Wanting the Thing We Get
(The Prayer of Petition)
Genesis 18:20-32 Colossians
2:12-14 Luke 11:1-13
To the church in
the diaspora[1]
& to the
church of the unchurched[2]
Alleluia,
alleluia.
A
reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory
to you, Lord.
Jesus was praying in a certain place,
and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to
pray just as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father,
hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and
forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not
subject us to the final test.”
And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at
“And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and
the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What
father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand
him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how
to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give
the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
Bold images of God
Through the ages humans
have used various images for God. Some of them are bold. In his poem The Hound of Heaven, Francis Thompson (a recovered alcoholic) boldly
likens God to a hound dog in loving pursuit of a wayward human being. God cries
out to him, “Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, save me, save only me?” The imagery wishes to console the wayward; they
should wildly trust in God who relentlessly pursues them with forgiveness.
In one of his parables
Jesus boldly likens God to a corrupt judge in town “who fears neither God nor
man.” A little old lady wants the judge to plead her case. She knocks
persistently at his door. He finally agrees to take her case and give judgment
in her favor, if for no other reason than to shut her up, because, he says, “she
is wearing me down.” Jesus’ imagery wishes to console us. “If an evil judge can
be worn down like that, don’t you think that God will surely give justice to
His people who plead with Him day and night.” We are enjoined to keep knocking,
like the little lady, at God’s door (Lk 18:1-8).
A quaint and humorous image
In today’s parable Jesus uses an image for God
which is humorous and quaint. He likens God to a dad all snuggled upstairs in
bed with his kids. Suddenly there’s loud knocking at the door below. A neighbor
outside looks up and pleads for three loaves of bread because a visitor has
suddenly come upon him, and he wants to offer him the hospitality of food. The night air is cold and the dad is half-awake.
He doesn’t want to come down, but the neighbor keeps knocking. The man finally
gives in. He descends to unlock the door and hand his neighbor the three
loaves. He does so to quiet his friend and send him on his way. Jesus enjoins
us saying, “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find; knock and the
door will be opened to you” (Lk 11: 1-13).
The Prayer of Petition
Our Catholic
catechism lines up four kinds of prayer. There is the Prayer of Adoration: the prayer of one who profoundly feels the
mystery of God. There is the Prayer of Thanksgiving: the prayer of one who is deeply grateful for his
blessings in a world filled with so much want and misery. There is the Prayer
of Forgiveness: the prayer of one who
painfully feels his waywardness. Then
there is the Prayer of Petition: the prayer of one who begs for something (for a
judge to plead a case or for three loaves of bread to feed an unexpected guest).
It’s the prayer of beggars. It’s the prayer of all of us who, sooner or later, become
beggars in desperate need of something.
The problem with the Prayer of Petition
The Prayer of Petition is
problematic. Somewhere along our journey we’ve all begged God earnestly for
some thing, and it was not given us. We’ve all begged earnestly for the cure of
a loved one seriously ill, but the cure was never granted. Or we begged God to
lift a mountainous problem from us and cast it into the sea, but it wasn’t cast
into the sea (Lk 17:6). Or we begged God to release people we love from bondage
or addiction, but they weren’t released. We remember (because we can never
forget) that the six million petitions from six million Jews of the Holocaust begged
God for deliverance from the concentration camps of
Being honest about the Prayer of Petition
Recently a friend with
his wife and daughter together with others dropped in the day before he was
going to undergo quintuple bypass heart surgery. They even brought their (and
my) lunch along. (We all like such guests!) The lunch, I guess, was meant to
lighten up the somber occasion. The day before heart surgery, you know, always
needs some lightening up. But the gravitas of such a moment inevitably broke
through, and soon we found ourselves not very “pious” at all. Soon we found
ourselves asking an honest question about the Prayer of Petition. An honest
question about begging God for a happy outcome to a heart surgery soon to take
place. An honest question like do we really think that when we earnestly pray
for something very important that we can actually influence God to change his
immutable mind?
Some thing or some One?
Perhaps the answer to such
a question is found in the very interesting variation with which Matthew and
Luke end this parable which likens God to a dad who is in bed with his kids,
and who is being persistently beseeched to lend a neighbor three loaves of
bread. Matthew ends the parable by having Jesus say, "If you, bad as you
are, know how to give your children good things, how much more will the Father
in heaven give good things to those who ask him" (Mt 7:11)? The image here is almost that of a Santa
Claus--one who gives us the good things we ask for.
Luke, however, ends the
parable by having Jesus say, “If you, bad as you are, know how to give your
children good things, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy
Spirit to those who ask him" (Lk 11:13)! No Santa Claus image here. You
ask for a loaf or a fish or an egg, and you don’t get the loaf or the fish or
the egg which you asked for. You get, instead, the Holy Spirit! You ask for
some thing, and instead you get some One--the Holy Spirit.
Does Luke offer a more
profound idea of the Prayer of Petition?
Could he possibly mean that when we beg heaven for some thing, heaven
does not give us some thing, i.e., a fish, a loaf, an egg? (That we must give
ourselves!) But heaven does give us some One--the Holy Spirit!
One response to being honest
Here as I try to speak
honestly, I must also speak tentatively and cautiously, for it is, indeed,
pretentious to claim to know what heaven gives us or does not give us. One woman angrily wrote: "When you speak that way [that heaven
perhaps gives us not some thing but only some One, and that everything which earth needs it must
give itself], you speak dangerously like a Marxist. You speak also rather
shockingly. And besides, it's all very
depressing!"
Another response to be honest
While one woman writes,
“You speak shockingly and dangerously like a Marxist,” a mystic friend writes, "When
you speak that way, you are really speaking to us about the poverty of God, who
comes to us so poor that all God has to give us is God’s Self—His Holy
Spirit. And when we receive God in that
poverty, God becomes human and we become divine. I am reminded of a quote of
unknown source which I wrote into my Bible several years ago:
I tell you nothing for your comfort
Nor
yet for your desire,
Save
that the sky grows darker still
And
the sea rises higher.”
She ends saying, "You are leading us into deep
waters and into the darkness of God. You
invite us when we pray to leave our playgrounds and follow you into the river
of rebirth."
The power to forgive God
To say that maybe
heaven gives us not some thing but only some One -– the Holy Spirit -- is not
shocking or dangerously Marxist. To be
left with only the Holy Spirit is not to be left with nothing. With the Holy Spirit of God, we have whatever
we need. We have especially the power to
forgive. ("Receive, ye, the Holy Spirit; receive, ye, the power to forgive
sin"{Jn
Conclusion
Wanting the thing we get
At the end of the day,
whatever might be our honest thoughts about the Prayer of Petition, we keep on
knocking at the door anyway, and we keep on asking for things, because Jesus says we should. "Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto
you." And if, when the door is
opened, we are, indeed, given the thing we asked for, i.e., the fish or the egg
or the loaf, that's fine. Praised be God! If, however, when the door is opened,
we are given not some thing but only some One (Luke's Holy Spirit) that's
better still. For though we don’t get
the thing we want, with the Holy Spirit we get the power to want the thing we
get! With that there’s nothing more important we need for the journey ahead.