdom of God that's hidden in our very midst.

"OUR FATHER, HALLOWED BY THY NAME" - The invitation to call God Father is an acknowledgment of the incredible truth that we are God's children, that we belong to God, and not to ourselves. Just as a child finds its ultimate security in the loving arms of a parent, so we find our ultimate security, by letting go of our self-sufficiency and resting back in the loving arms of our parent God -- and living life out of the strength and assurance of those arms!

"YOUR KINGDOM COME"-  We spend so much of our time, energy and resources establishing our own little kingdoms, staking out our claims and defending our territory. "Your kingdom come!" It's a prayer that acknowledges that the only kingdom that really counts is God's, and that we need to continually measure and evaluate our own with God's kingdom.

"GIVE US EACH DAY OUR DAILY BREAD" - “Don't I provide and work hard for my own bread?” says my self- sufficient self! Yes, but… the whole creation is a gift from God. The air we breathe! The water we drink! The trees we cut and convert into building materials! The fish we catch. It's all a sacred gift, given not because we deserve it, but because the Creator chose to give it.  It's sacred. We ought to treat it with reverence, like maybe the ownership is ultimately someone else's.

"FORGIVE US OUR SINS, FOR WE OURSELVES FORGIVE EVERYONE INDEBTED TO US." It's a concise description of the Christian life. To be Christian means to receive and to share in a repeating rhythm, the forgiving love of God in Christ - over and over and over again. But we live in a world that counts forgiveness as weakness, and rationalizes withholding forgiveness as reasonable.

"AND SAVE US FROM THE TIME OF TRIAL" Life is a web of trials and temptations, but only one of them can ever be fatal and that is the temptation to hang onto our self-sufficiency before God, and think that we, by more aggressive living, can have life all on our own. That's the only thing that cannot be forgiven, because that proud posture provides no room for God.

"Seek and you will find;
Knock and the door will be opened
Ask and it shall be given."

It's a giant invitation to bring your self-sufficient deadness to foot of his cross... to his deadness... and to gloriously receive the glorious life that can come only from the risen Jesus Christ! Amen.