Saint Luke 11:1-13
On Labor Day Sunday of 1966 60 people met at the Bear Lake pavilion of Cherry Log Mountain in Georgia to hold a worship service. The group continued to meet, monthly at first, then weekly, eventually forming Cherry Log Christian Church. By Easter, April 12, 1998, the congregation had grown to 80 members. Leading them as the pastor was Dr. Fred B. Craddock who one year later would begin his teaching career as preaching professor at the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta.
Dr. Craddock was not a tall man and admitted that he had few of the gifts other preachers had. He lacked either a booming voice or an impressive stature and he served a church which we have come to learn was of average size. It still is.
A collection of Dr. Craddock’s Sermons from Cherry Log Church contained the quote that you often hear as you leave this place. It is the very un-Lutheran “Charge to the Congregation” to go forth and “live simply, love generously, speak truthfully, serve faithfully, pray daily and then leave everything else to God.“
I love those words. If they were original to Dr. Craddock, he should have copyrighted them because I have seen them appear on plaques, coffee mugs, and numerous other tchotchkes in shops of towns both large and small.
The words are comforting because they begin by listing things we can do.
Live simply. We can do that. Sometimes we spurge on something like a vacation, or a car, or a big screen television. But we know each other pretty well by now and we know that if there is one thing that describes us is that we are not flashy. We are simple folk in the best sense of that word.
Love generously. We can do that too. I can’t enumerate for you all the ways you do it but I have seen you do it. Loving generously may be your forte.
Speak truthfully. That you can do too. And like me, I bet there have been times in your lives that you have spoken a little too truthfully.
Serve faithfully. On our best days those are words all of us hope will describe us. We hope we are faithful servants.
It the last clause in the sentence that we might trip over. Sure, we pray daily but there are times when it is hard, very hard, to then leave everything up to God.
We may place some loved ones in God’s hands but we want to know what the tests or surgical results are so that God and the doctors can be about the business of healing.
We may pray about our finances but we still check our retirement accounts to see if we’re solvent. We may pray for our church but that doesn’t stop us from getting a little anxious in times of transition.
We can pray about all manner of things but that still doesn’t stop us from trying to help give God a hand in fixing them.
On occasion Dr. Craddock would tell his students that it was all right to give their listeners the good news at the beginning of a sermon rather than waiting until the end. And the good news for us is that even biblical characters and examples of people in Jesus’ parables sometimes had a very hard time “leaving everything else up to God.”
Clearly Abraham is not going to let God’s desire to destroy the twin sin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah go unchallenged. He is not going to “leave this up to God.” Instead he is going to storm the barricades on behalf of the city where his nephew Lot and his family lived.
The problem with the city is that it was ruled by mobs. It was ungovernable to the point that any visitors or residents of the city could be the victims of murder, robbery and mayhem at any time. It had become a mad house.
God doesn’t see any other way out other than its complete destruction. Abraham objects in a most strenuous matter. His prayer is not “thy will be done” but rather “let’s make a deal.”
Unbelievably to us moderns he enters into a bidding contest with Yahweh on the city’s behalf. It is like an auction.
Abraham starts the bidding with 50 righteous. If he can find 50 good people would Yahweh consider sparing the city?
The problem is he can’t so he reduces the number. “How about 45? 40?” Abraham bargains. “35? 30? 25? 20? Can I get a 15?” What is this? An auction. Finally Abraham and the Lord settle on 10.
Violence has so overwhelmed the two cities that Abraham can’t even meet that quota. He can’t find ten good people in two towns! His prayers for the communities are going to go unanswered with only his nephew Lot and some of his family being sparred.
Even after storming the barricades Abraham didn’t get everything he wanted but he did get what he really needed - the lives of his nephew and members his family.
Perhaps Jesus’ disciples were tired of this storm the barricades model of prayer when they asked Jesus for a better way. What Jesus gives them and us is a prayer that invites us to trust God above all else for everything we need.
We are to trust God for the big things like the forgiveness of our sins and the coming of the kingdom. We are also to trust God for the everyday things like our daily bread. It’s a prayer that invites us to leave everything up to God.
That is a great place to be but Jesus makes it even better. He says that with God we can be like that neighbor who shows up in the middle of the night banging on the door and yelling, “‘lend me three loaves of bread. An old friend traveling through just showed up, and I don’t have a thing on hand.’”1
Jesus says that unlike God while we may grouch a little bit and yell back at our neighbor, “‘Please don’t ask me to get up. The door is locked for the night and we are all in bed. I just can’t help you this time.’”2
But “‘I’ll tell you this, ‘” says Jesus ‘if you keep knocking long enough, (your neighbor) will get up and give you everything you want—just because of your persistence.’”3
Scholars agree the word is not persistence but “shamelessness.” “[S}hamelessness, even though a negative quality in society, is not necessarily so in the Gospel tradition. The ‘faith’ commended . . . is a boldness that refuses to be stopped by social proprieties.”4
Who gets up in the middle of the night and goes to a friend and says, “Hey! I’ve got company. Have you got anything to feed them?” Such a request would be shameful but there is no need to worry about that with God.
Four times in these verses, the word "friend" (philos) is used. There is the friendship between the two neighbors and the friendship between the first man and his midnight visitors. The story then suggests that there is a similar friendship between God and us -- we can approach God as a friend -- even waking him up from a deep sleep -- that is, if God ever slept.5God is not staying up all night waiting for us to present a problem that is too big for God to handle.
That is what I love about Dr. Craddock’s charge. We are to do our part - storm the barricades if we feel we have to - but then we can “leave everything else up to God” knowing that God may not give us what we want but will give us what we need.
Adam Fronczek, Senior Minister of Know Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati tells this story:
I have a minister friend who performed one of the most brilliant acts of parenting I’ve ever seen. When his son was four and going through a period of being fairly demanding about things, my friend taught his son some Rolling Stones lyrics. Every time little Michael demanded something that just wasn’t going to happen, his dad, said, “Michael, what do the [Rolling] Stones say?” And Michael would huff and puff and then would look at his daddy and say, “You can’t always get what you want.” And then [his father] would say, “What else, Michael?” And Michael would answer, “But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”6
Remember “to live simply, love generously, speak truthfully, serve faithfully, pray daily and then leave everything else to God” and discover that, of all people, the Rolling Stones were right. “You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”
How about that?
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1. St. Luke 11:5-6. (MSG) [MSG = The Message]
2. St. Luke 11:7. (TLB) [TLB = The Living Bible]
3. St. Luke 11:8. (TLB)
4. Robert C. Tannehill, Abingdon New Testament Commentaries: Luke. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), p.189-190.
5. Brian P. Stoffregen, "Luke 11.1-13 Proper 12 - Year C," Luke 11.1-13, , accessed July 27, 2019, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/luke11x1.htm.
6. Adam Fronczek, ""Jazz at Four" Sermon" (sermon, 4 O'clock Worship, The Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, January 20, 2013), accessed July 27, 2019, http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2013/012013_4pm.html.
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