Listening Toward Sunday

Comments

4 responses to “Listening Toward Sunday”

1. 

   Greg Newton

   July 23, 2013

   Yeah, isn’t it interesting that Jesus doesn’t teach about prayer until his disciples ask for instruction. What if we didn’t try to teach anything unless someone is asking! We’d probably waste less time trying to teach the uninterested!

   I’ve read that the rabbi prayer was inserted within the regular prayers – like within our office of daily prayer. So it was a personalized prayer from your own rabbi to pray as you prayed the standard Jewish prayers. I would like to find some examples of other prayers that rabbis gave their disciples. Evidently John gave his disciples a prayer. I’ll look for examples.

   Thanks for the thoughts, Tyler. Blessings.
2. 

   thepriesthood

   July 23, 2013

   Word. Thought I’d chime in with a few thoughts and questions.

   Interesting that this teaching on prayer is borne out of a curiosity of Jesus’ disciples after seeing him “praying in a certain place.” Jesus doesn’t teach without already embodying his teaching.

   Jesus’ prayer is really short. I like that minimalism. It’s doable, while at the same time there’s so much to unpack. But is this all that Jesus is praying? If so, why does he seem to spend so much time in prayer, in solitude and quiet? What’s going on when Jesus prays? Is Jesus just repeating these words over and again? Is he engaged in some other disciplines in these quiet places?

   What was unique about Jesus’ rabbinical prayer among other rabbi’s prayers, if anything?

   Also, the “us-ness” of Jesus’ prayer jumps out at me. I don’t like that because it suggests that I am to pray in community. I’d rather have the solitary picture of Jesus. The invitation to truly pray in community can be a messy and difficult endeavor, and I find it a bit frightening!
3. 

   Greg Newton

   July 22, 2013

   Hey! I’ve got until Sunday to try and find something that will be halfway comprehensible! Don’t rush me!

   Your thoughts are good and will help me. I’ve tended to think of the prayer being for me and to help set me right about reality – so the ‘don’t lead me into temptation’ is to keep me from rationalizing my own desires, in the same way that God is not any more hallowed when I pray for it, unless I am changed. With Soren Kierkegaard we pray not until God is changed, but until we are. I like your suggestion too. Fortunately, we don’t have to be locked into a single meaning for a text, submitting to the modern paradigm of the excluded middle.

   On the snake bit, that God is a rascal isn’t he!
4. 

   Tim

   July 22, 2013

   Let’s see. I remember working this through several years ago and nothing much comes to mind, except to remember that the “lead us not into temptation” bit, which always troubled me, makes much more sense in it’s context if you read it as “help me not to test you, oh, Lord.” You know, “test” in the sense of Luke 4:12 or the testing of God by the Israelites in the wilderness (mana being a theme in the prayer and all that). That sort of tied it back to Luke, and the theme of salvation as an act of exodus so present in Luke, in a more satisfying way.

   And it also made the bit after the prayer, the part about knocking at an inopportune time and being sort of rudely insistent in prayer, a bit more idiosyncratic. I mean, the God of the exodus wasn’t really known for being altogether unoffended by people who were impatient, aggressive or desperate in their needs. Like, you know, the bit about not giving snakes to people who desperately ask for bread, Jesus asks who would do that? Look at Numbers 21:4-6. God would, that’s who!!!

   So, what exactly is Jesus try to say?