8th Sunday after Pentecost

This seems to be the season for questions. Two weeks ago, the lawyer asked Jesus what he must do to gain eternal life. Last week, Martha asked Jesus why he didn't tell Mary to come into the kitchen and help her. And today, the disciples ask Jesus if he will teach them to pray.

Jesus tells them to pray like this: "Father, hallowed be thy name." And then he tells this weird story about the man who knocks on his friend's window at midnight, a story which, if we're not careful, can give us the idea that if we're just persistent enough, God will give us everything we want.

Many translations of the Bible have called this story "The Importunate Friend at Midnight," because the Revised Standard Version, for example, says that "though [the man asleep in bed] will not get up and give [his friend] anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him whatever he needs."

Right there, most of us have dropped out! Because no one except Bible translators has ever heard of the word "importunity." At least it is not a word that has ever meant anything to me. I can't recall ever having heard of its being used anywhere, except in these translations of this story.

And there must be some translators who agree with me, because some have begun to translate the word as "persistence," as in the New Jerusalem Bible, and in the Revised English Bible from which the story was just read: "I tell you that even if the man will not get up and provide for him out of friendship, his very persistence will make the man get up and give him all he needs."

But there's something fishy here, because this "persistence" translation makes it sound as if all we need to do is nag God until God gets tired of our nagging and gives us what we ask for. But that can't be what Jesus means, especially if it is translated as "he will give us all we want," as some translations do, because all we have to do to prove that false is talk to the mother who prayed for months at her daughter's bedside, but whose little girl died anyway.

Or, to realize that persistence is not what Jesus had in mind in the story, consider Jesus himself. No one was more persistent in prayer than Jesus, and yet even he did not receive what he asked for in his prayer just before his death: "Father, if it's all the same with you, I'd just as soon not die." But he did die.

So what are we to make of this story Jesus tells?

Well, for me, I get a better handle on it by looking closer at two of the Greek words Luke used to tell the story originally. The first is the word we've been talking about, the word that has traditionally been translated into English as "importunity," and, more recently, as "persistence." The word is anaideian. And what it means -- get this now! -- is shamelessness. So at least the New English Bible now has Jesus saying that even if the man in bed will not provide for his friend out of friendship, "the very shamelessness of the request will make him get up and give him all he needs."

Hang on to that a moment, and before we return to it, let's look at another important Greek word in the story. The second word is anastas. When the man in bed says he is not able to get up, in Luke's Greek he says, "I am not able to rise (anastas). And anastas is from anistemi, which is the word most often used in the New Testament to mean resurrection.

Now, with the meanings of these two words in mind, let's look more closely at the story Jesus tells. Suppose one of you has a friend, Jesus begins. You go to your friend's house in the middle of the night, and you bang on his window and say, "Friend, I have a guest from out of town who has just arrived at my house, and I don't have anything to offer him to eat. So you get up and give me something from your pantry."

His friend, of course, is sound asleep, so we're not surprised when he says, "Beat it! Go away! Don't bother me. Go down to Safeway. My door is locked. I was sound asleep, and my children are asleep with me. I am not able to rise and give you what you ask."

And then Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, even if he will not rise to provide out of friendship for the man who is banging on his window, the very shamelessness of his friend's request will make him rise to give him all he needs." (NEB)

Consider some things in the story. Consider first, as always, the context. When this story comes up in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is on the road, on his way to Jerusalem to die. And he knows it.

Consider also the situation of the man asleep in bed. The man in bed, who in the parable is a stand-in for God, is, as Robert Capon says, a person who is deep into that experience -- sleep -- that is for us human beings the closest we come to death while we are alive. Sleep, deep sleep at midnight, the very image of the darkness of the grave, is like death. It is that "radically uncontrollable, lost state in which all reasonable responses to life are suspended." (Capon, The Parables of Grace, p. 71)

With this, then, as the situation, Jesus is asking us to imagine that we should, as Capon puts it, "break in upon this parabolic death of God with a veritable battering ram of reasonable requests": I need three loaves of bread. I need them because I need to feed a hungry guest. And I couldn't have come earlier, before you went to sleep, because my guest just arrived, and I didn't know he was coming. I would, of course, have gotten something from my own pantry, but yesterday wasn't my shopping day, so I don't have any food in the house. And although Safeway is open at this time of night, I don't have any gas in my car, because I didn't stop to get any yesterday, and I ran out of gas in front of my house just as I got home. So I can't go to Safeway. And yes, I should have planned ahead, but I didn't. You, the Sleeper, are my only hope!

It's a shameless thing to do! If you're a respectable person, you just don't go over to your neighbor's house in the middle of the night to ask for such things, because, if you do, it will show that you are a thoughtless beggar who can't take care of your own affairs. The only people who would behave like that are desperate people, shameless people.

And that, as Capon says, is the point of Jesus' story. What God will not do because of the reasonableness or respectability of our requests, God will do because of the shamelessness of it all, because of the desperation of our situation. God will rise from his own death to raise us from ours, but he does it only when we are shameless, desperate, dead.

Tony Campolo tells about the time he was invited to speak at a women's church meeting. During the meeting, one of the women described a ministry their group had decided to take on to help a sister church in a third-world country replace the decaying roof on their church. She then asked Campolo if he would pray for God's blessing on the project and ask God if God would send the necessary money their way to complete it.

