Christ the King Epiphany Church, Wilbraham

The Rev. Martha S. Sipe

July 27, 2025 / Seventh Sunday after Pentecost / Lectionary 17C

Luke 11:1-13

From time to time during my years of musical training, the school would offer a master class by a well-known musician.  Sometimes the master class involved a lecture or Q&A about technique or interpretation or practice methods.  Sometimes students would play in front of the whole assembly and the expert would offer critique – that was nerve-wracking for everyone.  But always, at least in my experience, always the master class included a recital – a demonstration of the musician’s superb abilities.  When run well, a master class is both educational and inspirational.

It strikes me, as I read from Luke chapter 11, that Jesus is offering his students an inspirational and educational master class in prayer.  Already at this point in his ministry, Jesus has proven himself to be an expert practitioner of prayer.  And so, like eager students at a master class, the disciples asked him: “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Jesus’ master class on prayer has two parts.  The first is the recital – the demonstration of his abilities.  He prays aloud what we have come to know as the Lord’s Prayer.  It is a masterpiece of both brevity and inclusivity – brief enough to be remembered, but inclusive of all the elements of a good prayer, and therefore, a good model for us to follow.  The second part of Jesus’ master class is the lecture on technique and practice.  And it’s to this second part that I draw your attention.  In my Bible, the subheading following the Lord’s Prayer is “Perseverance in Prayer.”

Perseverance.  Or as it says in the text:  persistence.  Not unlike the musicians I have heard in the master classes of my past, Jesus is urging his disciples (and us, by extension) – urging us to practice.  To rehearse.  To repeat.  To keep at it – asking, searching, knocking.  Not necessarily so that you get it perfect, but so that your prayer becomes a part of you and you become a part of your prayer.

To illustrate his teaching, not surprisingly, Jesus uses a parable.  But this parable is . . . well, it’s interesting.  It’s a story about having guests drop by unexpectedly in the middle of the night and having no food to offer them, thus requiring you to go and pound on the door of your neighbor to beg for some food for your guests.  And your neighbor doesn’t really want to get out of bed, but because you keep knocking and he can’t get back to sleep, eventually he comes downstairs, opens the door, and gives you the three loaves of bread – probably, honestly, to shut you up.  This whole scene seems implausible to us, but in Jesus’ day, few would have raised their eyebrows about a friend arriving unannounced at midnight in a world without modern means of communication or the ability to estimate the length of travel with any accuracy.  And providing a meal for a traveler – even if said traveler shows up in the middle of the night – that hospitality was absolutely required.  I think it’s hard for us to understand – and impossible to underestimate – how important hospitality is in Middle Eastern culture.  It is a core social value, so much so that the neighbor in this parable ought to have been immediately willing to get out of bed to help the unprepared host without his needing to bang on the door persistently. 

And it’s that word persistence that I invite you to pay attention.  I read several commentators this week who claim that the word that translators have rendered persistence is not really strong enough.   When Jesus says, “because of his persistence [the neighbor] will get up and give him whatever he needs,” he’s not just talking about knocking over and over again until he gets an answer.  The word translated as persistence means literally without shame.  How are we to approach God in prayer?  Persistently, yes.  But also with shameless boldness.  With impudence.  Unselfconsciously.  Without regard for norms or conventions, without embarrassment or social propriety.  Even, as one commentator wrote, with chutzpah – gall, brazen nerve, presumption, arrogance, and just plain “guts.”  Where do we get the nerve to pester God with our prayers?  Because we are God’s beloved children.

Think about a child in a toy store.  She asks for what she wants.  Repeatedly.  Even though she’s been told “no.”  Even though she’s been reminded that she already has many toys at home.  Even though she’s been told that she can’t have everything she wants.  Still she asks.  That’s shameless boldness:  shameless because appeals to her reason and good behavior don’t matter and she cares not at all that she might be making a scene; bold because she asks over and over again, not to be deterred.  The child has complete confidence in her parent’s will to take care of her.  That’s how we should pray, says Jesus.

There are biblical precedents for shameless boldness in prayer, as well.  Think about the blind beggar who shouted at Jesus to get his attention.  Even when others ordered him to be quiet, he shouted out even more loudly.  And Jesus answered his plea.  (See Luke 18.)  Think, too, about the thief crucified next to Jesus.  He was a convicted criminal who freely acknowledged that he was getting what he deserved.  But he shamelessly asked Jesus to remember him when he came into his kingdom.  And Jesus said yes.  (See Luke 23.)

Shameless boldness is how we ought to approach God in prayer . . . because that’s what Jesus commends in his parable.  We ought to approach God with chutzpa, holding nothing back because, by faith, we know that we can!  Jesus hasn’t just removed our sin; he’s also taken away our shame, giving us instead the standing of an adopted child of God.  He wants us to ask freely, without reservation, and with complete confidence for whatever we need, for whatever our friends and neighbors need, for whatever our world needs.  And like the neighbor in the parable, God will respond, even if, especially if, we knock when it feels like midnight in our soul or in our world.  Like the neighbor, God will respond, not with “the cakes and cookies we might dream of, but with the bread we need.  The bread of justice.  The bread of mercy.  The bread of hope.”  And the gift of the Spirit to remind us, as the psalmist says, “The Lord will his purpose for [you and for] me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.” 

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1  https://www.thenivbible.com/blog/jesus-parable-of-the-friend-at-midnight/ 

2  https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/75584/luke-118-shameless-teaching-about-prayer

3  https://oslc-warrenton.org/sermons/shameless-prayer/