Scripture

Luke 11:1-13

In this part of Luke's Gospel, we find Jesus giving a 'pattern prayer' and further teaching about the subject to his friends.

Seven or eight years ago my wife and I had a holiday in Fiji, with Fijian friends who had lived with us in Melbourne for a while. They took us by car over roads I would never attempt. We passed through villages, went from island to island, drank lots of kava, and learned about Fijian culture.

This included a radically different view of time, and also a kind of hospitality all their own. Nobody seemed surprised if we blew in unannounced for a day or two. If we arrived at the home of friends and they were absent, it seemed quite in order to eat what we could find, and leave some to replace it and show we had called.

This is much closer to the culture in which Jesus related today's parable.

Uninvited guests would have been common. Sending your card; like the British in India, would have been totally alien. Hospitality in Jesus' world was a sacred obligation - especially to the stranger.

It would be a major embarrassment to get caught at midnight with nothing to offer an unexpected arrival. Hence the call on a neighbour for help. Not surprisingly, the neighbour is a trifle peeved. But notwithstanding, he complies with the request.

1. The lavishness of God

Leaving aside for the moment any subtle 'nuances', what is the main point here? Obviously, Jesus is making some kind of a statement about our relationship with God, but what is it?

A common but mistaken idea is that the parable is about diligence in prayer. I have heard this more times than I can count. Similarly with the parable in Luke 18 about an unjustly treated widow who asks help from a cranky old judge 'who neither feared God nor respected people' (as Jesus put it).

Is God being likened to cussed neighbours or members of the judiciary: portrayed as one who is at first reluctant, but eventually caves in when someone shows their seriousness by refusing to go away? On the contrary, the point Jesus is out to make is precisely the opposite of this. The meaning becomes quite clear when you read on. 'Would any of you who is a father give your son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or give him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? The answer is obvious, of course. Then comes the punch-line. 'So then, if you, for all your defects, know how to give good things to your children, how much more likely that your Father in heaven ...'

The message is not that God is unhearing, unresponsive, unwilling, unhelpful. Quite the contrary! It is that God is the lavish philanthropist who requires no grovelling, no flattery, no cajoling, no pleading, no persuading, but who is more ready to give than we are to ask!

What does this lavish philanthropist give? The short answer is that God gives God's self. Not material goodies for the righteous; I think we have by now established that 'prosperity religion' hasn't too much to do with Jesus. In 1987 I conducted the funeral of an elderly man I had not met, as can often be the case. He had been a farmer. One son, a school headmaster, wrote this statement and read it in the service. There's no breach of confidence in my reading the statement, since at that point it became the property of all present.

As a farm family of eight (counting Mother and Dad), we never had cash, but we always had the essentials. There were no holidays in our childhood, but life was one endless venture of discovery. Dad would say, 'I cannot take you to these places, so I'll bring them here'. As far back as memory will reach, I recall the books, the atlases, the National Geographics and the terrestrial globe on which Dad would trace the voyages of the explorers. He was a great story-teller, and I suspect he made up what he didn't know. He could give us none of the paraphernalia of modernity, but he gave us what mattered most: himself and the values by which he lived. We will miss him, of course, but there is a sense in which he will continue to live on in us.

I thought that was rather a fine statement. 'He gave us what mattered most: himself and the values by which he lived.' It seems to me that this is what Jesus is saying about God. To be heretically frank, I find the mathematics of God's triune being unhelpful in this context. When I read 'Spirit' (or 'Holy spirit'), this is but another name for that mystery of whom we dare to speak. 'Father' is another name, of course. So, when Jesus says, 'How much more will the Father give the Spirit!' he is saying, 'How much will God give God's self!'

2. The gift of the Spirit

But we're talking here of something dynamic. When you find references to 'the Spirit' in scripture or in spiritual writing, these are referring to something which happens in human affairs or individual life which makes people say, 'Hey! There's something going on here which is out of the ordinary'.

These references can cover a great range of things, but there is a common thread in them all; namely, that God is somehow 'knowable' in human experience,

as the ground of 'integration' within the self;
as the goad to transcend myself for something higher;
as the guide who seems to head me this way or that; and
as the giver of those resources that I need for the journey.

Question is: when we talk like this about 'the Spirit' and the blessing of knowing God in this way, how do we image this? Do we envisage some emanation from God that lodges in one but comes from outside one - rather like that superb core of raspberry jam which mysteriously infuses a doughnut, with no apparent means of entry? Is the gift of the Spirit, so central to Pentecostal and charismatic piety, something which is 'injected' from outside? Moreover, 'injected' into some and not others?

