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Parables of Grace - Luke 11
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
May you know that you were never self sufficient to begin with, that you were always standing at God's door in the middle of the night begging for bread, and that this was never something to be ashamed of. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 1:Welcome today. My name is Jeremy. I'm part of the team here at commons, and thanks for being here. We really don't take it for granted that you come and you spend a part of your weekend with us to worship. It means a lot.
Speaker 1:And if you're new, then by all means, text your number in. Say hello to the number on the screen behind me. That way I can get in touch and say hi, and we can send you some information about commons and how to get connected at the church. But I also do wanna mention this again. We have this really interesting event coming up on Saturday afternoon here at the church.
Speaker 1:It's another pop up theology event. This time, we're talking about faith and food with our guest, Jeremy Clyde. Now Jeremy is a scholar and a librarian and a minister and a farmer all rolled into one exciting package. And so this is gonna be a really interesting conversation because what you eat says more than you think about what you believe. And so we wanna talk about sustainable farming.
Speaker 1:We wanna talk about local food production, and we wanna talk about the healthy economics of how we move from field to table. And that's an area that Rachel and I are trying to learn more about and make better choices in. I think you're really gonna enjoy that conversation, not only because Jeremy's a great name, and he'll be here. So enjoy that. But today, we are in the parables of grace, and this is the season of Lent.
Speaker 1:And, yes, I know there is an election going on somewhere out there, but in here, we are preparing ourselves for resurrection. And that's why I'm wearing this purple stole today. It helps to remind us and focus us on what we are building toward together. Last week, I was teaching in Inglewood, and Bobby was here talking us through the parable of the unmerciful servant, and I love what she did with that story because it's just a really interesting tale. A servant who's forgiven a huge debt and then immediately turns around and demands repayment of a much smaller amount that's owed to him.
Speaker 1:It's a really interesting parable to include in a series on grace because what happens next is that the king who originally forgave the man's debt, hears what happened, pulls him back in, and unforgives the original gift. That doesn't sound very graceful, does it? In fact, Jesus concludes the story by saying, this is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. And these are the types of stories that we really don't like to hear from Jesus, do we? We like that theology that says we're saved by faith, not works.
Speaker 1:That thinking the right things will always be more important than doing them. And yet Jesus keeps sneaking into church, telling us things like, actually, if you want to be forgiven, you better learn how to forgive. And yet I'm convinced that Jesus creates this tension specifically to point toward our misunderstandings of grace. Because for Jesus, grace isn't what we do. Grace isn't what we think.
Speaker 1:Grace is who we become. Another way to say it is that grace is the world we choose to inhabit. And so the question really is, do we choose to live in a world that's dictated by keeping score and tallying wrongs and adding up our rights, or will we choose an alternative relational economy, one initiated by God, extended to us freely, a world where the points really don't matter? That's what the story is about. A choice to live in a world that keeps score or a world that's defined by grace.
Speaker 1:And graciously, God says that choice is up to us. Now, today we have another tale, and this time is about an unhelpful friend. So let's read the story, and then we'll pray. This is Luke 11 beginning in verse one. One day, Jesus was praying in a certain place.
Speaker 1:And when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples. So he said to them, when you pray, say, father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we also forgive everyone who sins against us and lead us not into temptation. Then Jesus said to them, suppose you have a friend and you go to him at midnight and you say, friend, lend me three loaves of bread.
Speaker 1:A friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I have no food to offer him. And suppose the one inside answers, don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
Speaker 1:With that, let's pray. Gracious God, we have been exploring your imagination of grace as we travel toward the celebration of Easter. And help us again today to not simply read, but to imagine with you, to see the world through your eyes, to come to believe in the world you believe in. We want to understand grace. We want to be captured by your word.
