Anyone who thinks the Bible is all grim and serious stuff just hasn’t read this parable about going to a friend at midnight. Let me try to set the scene for you. In the small villages of the Middle East, retiring for the night did not mean that you hit the remote on the TV, let the dog out one last time, dialed down the thermostat, checked on the baby in the nursery, looked into the kids’ rooms to make sure they weren’t reading comic books under the covers, and retired to the master bedroom. Not hardly. 

Here’s a description from William Barclay’s Daily Study Bible: “The poorer Palestinian houses consisted of one room with only one little window. The floor was simply of beaten earth covered with dried reeds and rushes. The room was divided into two parts, not by a partition, but by a low platform. Two-thirds of it was on ground level. The other third was slightly raised. On the raised part, the charcoal stove burned all night, and round it the whole family slept, not on raised beds but on sleeping mats. Families were large and they slept close together for warmth, for to rise was inevitably to disturb the whole family. Further, in the villages, it was the custom to bring the livestock, the hens and the cocks and goats, into the house at night.” (Wm. Barclay, DSB: LUKE, p.148) 

Not quite the kind of dwelling that you will go home to after church! In such a setting, “having  your children in bed with you” was more than a figure of speech. To respond to the knocker’s request,  you would have to climb over the reclining forms of the other family members. There would have been a wooden door, probably fastened from the inside with a bar across it. You wouldn’t have to worry about turning on the light, of course. A clay lamp that gave about the light of a single candle might have been left burning, because fire was too precious to let go out. You would  want that lamp to see where you were stepping when you stepped off the raised platform in case one of the animals  —or a  part of one of them—was lying in the shadowed area where you would have to step. 

In carrying the lamp, you would be hoping that the activity and the light would not cause the rooster to think the sun was coming up. As you made your way across the lower level, you would want to be sure to pass in front of the donkey and behind the goat, if those two animals were included in the gathering. At the doorway you would have to find a place to set the lamp because it would take two hands to lift the bar and set it aside to open the door.  

Are you getting the picture?

Perhaps the first knock is rather soft. The friend at the door is aware of how much trouble his request will require. He was probably in bed asleep himself when his visitor arrived; there wasn’t much on the late movie channel in those days. There was no response to the first knock. Imagine yourself as the householder. You are holding your breath, hoping that whoever it is will go away. The knock comes again, more firmly. And  still again. (The Greek here literally suggests that the man knocked “with shameless persistence.”) One of the children turns restlessly. The wife, her voice full of sleep, asks, “What’s going on?”

You decide you have to respond. Trying to keep your voice at a volume that will carry to the doorway and still not awaken anyone who is not already awake, you tell whoever it is: “Go away. My children and I are all in bed. I can’t get up and open the door at this time of night!” 

Then the knocker announces his problem: “A guest has arrived unexpectedly and I have nothing to set before him.” Suddenly we have a major problem here. In the East, the law of hospitality was a sacred duty. It demanded that a visitor be provided with refreshments upon arrival. To fail to offer food and drink would be a major breach of etiquette. This neighbor would be shamed and humiliated  to go to bed without feeding the visitor. And he knows you have bread because he saw and smelled it being baked only a few hours earlier. Besides, if the situations were reversed, you would be knocking at his door. And now your own honor is at stake, because what kind of neighbor would refuse to help keep another from being shamed?  

With a sigh, you get up, step carefully around the bodies of your children, pick up the lamp from its place in the far corner, gather the loaves from the shelf, wrap them in a piece of cloth, pick your way among the livestock, unbar the door and hand them out. 

“Here,” you say. And to avoid the possibility of another interruption later, you add, “Do you need anything else?” 

He whispers an embarrassed, “No,” adds a heartfelt, “Thank you,” and hurries off. You pick your  way back to bed, managing to step only on the goat. 

Can you imagine Jesus telling this story without a twinkle in his eye? Can you imagine his hearers not smiling when they heard God compared to a sleepy householder, awakened by the knocking of their prayers? Many of them had probably been on one side of that door or the other on occasion. 

But Jesus didn’t tell stories just to win smiles from his hearers. Parables always had a point. So what is the point of this one?       

One might be tempted to focus on the importance of persistence. The needy neighbor did not stop knocking when at first there was no answer. He did not stop even when he was told to go away. Remember the Greek? “With shameless persistence. ...”

We are quick enough to underscore the value of persistence in every other aspect of life, all the way from kindergarten to graduate school. Do we give up on learning to drive because we had trouble  parallel parking the first time we got behind the wheel of an automobile? Do we give up on learning to swim because we once got a mouth full of water and choked a bit? How many times do we try before we beat the computer game or master our serve at tennis or par a hole of golf? Persistence is a commentary on commitment, a testimony to the sincerity of our interest. Why should we be slow to apply the same standard to the life of the spirit? Do we think we  can mumble a few words now and then, worship when we feel like it, go to church when it is convenient, keep the commandments that are expedient, and call ourselves religious? The intensity of our involvement is a testimony to the importance that we attach to anything. Why do we think God should be concerned about something towards which we are indifferent? But while all of this is true, persistence is not the point that Jesus is making with his story. 

Some might see a lesson here in the necessity to acknowledge our need. The man may have been embarrassed to be making his request at such an inconvenient time, but he had to weigh the embarrassment of asking against his need for what he did not have. He could philosophize about self-sufficiency and how people ought to take care of themselves, but the simple fact was that this did not describe his situation anymore. Circumstances had caught him without what he needed. It was not particularly his fault; he had not known the guest was coming. But planned or not, the guest had arrived, so he swallowed his pride and asked for what he did not have. 

Some of us are a bit like that with the life of faith. Deep down, we like to feel independent. We like to think that we are capable and self-sufficient, that we  have everything that we need. We may even like to feel that we don’t want or need to bother God. After all, there are people much worse off than we are, we courageously declare. Then life catches us unawares. Someone comes calling at midnight. Something happens that we had not planned on and, like it or not, if we are going to respond  as we ought to, we need something that we do not have—more faith or grace or courage, more hope or  forgiveness or love. Suddenly, we are beggars, whether we like it or not. 

But while we may see acknowledgment of need and encouragement to persist in this parable, they are not the main point here. My homiletics professor used to say, “Every good sermon should have one main idea, seldom more and never less.” So it is with parables. 

The real lesson in this parable is not about need or persistence. It is about the character of God.  People get hung up sometimes talking about the power of God. But for me, of far greater consequence is the question of the character of God. My question is not so much what God could do, as what God would do. If I have to choose between a God of infinite power and a God of infinite love, I’ll go with love any day.   

If there is any subject in Scripture on which the Bible seems to be in a continuing dialogue with itself, it is on this matter of Power and Love. Scripture is usually written after things happen, and the writers are often  trying to make sense out of hard times by looking at them after times have gotten better again. They often end up expressing the feeling that because good had come out of something bad, God  must have intended the bad in order to bring about the good. That means, of course, that with things like Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and the Egyptian Pharaoh’s refusal to let the Israelites leave Egypt, people end up getting blamed for something that supposedly God made them do.