Praying like a Disciple: Embracing Jesus’ Brand

How do you feel about merch? Personally, I’m into it. It’s a really special feeling to find a shirt, sticker, or hat that perfectly communicates something about who you are, what you love, and which tribe you belong to.

When I found my first Schitt’s Creek sticker out in the wild? MAGICAL. A sweatshirt with the name of the school I attend across the front? GIVE ME TEN.

In Second Temple Judaism (roughly 500 BC–70 AD), prayers were kind of like merch. 

Kind of.

Let me explain myself. 

Rabbinic teachers at the time were like heads of their own mini schools, each with their own distinctive prayers, practices, and interpretations. According to James Edwards in The Gospel According to Luke, Rabbinic disciples “were known to request renowned rabbis to teach them prayers that would characterize and differentiate them.”

So in Luke 11:1, when the disciples say to Jesus, “Rabbi, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples,” they aren’t asking how to pray. Presumably, these Jewish men are well-versed in prayer. Rather, they’re asking how to pray in a way that will distinguish them. Essentially: Teach us to pray like you so that others will know who we belong to. Or, sticking with our merch analogy: We need a brand! Let’s get sweatshirts that say, “SCHOOL OF JESUS!”

The Prayer

Jesus establishes his brand: The Lord’s Prayer. Or, rather, Luke’s account of The Lord’s Prayer. Luke’s version and Matthew’s version? Same story, different energy. Luke’s is WAY shorter. 

When gospel writers tell the same story differently, it’s usually intentional. Here, Luke emphasizes brevity and boldness. 

He said to them, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation’” (verses 2-4).

Super short. Super imperative. Maybe even… demanding? “Give us,” “forgive us,” “lead us.” Not one single please or thank you.

The Parables

But then Jesus goes on to tell stories.

First, he shares a parable where a traveling friend stops into someone’s house unannounced in the middle of the night, and the host has no food to offer them. The host would, Jesus assures his listeners, go bother his neighbor friend and ask him for bread, even if it was the middle of the night. And undoubtedly the neighbor friend would be irritated, would complain, but eventually relent, if only because of the host’s shameless audacity. 

That phrase, “shameless audacity” is translated from the Greek word anaideia and throughout Greek literature seems to mean “asking rudely to get a request at any cost, without thought of propriety or shame” (Edwards). 

But remember, Jesus is talking about what it means to pray as a disciple of Jesus. This parable explains The Lord’s Prayer and responds to the disciples’ request for a style of prayer that sets them apart. It encourages disciples of Jesus to pray with this same shameless audacity, a shameless audacity that borders on “rude.” 

Now, you might be asking yourself, Are the disciples like the host in need of bread, while God is like the irritated and snoozy, yet relenting, neighbor? 

Yes and no. Disciples are to go to God with their shameless audacity, but in the next parable, Jesus seems to clarify the heart of the Father. 

He asks rhetorically: If your child asked for fish, would you give them a snake? And if you can give good gifts, even though you’re imperfect, don’t you think God can give better ones? 

When these two parables are held together in the context of the disciples’ request, Jesus’ meaning rises to the surface: 

Disciples of Jesus will approach God with a stubbornly determined attitude. Prayer for disciples of Jesus is not a polite, quaint, religious sensibility. It is, among many things, our way of communicating with our Father, and he likes his communication direct. In return, God promises not to be the sleeping villager who is irritated and reluctant. Rather, he is the generous and loving Father who gives exceptionally good gifts. 

The Point

Between the two parables is a section where Jesus urges his disciples to simply ask, seek, and knock (verses 9-10). So, as we engage with ministry on our respective campuses, let us ask. 

Let us also remember that, as disciples of Jesus, we do, in fact, have a brand: It’s the willingness to go boldly before God, to make tenacious and stubborn requests on behalf of our peers and to trust that God wants what’s best for us.

May God’s presence be with you as you go, and may you be brazen enough to ask him for what you and those around you need. It is, after all, what marks you as his disciple.