Speaker 1:We want to accept your invitation into a new way of being. So for those of us who feel like we have tried to pray before and being left standing at the door knocking, give us new resolve to trust again. Perhaps today, we might be brought back to the place of trust for the first time in a very long time. As we talk, as we pray, as we explore, Help us to find your grace in our midst today. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. K. The unhelpful friend. In this story, we have a thinking theologically, misreading our relationships, learning about persistence, and when the story flips on us. But let's start at the start.
Speaker 1:Because as we read the parable, we also read the Lord's prayer. Now Luke contains a shorter version of the Lord's Prayer from what we are probably more familiar with in Matthew. And if you're interested in our take on the Lord's Prayer, we did a series in the fall called the problem with prayer. And in that series, we walked through this model for prayer that Jesus gives us. You can find that online at commons.church.
Speaker 1:But here, to read the parable well, we have to keep in mind its context. And its context is a teaching on prayer. And this is one of the things I think we need to capture in our imagination of parables. Very often, they are Jesus' answer to a question. Here, the question is teach us to pray.
Speaker 1:Last week, the parable was a response to Peter asking how many times should I forgive? The good Samaritan is a response to the question, who is my neighbor? And the lost sheep was a response to questions about those Jesus kept company with. And this is really fascinating to me. That when posed with a question, Jesus often tells a story.
Speaker 1:Now we don't get a lot in terms of the people's response to these stories. Obviously, a lot of people found Jesus fascinating. They kept coming to hear him. But I wonder, did they find him frustrating as well? I mean, just once, wouldn't you like a straight answer from Jesus?
Speaker 1:I know I would at times. This is kind of the genius of storytelling because Jesus isn't interested in straight answers. He's interested in making us think. And think about that for a second. The divine voice isn't interested in correcting your theological thinking as much as the divine voice wants you to learn how to think theologically for yourself.
Speaker 1:In other words, Jesus would rather you fumble your way through a story than be handed an answer. And honestly, that in itself should challenge a lot of our assumptions about God. Perhaps we could say that the process of coming to know God is entirely as important as the knowing itself. But here, the disciples want to know how to pray. And they have heard that John the Baptist taught his disciples how to do it, so they wanna know too.
Speaker 1:And, again, prayer is a very difficult concept. I mean, the very idea of speaking to the divine is fraught with contradictions. And those contradictions can either scare us away, or if we allow them, they can make the entire ritual even more beautiful for us. But here, Jesus offers us a model of prayer and then tells a story about prayer. That's important for a couple reasons.
Speaker 1:First, because if we forget that this story is about prayer, we risk missing Jesus' point. Notice here, Jesus teaches us to pray for bread and then immediately tells a story about asking for bread. So he's wanting to make it explicit that these two sections are tied together. They work together. That's because ritual and story are inseparable or at least they should be.
Speaker 1:A ritual without a story to drive it in sometimes just becomes going through the motions. But a story without a ritual to maintain it and ground it often ends up getting forgotten very quickly. And I've often thought that spirituality in church is at its best when story and ritual work together and complement each other. They help each other the way they often do in Jesus' words. But let's keep prayer in mind as we look at this story.
Speaker 1:Suppose you have a friend. And suppose you go to him at midnight, and suppose you say, friend, lend me some bread. A friend of mine has come on a journey to me, and I have no food to share. The first thing I notice here in this story is this very detailed explanation. My five year old has realized recently that simply asking for what he wants sometimes is not the most effective strategy to get what he wants.
Speaker 1:And so now I find that I often have to sit and listen to long and winding stories that build to his argument one compounding factor at a time until we finally get to the ask. He's in kindergarten right now. And on Mondays, I pick him up, and we have ninety minutes before the end of school and the start of gymnastics. And so our ritual is that we head together down to the central library to get some new books and spend some time together. And so on Monday, we walk into the entrance, and he stops me and says, okay, dad.
Speaker 1:Here's the plan. One, we take back our old books. Two, we find some new books. Three, we go to the play area and I play for a bit. Four, we go sit on the couches, and you can have a coffee, and I will tell you about my day at school.
