Teach us to pray: the finger of God and the stronger man

The Gospel according to Luke is the third Gospel in the New Testament and the first of two volumes. Its sequel is the Acts of the Apostles, which opens by recalling his earlier book (Acts 1:1). Early church tradition names the author as Luke, the physician and travelling companion of Paul (Colossians 4:14; Philemon 24; 2 Timothy 4:11). Writers such as Irenaeus in the late second century, and a document called the Muratorian fragment, say so. The 'we' passages in Acts (beginning at Acts 16:10) are often taken as the author's own presence. Some critical scholars doubt that a companion of Paul wrote the books, pointing to differences between Acts and Paul's letters. Neither book names its author.

The date is also disputed. Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome, probably around AD 62, and does not report his trial. Some scholars therefore place both books in the early 60s. Many others date Luke between about AD 80 and 90, because they hold that Luke used Mark's Gospel and read Luke 19:43-44 and 21:20-24 as written after Rome destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70. Those who accept Jesus could foresee the fall of the city find no need for the later date.

Luke addresses a person called Theophilus (Luke 1:3) and writes an orderly account so that he may know the certainty of what he has been taught. Most readers think the first audience was largely Gentile, though Luke is steeped in the Old Testament. The synoptic problem concerns why Matthew, Mark and Luke share so much material. The majority view is that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke both used it, along with a shared collection of sayings of Jesus often labelled 'Q', plus material of their own. Others argue that Luke used Matthew and no 'Q' is needed, and some hold that Mark came last. Luke 11 is mostly in the sayings material shared with Matthew, set here in Luke's long section called the travel narrative (9:51-19:44), in which Jesus walks toward Jerusalem and teaches on the way.

Luke 11 is a gathering of teachings and encounters within a travel narrative. It is not a tidy itinerary. It is Luke's frame for what Jesus taught and how the leaders responded as the road narrows toward Jerusalem. Reading it well means watching the links between scenes. The demand for a sign follows the charge that Jesus is in league with Satan. The woes at the table follow the warning about inner light, because the leaders are exposed as dark inside though clean outside.

Three interpretive principles guide this class.

• First, parables and sayings answer particular situations. The friend at midnight (verses 5-8) is a short story with one main point about the character of the one asked, and it is not an allegory in which every detail stands for something.
• Second, Luke and Matthew have overlapping material but arrange it for different purposes, so differences are not contradictions. Matthew places the Lord's Prayer inside the Sermon on the Mount, while Luke places it in answer to a request. Jesus may have taught it more than once, or each Evangelist may have shaped one tradition for his readers.
• Third, the sayings about demons belong to the Old Testament pattern in which the LORD alone frees captives from powers too strong for them.

Verses 1–4

Luke sets the scene with Jesus praying in a certain place. Praying is a repeated habit of Jesus in Luke (3:21; 5:16; 6:12; 9:18, 28). A disciple asks to be taught to pray, as John taught his disciples, which shows that rabbis and prophets gave their followers a distinctive prayer. Jesus begins with 'Father'. In Luke the address is the single word, which presumes a child's closeness to a parent.

• The first two petitions concern God: may his name be treated as holy, and may his kingdom come.
• The first echoes Ezekiel 36:23, where the LORD promises to vindicate the holiness of his name among the nations. Three petitions concern the disciples: bread, forgiveness, and not being led into testing. The word translated 'daily' (epiousios) is very rare and its exact sense is debated; the options include 'for today', 'for tomorrow' and 'necessary for existence'. Forgiveness is asked on the ground that the disciples themselves forgive everyone indebted to them. Forgiveness received and given are joined, as in Matthew 6:14-15. Luke's form is shorter than Matthew's. It has no petition that God's will be done and none to be delivered from the evil one, and the doxology that appears in later manuscripts of Matthew is not original to either Gospel.

Verses 5–13

The friend at midnight asks for bread because a traveller has arrived, and a host who has nothing to set before a guest is shamed. The Greek word anaideia, often rendered 'persistence' or 'shameless boldness', is the key. The argument is from the lesser to the greater: if even a grumbling neighbour will rise and give, how much more will the Father. Then come ask, seek and knock, each with its promise. A son who asks for a fish is not given a snake. The unit ends with a surprise. Where Matthew 7:11 has the Father giving 'good things', Luke has him giving 'the Holy Spirit' to those who ask. In Luke-Acts the gift of the Spirit is the Father's supreme answer to prayer (Acts 1:4-5; 2:33).