Or could it be that we are speaking of something that might be present in everyone, but released only in some? To illustrate, I think of artist friends and art teachers I know who insist that there is an artist lurking inside everyone - but in most cases is suppressed, repressed, compressed, depressed or whatever! Certainly there have been enough examples of men and women starting to paint in later life to suggest there is some truth in the idea.

My own understanding (which is not strictly orthodox!) is that what we refer to as the gift of the Spirit or the blessing of the Spirit is not the injection or infusion of something 'from the outside', but the release or activation in our being of something which has always been there. But like the unknown artist it can be suppressed, repressed, compressed ... just not allowed to light, warm and empower our being.

Somehow, the act of faith, or of response to God in trust, can act as a kind of switch or catalyst that releases what has been waiting within. In fact - provided you don't push it too far - the metaphor of electrical energy is not a bad one. A house can be fully wired, but have only a night light burning in the hallway. The energy is present to deliver light, heat and power in place of dark, cold and stillness.

3. Why ask?

This brings me to the last part: the matter of 'asking'. If God is indeed the lavish philanthropist who holds nothing back, why the necessity to ask at all? Like a lot of the words in scripture, aiteo carries a stronger meaning than, say, 'asking' for the salt ('Pass the salt, please'). It can mean to 'crave' something; that is, to desire with a great longing. It can also mean to 'claim' something, like saying, 'Hey! I think I'm meant to have that!'

I've a feeling that what Jesus was saying was something like this: 'Lay hold on what is already within you - waiting to be released, let loose, made real in your own experience'. I want to illustrate this with a story that is in the fourth gospel, because I believe it is very much to the point.

There was a very famous pool called 'Bethzatha' (House of the Olive). It was very deep, and fed by a subterranean stream that bubbled up regularly, disturbing the water. Popular belief was that this turbulence was caused by an angel, and that the first person to plunge in after it would be healed. In John 5 we read of a man who had been there thirty-eight years complaining to Jesus that someone else always beat him to the healing water.

Jesus asked him, 'Do you want to get well?' On the face of it, this seems and extraordinarily callous thing to say - except that there's no evidence of Jesus being callous! More likely, Jesus wondered if the man had become content to remain an invalid. If he were cured, he would have to shoulder responsibility and learn how to live normally. Maybe the possibility of becoming a radically different person was altogether too threatening. There is a considerable body of literature on patients who stay in hospital to the point where it becomes preferable to discharge. Hence the question, 'Do you want to get well?'

Jesus then did something quite extraordinary. He told the man to get up, pick up his mat and walk! He didn't say, 'Your sins are forgiven' or 'Be ye healed' or to a demon 'Get thee out of him'. It was like he said, 'The divine energies are already within you; lay hold on them!' William Barclay, in his commentary on this incident, said the power of God never replaces human effort; that nobody can sit back and expect a miracle. He wrote,

Nothing is truer than that we must realise our own helplessness; but in a very real sense it is true that a miracle happens when our will and God's power co-operate to make it possible.

(William Barclay, Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of John, Vol. 1, Edinburgh: The St Andrew Press, 1965, p. 175.)

It would be cruel to generalise from this that every chronically ill person is the cause of his or her own problem. I don't think John intends to convey that message, and we know Jesus didn't believe that, anyhow. Rather, the message seems to be that the untapped resources of the Divine may be already lurking inside us, inactive until we 'claim' them, as it were.

It is many years since I came on this story, with which I want to close. True or not, it illustrated rather graphically what we have been saying. As I recall, a coastal freighter had sunk in a storm off northern Brazil. The crew took to lifeboats which were ill-equipped for a long time adrift.

After several days, the four survivors in one boat drank the remaining water. As the sun rose and they became increasingly dehydrated, one also became delirious. He had to be forcibly restrained from drinking sea water. When night came, the men settled to sleep, wondering who would be alive next day.

When the sun rose, the struggle to keep the sickest from drinking sea water was resumed. But all were now very weak. Suddenly he slipped their grasp, lunged over the gunwale, cupped his hands and took a deep draught. He screamed 'Fresh! Fresh!'

It was true. They had actually drifted into the mouth of the Amazon, which is immense of course. The Amazon discharges fifteen billion litres of fresh water per hour into the Atlantic. They were floating on fresh water, yet could have died of thirst if one had not cupped his hands to drink.

You and I don't worship and pray because without our asking God will not be persuaded to answer - much less because God cannot live without our chatter! We worship and pray because it is this unique act, of which only human beings are capable, that enables us to drink deep from the resources which are already bearing us up!

Reproduced here on the Warragul Uniting Church web site with the permission of the author,
Rev Dr John Bodycomb -2004.