A sermon for Year C Proper 12 in the summer of 2025. Luke 11:1-13

The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, as John had done for his disciples, as our parents or godparents or priests or somebody did for us. Prayer is as natural as breathing; sometimes our breathing is a prayer. And yet it is also something to pay attention to, to be devoutly intentional about, to study closely. How we pray tells us a lot about where we are in our relationship with God, with Jesus, with one another.

Jesus is unusually direct in his answer to his disciples – do you notice? Often, when they or others ask him a question, he responds with another question, or an indecipherable parable, or both. This time, he tells them,

“When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

We’ll come back to that part, because then Jesus goes on to respond in the more familiar way, with a story, with a proverb, with something that demands our reflection, and response.

Jesus, instead of simply giving us the words of a prayer, asks us to consider what it means to pray to God. He offers the illustration of a close-knit community, in which one person can call upon another at any hour of the night when in need, and expect, if not a joyful, then at least a useful response.

This is not a story of one person nagging God to get out of bed and give him his daily bread. The person ate all of their daily bread already – that’s why they had none left for the unexpected guest! But in the world of Jesus’ story, the absolute duty of one person to offer bread to their unexpected guest is matched by the duty of their neighbour to help out, to share in the hospitality to the stranger, to make sure that the love that should welcome them should not be lost.

It’s as if, Jesus goes on to say, you all are family with God, community with God and one another. It’s an audacious claim, to be in communion with God – but if that’s not the truth, why are we here?

We forgive because we are forgiven; we know forgiveness, mercy, through its practice. This prayer is not a set of petitions but a prescription for living in the kingdom of heaven, in the community of Christ, with God the all-creative Lover and the Holy Spirit. We pray to our father, our parent, which makes us family, community, connected by the  providential love of God.

I’ll admit, I’ve struggled this week with how we can pray for our daily bread – those of us who have food security, who have enough, people like me – while we can see, if we care to look, people who are starving. You see them, to, don’t you; the ones in need of solidarity, love, mercy, bread without stones or scorpions, food without fear? How then is my prayer for my own bread?

But it isn’t. If we look again at Jesus’ instructions to his disciples, the prayer is for us, for our, for we. And the story that Jesus tells suggests that we are in this together; that while one person is begging for bread, the one who is secure, safe and comfortable and tucked up in bed with their well-fed children, is the one who is called upon to answer, “and 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.” (Hosea 1:10)

If the prayer that Jesus taught us is one that binds us in community, in beloved community – with one another, with family members, with fellow children of God we have yet to meet – still, it is personal. “Father,” he has us pray, just as he calls God his Father. And he paints a picture of a parent who holds their family close in warm embrace, yet still has love to spare, love like bread to share. God, who loves us, not at the expense of our neighbours nor any other, but that we