Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Prayer is a central theme in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus was frequently going away to pray, and he prayed before the major turning points in his ministry, the calling of the disciples (6:12-13), Peter’s confession (9:18), the transfiguration (9:28), at Gethsemane (22:40-42), on the cross (23:34, 46), and at the table with his disciples after the resurrection (24:30).
• First century Judaism already involved set prayers. Jews have prayers for morning and prayers for evening, prayers before eating, prayers before working. According to Jewish liturgical scholar Lawrence Hoffman, “Jews do offer freely composed prayers… But overall, it is the fixed order and content of Jewish prayer that gives it its distinctiveness and that demands the personal commitment to prayer as a discipline.” This is not unique to Judaism. Think about the liturgy we use in worship, the monastic tradition of praying the hours, the lectionary, even the order of fast songs, slower songs, faster songs of the non-liturgical traditions.
• V. 1 starts with “a certain” again, universalizing the teaching.
• Jesus teaches this prayer in Matthew also (6:9-13). While the prayers are very similar, there are some differences. The Lukan form, true to Luke’s general style, is simpler and more direct.
• The use of first person plural pronouns in the prayer demonstrate the communal nature of prayer. It is not an act of individual piety, but of communal worship.
• Naming plays an important role in identity in first century culture (c.f. Jesus asking the demons names in 8:30). Praying that God’s name be hallowed (made holy), is both a prayer to ask God to establish God’s own sanctity, and for the day that all will know God as holy).
• The second part, that God’s kingdom come, has been a central part of Jesus teachings (c.f. 10:9, 11).
• Having prayed for God, the prayer then turns to our needs; bread, forgiveness, and deliverance. Daily is an unusual word in the Greek. Epiousios, it only shows up on one other manuscript, so it is hard to know its exact meaning. It seems to have a physical rather than a metaphorical meaning, coming from the manna in the wilderness, which the Israelites could only gather enough for one day at a time (Exodus 16:4), or from Proverbs 30:8, “Feed me with the food that I need.” “Give” in v. 3 is in the present tense, which in the Greek indicates an event that happens over and over again. Every day, give us our daily bread.
• “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” The first “forgive” is in what is called the aorist tense. The aorist indicates an event that happens once and then has ongoing effects into the future. The second “forgive” is in the present tense, a thing that happens over and over again. We can read this as a powerful theological statement of the nature of forgiveness. The event from which we receive forgiveness is the death and resurrection of Christ, an event that has ongoing effects into the future, it continues to be true. We then forgive again and again. Our ability to forgive comes from the fact that we have been forgiven.
• Jesus teaching the disciples to pray is followed by a lesson about how God answers prayer.
• Galilean homes were simple one to two room structures built around a common oven. Because they all baked together, women would know which house was likely to have extra bread. And because the homes were small, getting up in the night was liable to rouse the whole family.
• Hospitality was such a central tenet of the community, that it would have been unthinkable for someone to refuse to help a neighbor, and thus forcing them to be unable to provide hospitality to their guest. Proverbs 3:28-29, “Do not say to your neighbor, ‘Go, and come again, tomorrow I will give it,—when you have it with you.” The honor-shame code of the time would require the neighbor to get up and help, or risk being shamed for their failure of hospitality.
• V. 11-13 compare the goodness of a human father with the greater goodness of God.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Winner, Lauren. “Chapter Five: Tefillah, Prayer.” Mudhouse Sabbath. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2003, (54-64).
No comments:
Post a Comment