Proper 12C, July 27, 2025. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
- Hosea 1:2-10. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the Living God.’,
- Colossians 2:6-19. Do not let anyone disqualify you.
- Luke 11:1-13. Everyone who ask . . . everyone who searches . . . everyone who knocks.
O God of Everyone, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
I want to preach about the Gospel lesson from Luke, but I cannot leave the reading from Hosea just hanging there! Hosea, a prophet of Israel, was crying out against his people for breaking the covenant by not worshipping The Holy One alone. Idolatry and whoredom, in ancient Hebrew, are the same word – the very same thing. [1] The people had promised fidelity to the Holy One of Israel, but they had been seeing other gods. They had been engaged in moral defection, fraud and cheating, improper intercourse with other deities. They have been putting their faith in wealth and other forms of power, engaging in dishonorable and undignified behavior, rather than acting in compassion and with high regard for both neighbors and aliens. (This could be ripped from today’s headlines.) Hosea charged that economic resources were being misused to wage war, and the government was exploiting poor people. When the Lord first spoke within Hosea, Hosea heard, ‘find a wife who is seeing other gods, because you’ll not be able to find one who is not seeing other gods – everyone in the land is doing it…and name your children after a place of a brutal massacre; “no compassion;” and “not my people.” Hosea heard God saying, “because I am not your becoming; I am not your being; I am not your will be.”
In the next verses, all of that was restored, and in the very next chapter, the renewed covenant between God and God’s people went further and deeper than ever before. The covenant became no longer just “you will be my people and I will be your god,” it is now that plus compassion. Hosea is a story about a forgiving, patient, and tender God. Tragically, our lectionary’s delivery system can make it sound to Christians as if God forsook and rejected God’s people in the 8th century BCE, not to be restored until Jesus came along. What we Christians don’t hear is that the whole of Hosea is a treatise on God’s redeeming love for God’s people in the 8th century BCE.
On the other hand, I can’t leave this passage without mentioning what God has not yet redeemed. That is, our sacred texts are shot through with misogynistic imagery and metaphors. It was the case in ancient times as it is now, that when men call each other names, often the names they choose denigrate women. What’s more, women are treated as the primary offenders in societal dysfunction and women are punished by not having legal control of their own bodies, even as they bear (and deliver) the burdens of misogynist misconduct. If the Divine becomes only male, then only male becomes divine, as my First Testament professor, Gale Yee says. [2] The language of “King” and “Father” for the Holy One, that dominates our prayer books and our hymnals, is oppressive for people of all genders. We are all incarcerated by it.
Gender has been on my mind lately. Okay, it’s always on my mind. The Gospel of Luke was once thought of as the Gospel most friendly and supportive of women. It certainly names more women and includes more dialogue by women than the other gospels. Then in the late 20th century, there was considerable pushback in the academy among Bible scholars pointing out things like the effect of the Martha and Mary story which stops one and shuts up the other. Into that conversation, Brittany Wilson, Associate Professor at Duke University, contributed a fascinating study of masculinity in Luke and its companion volume, the Acts of the Apostles. In her book, Unmanly Men, she looks at how Luke’s male characters “measured up” compared with what it meant to “be a man” in first century Rome (which turns out not to be all that different from societal or commercial norms in the United States, by the way). [3]
Wilson takes a close look at Zechariah, who lost his power to speak; the Ethiopian eunuch, who lost his power to procreate; the Apostle Paul, who lost his power to see; and Jesus, who lost his life in one of the most excruciating and humiliating ways ever devised, and who ultimately showed us the powerless power of God. Wilson concludes that the Gospel of Luke “provides a refiguration of masculinity that is inextricably wed to [the writer’s] understanding of God’s powerless power…Luke’s portrayal…blurs gender boundaries, but presents a ‘Lord’ who looks unmanly to the world of the first century and to the world of the twenty-first century as well.” [4] Emmanuel’s own Karen King might have some thoughts about this to share when she talks about the Gospel of Mary after our service today. It seems to me that this matters to all who are curious about or are drawn to the love God in Jesus.
It also seems to me that this idea or this interpretive lens applies directly to the Gospel passage that we have before us today, because it sounds like if you’re not getting what you ask for from The Giver of All, you’re either not doing it right or you must not be persistent enough. It also reads like Jesus is saying that God is like a grumpy man trying to get some sleep. We all know of children who are asking for good things and are getting deadly things instead. The bottom line for some people is that this teaching about searching and finding, knocking and doors opening, asking and receiving just isn’t true. I once heard of a friend of a friend who cited this very passage as the reason he walked away from Christianity altogether.