Campolo said, "No, I won't. You already have the resources to complete this missionary project right here in this room. It would be wrong, presumptuous, to ask God to do it for you when you can do it yourselves with the abundance God has already blessed you with." And then Campolo took out his wallet and placed his own offering on the table, and said, "After you take an offering and raise the money to replace the roof yourselves, we will thank God for freeing us to be the generous and responsible stewards that we are called to be as his disciples."

The women in that group were not desperate. They had pocketbooks. God had already given them the resources they needed.

Notice in the story Jesus tells us today that the man asleep in bed does not give any credit at all to all his friend's justifications. In response to all that, the man says, "Go away! I'm asleep, dead!" In this story, God does not rise to our help simply because we go on repeating our same arguments or reasons or justifications for not doing what we are able to do on our own. Our persistence is not the issue.

As I said earlier, no one was more persistent in prayer than Jesus, and yet not even Jesus' last prayer was answered the way Jesus wanted it: "Father, I'd just as soon not die." But he did die. And then, and only then, did the Sleeper rise to raise Jesus to life. Because the only people God can raise from the dead are shameless people, hopeless people, dead people, people without any resources of their own.

What must we do to be saved? That is the question the lawyer asked Jesus two weeks ago, and the question we ask Jesus today. What must we do?

Nothing. There's nothing we can do. Not even Jesus could do anything. Remember that Jesus did not raise himself. He was raised by his Father. And the only people God can raise from the dead are dead people, people without resources of their own, shameless people, hopeless people.

So how are we to pray? Jesus says, "When you pray, say, 'Father, may your name be hallowed; your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we too forgive all who have done us wrong. And do not bring us to the test."

Notice that in the prayer Jesus teaches us to pray, there is only one petition that speaks at all about what we human beings can do or should do, and that petition asks God to forgive us our sins in the same way we have forgiven those who have sinned against us, to forgive our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us. Father, cancel our debts in the same way that we cancel the debts of those who owe us. Forgiveness -- that is the one thing that is within our power to do that is worthy of imitation and that has any connection at all to our salvation!

And what is it to forgive? What is it to cancel a debt? It is to die. It is to give up what you have a right to. Forgiveness, like sleep, is to forfeit one's control. It is to die to self. It's shameless behavior, because all dignity and control and self-justification are put aside and are, in fact, beside the point.

This is why St. Paul says, "It is by grace that you have been saved, through faith, not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God, not by anything that you have done, so that no one can claim credit. We are God's work of art...." (Ephesians 2:8-9)

And, again, from today's epistle : "You have died, and you have been buried with Christ by your baptism. And by your baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God, who raised Christ from the dead. You were dead, but he has brought you to life with him, and he has forgiven us every one of our sins. Christ has wiped out the record of our debt, which stood against us. He has destroyed it by nailing it to the Cross."

What must you do, what can you do, to be saved? Nothing. It has been done for you by the One who died for you. We are saved by grace, not by anything we in our shameless hopelessness must do, or have done, or can do, lest any of us should boast.

That's the Gospel news!

And it has been the Gospel news forever, not just since Jesus. Look for a moment at Abraham. "Lord," Abraham said, "I know those folks in Sodom and Gomorrah are a sinful, shameless, hopeless lot. But suppose there are fifty righteous people living in the city, fifty upright people who do what is right. Would you put the upright to death together with the shameless and sinful? Wouldn't you spare the city for the sake of fifty righteous people?" And the Lord says, "Yes, if there are fifty righteous people in Sodom, I will spare the city for their sake."

"But what if there are not quite fifty, but only forty-five?" Abraham shamelessly asks. And the Lord says, "For forty-five righteous people I would spare the city."

And Abraham keeps upping the ante, shamelessly -- from forty-five to forty, and then thirty, and then twenty, and finally to ten, because Abraham knows that if there are any righteous people in Sodom, there aren't many! "What if there are only ten righteous people in the city?" And the Lord says, "For the sake of ten I would spare the city."

What Abraham sees in his hopelessness, in his shameless wheeling and dealing with God when he knocks on God's window in the middle of the night, at a time that is the very image of the grave, is that God is far ahead of him in forgiveness and mercy and grace. Abraham loses his courage at ten, but if he had pushed his efforts a little further, he would have found that God, in fact, was prepared to spare not only the city of Sodom, but the entire world for the sake of just one righteous person, even if he had himself to send that One from heaven for the sake of the world, and even if the only way it could have been done was for that One to die and be raised, so that we, the shameless and the unrighteous, the dead, those without resources of our own, can be raised with him.

When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw that misfortune was threatening his people, it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. And there, in that place, he would light a fire and say a prayer, and a miracle would occur, and the misfortune would be averted.

Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Rabbi Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to say the same prayer, he would go to the same place in the forest and say, "Master of the Universe, it is a dark time for your people, and I do not know how to light the fire. But I am still able to say the prayer." And again, a miracle would occur, and the people would be spared.

Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save the people in his day, would go into the forest and say, "Lord, it is a dark time for your people, and I do not know how to light the fire, and I do not know the prayer. But I know the place, and this must be sufficient." And once again, a miracle. And the people were spared.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhen to meet with God to overcome misfortune for his people. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, Rabbi Israel of Rizhen said, "Master of the Universe, it is a dark time for your people, and I am unable to light the fire, and I do not know the prayer, and I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is tell the story, and it must be sufficient." And it was.

And the story is that Christ, though he was himself in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but for our sake he took the form of a slave, and became as we are. He became in every way like us, and for our sake, and out of love for us in the darkness of our world, he became even humbler yet, even to accepting death, even death on a Cross. And for this shamelessness, God raised him on high, that we might be raised with him.

And that must be sufficient.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.