Speaker 1:And I say, okay. That sounds like a great plan. Let's do it. And then he adds, and maybe while you have a coffee, I could have a cinnamon roll. And all I could think of was, Eaton, I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 1:Because sometimes when you're a dad who talks for a living, all you want is to see your kids grow up to talk a good game even if they start to use those powers against you. But here, look at this pitch. Here's what's happened, and here's why I wasn't prepared, and here's why I couldn't have seen it coming, and here's why I just need three loaves of bread. So it's just this once, can you help me out? This is someone who has thought their argument through.
Speaker 1:And I don't know if you do this, but I practice conversations in the shower all the time in the morning, random scenarios that might come up and questions that might come my way, chances that I might have to be witty and spontaneous, and I want to be very diligently prepared for those opportunities should they arise. Well, this guy here is prepared. And I think that makes me notice something else in the story. Because Jesus uses the word friend three times in the first line. Suppose you have a friend and you go to him and say, friend, a friend of mine has come to town, and I need some help.
Speaker 1:And the repetition of the word friend and the rehearsed nature of the ask and the fact that the friend responds so coldly, all of this makes me think that maybe these two friends don't see their relationship the same way. And you've been there before. Right? That place where you came face to face with the realization that you saw your relationship differently than the other person. You you thought it was up here, and maybe they thought it was over here.
Speaker 1:You thought the relationship was on its way past being friends, and they thought, no. That ain't happening. And maybe you went for a fist bump. They went for a handshake, you did that weird thing where you just shook their fist. I mean, that's embarrassing.
Speaker 1:Right? Or maybe you actually found yourself short, and something came up, and you couldn't have planned for it. It was unexpected. It was humbling, a little bit embarrassing, but you pulled yourself together, and you put yourself out there, and you went to your friend, and you asked for help. And maybe you said, you know, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:I just I can't get involved right now. Because we can be honest. Asking for help is hard, particularly in a culture that tells us self sufficiency is a life goal. Needing help, asking for help, showing up at your neighbor's door in the middle of the night to inconvenience them for help, that's an uncomfortable place to be. And I don't know about you, but I hate being woken up unexpectedly.
Speaker 1:I have a hard time sleeping, and so if I do get to sleep, I don't want to be disturbed. And that said, I would still rather be woken up in the middle of the night by a knock on the door than be the one needing to knock. That's not healthy because that's the product of a cultural narrative that tells me I need to be strong and independent and self sufficient, and that can be incredibly toxic. None of us are any of those things. Of course, if I'm at my neighbor's door every night asking for help, maybe there's another problem.
Speaker 1:But when I need help and I won't ask for it, that's a problem as well because self sufficiency is an illusion. And if you buy into it, you will end up disillusioned. None of us here are nearly as independent as we think we are, and that's part of what Jesus wants to remind us of in this story. Realizing you need help, asking for help, all of this is healthy. But if that's the case, then why does our hero get such a rude welcome at the door?
Speaker 1:And there are, as always, a number of different ways we can read this story. I suppose the moral of the story could be to just keep on asking. Right? Jesus says, I tell you the truth. Even though he will not get up to give you bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will surely give you whatever you need.
Speaker 1:So maybe this is a story about persistence. It's a story about asking again. It's a story about not giving up when you don't get the answer you need. And there's probably something to that in the right situation. Picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, trusting you can speak for yourself and ask for what you need even in the face of apathy, this is a really important skill.
Speaker 1:A lot of us could learn that lesson to speak our truth and name our needs with more clarity. One of the things that can really kill any relationship in the long term is when one or both of the partners don't know how to ask for what they need. And, yes, it would be nice if our partner knew us well enough to read our minds and offer it to us without an ask, that only happens in the movies. Sorry. And so sometimes learning to ask clearly and repeatedly when necessary, this is a superpower.