One thing I know is that this teaching is not the bottom line. It’s a teaching in the early days, a conversation along the way about 1/5 of the way into the combined books of Luke and Acts. This is the only time in all of the Gospels that the disciples ask to be taught. They don’t ask to be taught to think more clearly or more accurately about God. They’re not asking for a systematic theology. They’re not seeking better strategic plans or stronger managerial skills, or more effective organizing tactics. “Teach us to pray,” they say. Now my strong hunch is that they already knew prayers; they were looking for something deeper. They wanted some of what Jesus (or John and his disciples) had.
It reminds me of the late Bishop Tom Shaw. For 20 years, the Diocese of Massachusetts had a monk for a bishop. I don’t think I’ve known anyone who spent more time in prayer than Tom Shaw. I was with him on many occasions when people would ask him to teach them about prayer. One person asked, “How much time should I spend praying?” Tom’s answer was: “whatever amount you think you should be praying, cut that amount in half and don’t start there, make that your goal.” Another person was sheepish about asking for something from God, not sure if it was the right thing to ask for, or whether it was important enough to bother The Holy One. Tom smiled and gently said, “I think you should ask God for whatever your heart desires.”
Like Bishop Shaw’s teaching, what Jesus taught is simple and direct. It’s similar to the Kiddush, with ideas found in Hebrew Scripture and in teachings of other first century Jews. None of the words or ideas are elaborate or innovative. They are words of participation and engagement with the Divine. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote, “The purpose of prayer is not the same as the purpose of speech. The purpose of speech is to inform; the purpose of prayer is to partake.” [5] Partake in the hallowing of God’s name. Pray that God’s name be Holy. Partake in the manifestations of the realm of God on earth. Pray for the mercy and the compassion and the just distribution of resources. Pray for a world where the most basic needs of all are met, because the world has enough resources to meet the basic needs of everyone. “Your kingdom come;” it’s imperative. Partake in the hunger for actual food and spiritual sustenance. Pray that the third of the world’s population that is overfed and wasting water will have the spiritual means to change our ways to benefit the other 2/3 who need actual food and potable water. Partake in forgiveness. Pray for an open circuit of debt relief. Partake in deliverance. Pray that we all might be spared from that which is too great to bear.
And then Jesus told them a parable. Like all parables, this one is subversive and funny. But we’ve lost the humor in the translation of time, and culture, and in this one in particular, by a weird translation into English [6] of a word that means “with no shame” into the word “persistence.” The story Jesus tells about a grumpy man who won’t open the door to give his neighbor bread is absurd. It would have made his disciples belly laugh. It’s as funny as someone ringing a doorbell and hearing a voice from inside yell, “go away, there’s nobody home.” In Jesus’ time, no one in their right mind would deny bread to a nighttime traveler or the friend of a nighttime traveler, and they all knew it. It had to do with life and death, and it had to do with honor — the honor of the individual, the honor of the family, and the honor of the village. It’s not the persistence of the person knocking that results in the gift of bread, it’s the “without shame” of the person who has been awakened that will cause him to rise to give his friend what is needed.
This parable seeming like a lesson about persistence in prayer, has spawned a peculiar theology making God seem like a reluctant grouch who answers our requests to get some relief from our constant nagging. And it makes any who haven’t received what they have been asking for into people who must not have been asking often enough or crying out loudly enough. That kind of theology oppresses the very ones Jesus sought to liberate. David Buttrick, in his book about parables, writes: “the notion that, repeatedly, we must bang on the doors of heaven if we are to catch God’s attention is hardly an appropriate theology of prayer.” [7]
But there’s something else going on here that I think we misunderstand. Jesus tells his disciples that if they, “who are evil,” know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more will God give a spirit of holiness to those who ask. The Greek word poneros can mean evil, but it can also mean troubled, afflicted, or burdened. I think Jesus is acknowledging the reality that even struggling parents want to give their children good things. The point is not about human depravity but about divine generosity. And what does God give? Not just any good gift, but specifically a spirit of holiness. In Luke’s Gospel, a spirit of holiness is the presence of God that empowers mission, that enables us to bear witness to the persistent love we have experienced, that transforms us into agents of the same grace that has transformed us.
So what is an appropriate theology of prayer? If, as Soren Kierkegaard taught, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes [the one] who prays,” then it seems to me that prayer is a practice that reminds us just who and Whose we are. Prayer is a reminder that a spirit of holiness is in us and among us. (In and among everyone, Jesus says three times.) Ask and you will have it. Seek and you will find it. Knock and it will open. It’s already in you. It’s among you – every one of you. To pray, according to Jesus, is to partake in liberative, just, loving, compassionate, and redemptive praxis, because this is how we remember we are God’s people. This is how we bear witness to the persistent love of God. This is our stance. Prayer is not a transaction, it is a posture, as my wife Joy always says. [8] Prayer is an open posture of humility and vulnerability and the kind of bravery that comes from acknowledging God’s powerless power and our own.