Luke 11: 1 13 The Lord’s Prayer
Target year level: Prep, Year Three, Year Five, Year Six
Scripture text
Luke 11:1-13
Prep: Jesus taught his disciples to pray (Luke 11:1-4)
Year Three: Prayers of thanksgiving and praise (Our Father - Luke 11:2-4)
Year Five: Significance of personal and communal prayer and worship (The Lord’s Prayer - Luke 11: 1-4)
Year Six: The Our Father: Luke 11:1-13
The Lord’s Prayer
World behind the text
The authorship of the Gospel which bears the name of Luke is uncertain. However, according to Fitzmyer and other scholars, the author of this gospel is quite likely a Syrian of Antioch, a physician, and a supporter of the poor, named Luke. He was clearly writing to a gentile Christian audience. The Gospel of Luke was probably written between 80 and 90 CE.
See also: Teacher background, Who Wrote the Gospels and When?
“Most scholars agree that the gospel of Mark is the source for about one third of Luke’s material. Luke also has 230 verses in which he records sayings of Jesus which are not in Mark but which can be found in Matthew. The source for this material is commonly called ‘Q’, from the German Quelle, meaning source. The remaining third of Luke’s gospel is proper to him, having no parallel material in either Mark or Matthew. How much of this is based on written sources, and how much on oral tradition, we do not know.” (Fallon, p. 22)
Permeating both the Gospel of Luke and Acts is the idea and description of the presence and action of God’s Holy Spirit. (Fallon, p. 23)
Michael Fallon msc, Introduction to Luke (pdf)
See also: the NABRE, Introduction to Luke
World of the text
Luke 11:1-4
Here we see Jesus in prayer, and on this occasion his disciples ask him to teach them to pray. God is addressed simply as ‘Father’. The practise of calling God ‘Abba’, the intimate address used by Jesus, is found in one of Paul’s earliest letters (Galatians 4:6).
There are no texts in the Hebrew Scriptures in which God is addressed as ‘Abba’, though we do find God spoken of as a tender father.
The first words of the prayer are: ‘Hallowed be your name’. To be ‘hallowed’ is to be recognised as holy and treated as such. ‘Holy’ is a word kept solely for God. It refers to the unique beauty and mystery of God.
If people are said to be ‘holy’, as they sometimes are, this is not a statement about some quality which they possess; rather, it is an assertion that God, the Holy One, is in them. Likewise, a place is said to be holy only because the Holy One has been experienced there.
The ‘name’ of God means God as addressed by the person who is praying. God is revealed as one who wishes to relate to us personally. The second phrase, ‘your kingdom come’, points to the way in which this wish to relate is to be realised. Being part of God’s kingdom requires a wholehearted commitment to doing the will of God (Luke 9:62).
‘Give us each day our daily bread’. In this passage, Jesus knows that the bread we need is always ‘manna from heaven’. God alone has the wisdom to know what ‘bread’ we really need, and he will provide this, but only enough to last us from day to day. Jesus invites his disciples to share this trust.
‘Forgive us our sins, as we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us’.
The final plea is a cry from the heart to the Father that He will not leave us alone to confront evil.
Michael Fallon msc, pp. 215 – 218, Luke Commentary: Luke 9:51-19:40 (pdf)
Luke 11:5-8
The point of this parable depends on the translation of the Greek of the final verse, dia tên anaideian outou. The NRSV considers that it is speaking of the shameless insistence of the man asking for the bread. It seems more likely that it refers to the shame that would be experienced by the man in bed, if it were known that he had refused such a simple hospitality to a needy neighbour.
If this second understanding is correct, a contrast is being made between this and the following passage (v. 13). Here we have an ordinary, and not very generous, neighbour who is shamed into granting a request for bread. In the following passage we see the generous love of our Father to whom we address our request for ‘our daily bread’ (v. 3).
The neighbour in this parable gives the food requested, because not to do so would bring him dishonour. How much more confident we can be that our loving Father will respond to our prayer.
Michael Fallon msc, p. 219, Luke Commentary: Luke 9:51-19:40 (pdf)
Luke 11: 9 - 13
In this passage, Jesus encourages his disciples to ask for what is wanted with eyes fixed not on the object of our request but on God the Father. God is wise and God will certainly give what is needed.
Michael Fallon msc, p. 220, Luke Commentary: Luke 9:51-19:40 (pdf)
World in front of the text
Luke 11:1-4
Jesus’ reply to the disciples’ request “teach us to pray” takes us to the heart of his own prayer, and the prayer he taught the disciples has been treasured in the community as an example of Jesus’ own prayer and of how we should pray. We can pray this prayer only while contemplating Jesus and accepting his invitation to join him in the intimacy of his communion with God.
To pray to God, our ‘Father’, is to be conscious of our union with Jesus. It is to join with his prayer and to allow his Spirit to move our hearts and minds to share his sentiments. Christian prayer is the prayer of Jesus drawing his disciples with him towards God. It is the prayer of the ‘poor’, responding to the assurance of a Father’s loving presence. Michael Fallon msc, p. 215, Luke Commentary: Luke 9:51-19:40 (pdf)
‘Forgive us our sins, as we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us’. It is the consciousness of God’s forgiveness that brings the reader, in the prayer itself, to forgive others. It is impossible to repay God for all that God has given, and so Jesus asks his Father to cast aside the debt. Jesus, embracing the human condition, knew the limitations of the human and in the weakness he shares with all the human race, he asks his Father to keep giving him life, love, the Spirit, and the blessed communion that sustains him, knowing that, as man, he would always be in God’s debt. It is this total generosity of God that enables God to not measure the love he offers and to keep giving (to ‘for-give’). Michael Fallon msc, p. 217, Luke Commentary: Luke 9:51-19:40 (pdf)