Verses 14–26

Jesus casts out a demon that has left a man mute. Some say he does it by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons; others test him by asking for a sign from heaven. Jesus answers with logic: a kingdom divided against itself falls, and if Satan's house is divided, his kingdom cannot stand. He adds that the accusers' own exorcists cast out demons, so by whose power do they work? Then he says that if he casts out demons by the finger of God, the kingdom of God has come upon them. The phrase recalls Exodus 8:19, where Pharaoh's magicians confess the finger of God in the plagues. In the parallel in Matthew 12:28 Jesus says 'by the Spirit of God', which gives the same sense. Jesus is the stronger man who attacks a strong man's guarded house, takes his armour and divides his plunder. The picture draws on Isaiah 49:24-25, where the LORD takes captives from the mighty. A neutral position is impossible: Whoever is not with him is against him. The unclean spirit that returns with seven worse ones warns that an emptied house needs a new occupant.

Verses 27–32

A woman in the crowd cries out a blessing on Jesus' mother. Jesus does not reject it but redirects it: those who hear the word of God and keep it are blessed. The demand for a sign receives the sign of Jonah. In Luke the sign is that Jonah himself, by his preaching, was a sign to Nineveh, and so the Son of Man will be to this generation. Matthew 12:40 connects the sign with Jonah's three days in the great fish and Jesus' time in the earth. The queen of the South (the queen of Sheba, 1 Kings 10) travelled far to hear Solomon's wisdom, and the people of Nineveh repented at Jonah's preaching. At the judgment they will condemn a generation that has something greater than Jonah and Solomon in front of it and does not respond.

Verses 33–36

A lamp is set on a stand, not hidden. The eye is the lamp of the body: if it is sound, the body is full of light. The warning is to take care that the light in you is not darkness. The leaders have light in front of them in Jesus and cannot see it.

Verses 37–54

A Pharisee invites Jesus to a meal, and Jesus reclines without the ritual washing. The host is surprised. Jesus responds that they clean the outside of the cup while inside they are full of greed and wickedness. He pronounces three woes on the Pharisees: for tithing small herbs while neglecting justice and the love of God, for loving the best seats and public greetings, and for being like unmarked graves that people walk over unaware. A law expert objects that Jesus insults them too, and Jesus adds three woes on the experts in the law: for loading people with burdens they will not lift a finger to help carry, for building tombs for the prophets whom their fathers killed, and for taking away the key of knowledge so that neither they nor those they hinder enter. The blood of the prophets, from Abel to Zechariah (Genesis 4; 2 Chronicles 24:20-22) will be required of this generation. The chapter ends with the scribes and Pharisees pressing him hard and lying in wait to catch him in something he says.

The chapter holds together three truths about God. He is Father, and his people come to him as children who ask. He is King, whose kingdom is breaking into the world: the prayer asks for it to come while Jesus announces that it has begun to come. And he gives the Holy Spirit as his best gift, which Acts shows at Pentecost.

The chapter also gives a picture of spiritual conflict. Satan holds a house, and the stronger one comes to take it. The Old Testament presents the LORD as the redeemer who frees captives (Exodus 6:6; Isaiah 49:24-25), and the Gospels present Jesus' exorcisms as the beginning of that rescue (compare Colossians 2:15; 1 John 3:8). The woes continue the prophets' complaint that religious people can be exact in ritual and careless about justice (Micah 6:8; Isaiah 1:10-17), and that Israel's story is marked by the killing of those God sends (2 Chronicles 36:15-16).

The chapter shows who Jesus is by what he claims. He teaches his disciples to call God Father, and in Luke 10:21-22 he has just said that no one knows the Father except the Son, so the invitation to pray the prayer rests on his own relationship to God. He claims that the kingdom has arrived in his exorcisms, and so he stands where the LORD stood in the exodus. The finger of God ties him to the God who rescued Israel from Pharaoh, and the stronger man picks up a promise that the LORD himself would take back plunder from the mighty. This is fulfilment, because Jesus says the kingdom has come in what he does.

He also stands above two Old Testament figures. Jonah was a prophet who preached and a city repented, and Solomon was a king whose wisdom drew a queen from the ends of the earth. Jesus says one greater than both is here. Jesus himself makes each a type by comparison: the wise king and the preaching prophet find their match in one who is both. The sign of Jonah also points forward to the resurrection, which Matthew 12:40 states outright. In the woes Jesus speaks in the voice of the wisdom of God (11:49), who sends prophets and apostles. The same one will be rejected and killed in Jerusalem, and the leaders are already lying in wait.