And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.”

Luke 11:5-8, excerpt from Luke 11:1-13, lectionary gospel for July 24, 2022

‘The Lord’s Prayer.’ We title it a stand-alone piece, but it comes enmeshed in story, a pattern of request and response. The disciple asks for words, the neighbor for bread, the child for good gifts.

A warm evening in July. It is too hot to sit outside, but we do. The air is close, the garden lushly grown. It’s a Thursday night, and there are few others on the patio. The friendly waitress brings us menus and ice water. We order drinks and bites. The light is quiet, the air calm. The sky glows, then sinks into dusk. We eat and drink and talk and laugh. And if sometimes the talk is sarcastic, well, we hear the ache behind the snark, know the tears that lie just the other side of that brittle laugh. We’ve been meeting for 13 years, since seminary, through endings and beginnings and children coming on for grown.

I have not written, I tell. Again. Still. My excuses were various, some even good, but all now expired, and I have not written. I start to feel sick when I contemplate the work. “There’s sin in that,” Gini says, “some power of darkness.” Cynthia and Lydia agree. They lean forward as if to confront and to comfort both at once. “I’ve cleared a table as an office corner in the basement,” I say, “maybe ….” “We will come and bless the space,” the ladies decide. Gini recalls the liturgy used to consecrate St. John’s; Cynthia recalls the blessing of her new house. “Powerful,” she says. “Let us come,” Lydia urges. I demur: “I don’t have a bookcase yet. The space isn’t ready to be blessed ….” What has blessing to do with this my problem, my failure, my fault, I feel. “We will come,” they promise. Maybe. We part – as always – with hugs.

“Teach us to pray,” Jesus’ disciple asks. It’s like this, Jesus explains, “if one of you will have a friend,” and having implicated his hearers with the introducing “you,” Jesus tells the parable in third person, “and he will go to him at midnight, and he will say to him….” It is awkward to read all the third-person masculine singulars: one in the house, wanting to sleep; one outside it, knocking, asking, “Lend me some bread….”

Then comes the puzzle: “Even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence, he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” The referents are unclear: who is “his friend,” the breadless neighbor or the one abed? Whose is the “persistence”? And what is this “persistence”? It’s an odd word in the Greek, less perseverance than shamelessness. Is the critical audacity that of the breadless neighbor, who knocks and knocks and will not give up? or is it that of the one abed, who rises, if only for the sake of honor, that bread may be set before the guest?

Why choose, I decide. Let the audacity belong to both of them. Ponder the practice of persistent boldness forming and re-forming each in relationship with the other.

I get a used blue bookcase and fill it with heavy texts. I hang a tea towel as a curtain for the small window. I sit in my office corner. And after yet another day of not-writing, I take a picture of the space and send it to my friends. “I have a bookcase,” I type. We will bless it, they reply.

And they do. Gini comes with her clerical collar and an aspergillum of holy water, which we sprinkle on table and chair and bookcase. She blesses my head and hands and heart with oil, prays for the work and the worker. Cynthia comes later, lays hands on the table, wraps arms around me, and talks to God on my behalf. Lydia is on the road, but emails blessing liberally strewn with emojis that I construe as midnight knocking and bold cry, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread.”

And me? I am that not-quite-forgotten third: the traveler so far from home and wholeness that she cannot even beg bread for herself. Yet the audacious persistence of my friends and my God conspire together to set bread before me. Enough to sustain me for the night, so that I can rise for the next day’s prayer. And I write: “Give us each day our daily bread.”

*This devotion was originally written July 2016, and emailed then to the ladies named. Six years on, our children are more grown, and we’re still meeting. As the lectionary cycles back to this text from Luke, I’m posting this devo if only as a reminder to myself that being prayed for is also a prayer discipline.