Speaker 1:And maybe there's even something to that when it comes to prayer. I know people who have very diligently, faithfully prayed for years, and there is a profound beauty in that. Trusting in God's goodness, refusing to give up no matter what. But at the same time, all of us have prayed for something that didn't work out. One of the least favorite parts of my job is also one of the great privileges of my role that I have journeyed with a number of youth through loss.
Speaker 1:Relationships that break, careers that falter, bad things that happen to really, really good people, Parents that lose a child, parents that want a child. And there's a time for faith and persistence, but the truth is asking can't fix everything. We get sick. We lose faith. We die before it ever makes sense.
Speaker 1:And the simple fact is, someday, every single one of us will pray for just one more day, and no matter how much we want it or plead for it or believe in it, we will not get it. So, of course, I believe in faith. Of course, I believe in persistence. I'm just not sure that's as simple as all that Jesus is talking about here. And I think part of the problem is that we actually read too much into the story.
Speaker 1:So let me show you a couple translations here to show you what I mean. Suppose you have a friend. And suppose you ask for help, and suppose he says, can't get involved right now. And then the message says, but if you stand your ground knocking and waking all the neighbors, he will finally get up and give you what you need. The New Living Translation says, but if you keep knocking long enough, he will get up and give you what you need because of your shameless persistence.
Speaker 1:So both of these translations, they read the parable, and they go with this idea that it's you waking the neighbors and making a racket and persisting and annoying your friend into helping. That's what gets the job done. That certainly makes a lot of sense if we're talking about the person who lives beside us. Anyone can be harassed into helping eventually. My question is, does that really sound like God?
Speaker 1:Does the divine need to be badgered into waking or disturbed from slumber, annoyed into listening? Is that really what prayer is about for Jesus? And, again, I think the problem here is that we actually read too much into the story. Because where the message has us waking the neighbors and the NLT has us knocking and knocking and knocking over and over and over again, the NIV, which I read earlier, is actually much closer to the original Greek text. And there, what we read is simply, I tell you that even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
Speaker 1:Now do you notice the difference here? Because it's subtle, but it's really important. In Jesus' version of the story, there is actually no second knock. There is no scene to wake up the neighbors. There's no racket.
Speaker 1:There's no drama at all. In fact, as I read it, there's only a contrast between two potential responses. Imagine a friend comes to town, and imagine you don't have anything to offer him. And imagine you go to your neighbor and you ask for some help. But imagine he says, listen.
Speaker 1:It's the middle of the night. I'm in bed. Leave me alone. But I tell you that with God, it will not be like that. See, actually, I think this story is about the fact that God is not like your friends.
Speaker 1:God doesn't respond to social norms. God doesn't need you to wake God up and make a racket. God responds to your audacity. And the first thing you have to understand here is that friendship is a very big category in the ancient world. Philosophers, emperors, religious leaders, storytellers, they all love to play with this idea of friendship.
Speaker 1:And we explored friendship a few months ago in a series called friendship, but the ancient concept of friendship was very different from what we often hold today. Some four hundred years before Jesus, the Greek philosopher Aristotle once wrote, only when two are on an equal footing are two parties able to be friends. It would be absurd for a man to be the friend of a child even though he does feel affection for him and receive it from him. Aristotle's point here is that friendship is based on mutual benefit. I can't be a friend with someone who can't help me.
Speaker 1:I can love them. I might care for them. I might even go out of my way to be generous to them. But until they can offer me what I can offer them, we're not really friends. And I happen to think there's something to this assuming we can expand our categories broadly enough.
Speaker 1:And my best friends all bring something very significant to the table in our relationship. And depending on the metrics that we use to measure our various contributions, those friendships might seem wildly out of whack, but I know that each of my close relationships add something very important to me. But Jesus seems to be saying that our connection to the divine does not work that way. You see, a friend might respond based on a back of the napkin cost benefit analysis. Where have you been for them in the past?
Speaker 1:Where might you be for them in the future? But God is not like that. There is no social calculus here. There's no past performance check. There's no metric but your shameless audacity to ask.
Speaker 1:And for me, it's this phrase, shameless audacity, that's the key to the whole story. Because I think whenever we hear shameless, immediately, a lot of us, what we think of is shame. Right? We imagine ourselves standing on the street, banging on the door, making a scene, embarrassed, persisting, and demanding that our chagrinned neighbor finally come down to us. But that's not what Jesus says.
Speaker 1:Because God doesn't respond to our shame. God responds to our shamelessness. In fact, the Greek word that Jesus uses here is the word, and it is the antonym to the word, is the Greek word for shame. Jesus is saying shame has no part in this. What God responds to is when you stand at the door completely unashamed to be there.
Speaker 1:Story is not meant to illustrate prayer as this laborious task where you ask and you ask and you ask until you get what you want. The story is meant to illustrate how prayer is different from any other relationship you've ever encountered. Here before God, there is no argument to be made. There is no defense to be mounted. There is no transaction to appeal to.
Speaker 1:There is simply the goodness of God and the audacity of standing completely shame free before the divine to ask for what you need. For Jesus, prayers about being unashamed of need. Prayers about being unconcerned with looking respectable. Prayers about being unbothered by the sight of our own poverty. Because prayer is about being absolutely open and honest and knowing that we are still always completely welcome before God.
Speaker 1:K. Pon says it this way. People who lead reasonable, respectable lives, those who are preoccupied first and foremost with this endless struggle to think well of themselves, they do not obtrude upon their friend's privacy at midnight. And why not? Well, because I would display them as the thoughtless beggars they are, and it would make them look bad.
Speaker 1:But if someone were dead to all that, and if someone could come to his friend's house with nothing more than the confession that he was at a total loss as a host or anything else for that matter, then precisely because of his lack of shame, his total lack of self regard, he might find himself raised out of such death by his new and beautiful rising friend. And all of a sudden, this whole story begins to seem like a more cohesive image of grace for me. The disciples asked, Jesus, teach us how to pray. And he says, father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
Speaker 1:Your will be done even here as it is there. Give us each our daily bread. Not because we've earned it, not because we're owed it, but simply because we trust that you are good. Forgive us. Help us forgive.
Speaker 1:Move us past this keeping score that shapes so much of our lives and lead us not back into the patterns that we were once so deeply familiar with. And then he tells a story. Because that kind of prayer is unlike anything we've experienced before. It says that the cost benefit transactional thinking that defines so much of our lives and our friendships, all of it becomes meaningless before God. Before God, this is where you will never have to prove your value.
Speaker 1:You'll never have to explain your need. In fact, the only prerequisite here is the willingness to ask without any shame. And if we're listening, this is really where the teeth of the story are found because you were always meant to be dependent. And the idea that you are good on your own, that was always a lie, but the truth is it's a lie that most of us hold on to far too desperately. And grace is about letting it go.
Speaker 1:May you know that you were never self sufficient to begin with, that you were always standing at God's door in the middle of the night begging for bread, and that this was never something to be ashamed of. Because grace is about knowing that you are allowed to need help. Let's pray. Gracious God, as we read your stories of grace and we recognize that we have often filtered your images through the world that surrounds us, cultural ideas of relational transactions, and economies that drive us to cost benefit analysis. And we take those ideas, and we overlay them onto you.
Speaker 1:For all of this, we repent. And instead, we ask that you might break through all of that to remind us that you are fundamentally different, that grace is a new world that we are invited to explore. When we're the keeping score and the tallying wrongs and the adding up rights, and none of it matters, but instead, we are invited to come completely shame free in our need before you. Might we recognize that our illusions of self sufficiency are killing us, and that the sooner we can let go and realize that our dependence is not a source of shame or embarrassment but part of our core identity as your children, In that moment, we can be welcomed into everything that your embrace allows for us. God, may we express our need this week to each other, to you, and may we do it without shame.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.