Sermon Archive
The friend at Midnight
Sermon preached by John Burdett at Holy Communion on 25 July 2004
There's enough material in that Gospel reading for half a dozen sermons, or one very long one. You'll be relieved to hear that I'm not proposing to talk about all of it. I'm not going to talk about the Lord's Prayer, but I would like to say something about the story that Jesus told to illustrate one aspect of it. I don't think there's much doubt that some of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels originated later in the early Church. But he was a great storyteller, and it seems to me to be highly probable that the stories reported by the Gospel writers were in fact told by Jesus. That probability becomes a certainty when the story's amusing, because that's the sort of thing that people remember.
I love the story - and I'm sure Jesus must have been smiling when he told it - about the man who has an unexpected visit from a friend at night. It's very embarrassing, because the friend's obviously expecting to be given some supper and there's no food in the house. So he goes round to his neighbour, who unfortunately has already gone to bed and isn't best pleased at being disturbed. One can imagine the conversation that ensues - desperate on the part of the man outside, the host - distinctly frosty on the part of the man at the window above, until eventually, for the sake of peace, he comes down, goes to his larder and gives the host what he needs.
At first sight that seems to be reasonable way of fleshing out the story a bit, and it looks as if the important thing about it is the persistence of the man who went on knocking, teaching us of the duty of perseverance in prayer. And that interpretation is perfectly consistent with our Lord's teaching. You remember his story about the woman who kept on going to a judge, saying: 'Grant me justice against my adversary'. For some time the judge refused, but finally he said to himself: 'Because this woman keeps bothering me I'll see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually wear me out'. And Jesus said: 'Will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?' So Jesus did teach us to pray persistently, but that's not the lesson he's teaching us in the story of the friend at midnight.
Dr. Kenneth Bailey is a theologian who has an unparalleled knowledge of the culture of isolated peasant communities in the Middle East. Because of their isolation these communities have changed very little in the past 2,000 years. And by talking to these people Dr. Bailey was able to get a very good idea of what the stories that Jesus told must have meant to the people who first heard them. He says that the normal explanation of this story is based on a misunderstanding of the word translated as 'boldness' or 'persistence'. The crucial element of the first part of the story is that the guest is a guest of the community, not just of the individual. When any guest arrives at someone's house, the host, in his formal welcome, will say: 'You have honoured our village', never: 'You have honoured me'. When the guest leaves he must go with a good feeling about the hospitality of the village as a community. So the host knows that he can rely on his neighbours to help him out. There may be some bread left in the his own house, but he must offer his guest a complete, unbroken loaf. To feed a guest with a partial loaf left over from another meal would be an insult. But Middle Eastern women cooperate over bread-baking. Everyone would know who'd baked recently, so the host would know where to go to get bread. And of course he'd get it.
The phrase Jesus uses at the beginning of the story, which is translated in the new International Version of the Bible as 'Suppose one of you . . .', is actually the question 'Which one of you . . .?' Which can be translated into modern English as 'Can any of you imagine . . .?' Jesus uses the same phrase seven times in St Luke's Gospel and it always expects an emphatic 'No!'. 'Can you imagine having a son who'd fallen into a well and not pulling him out on the Sabbath day?'. 'Can you imagine having a hundred sheep and, having lost one of them, not leaving the ninety nine and going after the one that is lost?' 'Can you imagine adding a single hour to your life by worrying?'
So in this case: 'Can you imagine going to a neighbour at midnight and asking for bread to entertain a guest, and the neighbour refusing?' No, of course not. The idea would be absurd. Silly excuses about a closed door and sleeping children would seem ridiculous when the entertainment of a guest was a stake. So the neighbour's going to give the host some bread. The host wouldn't need to be persistent. And if he were, and went on calling and knocking until the neighbour had to get up for the sake of peace, he'd have got the three loaves he asked for, but no more. There'd have been no question of him getting 'all he needs' as the story says. And this is where we come to the meaning of the word translated as 'persistence'. In classical Greek literature the word had a derogatory connotation and meant 'shamelessness', but that doesn't fit with this story. You couldn't say it was shameless to take your requests to God in prayer. So the early translators of the Gospels into Latin, Coptic, Syriac and Arabic were unanimous in altering the meaning from 'shamelessness' to 'persistence' - what the King James Bible calls 'importunity'. But that won't work, because, unlike the widow with the unjust judge, the host in this story gets an immediate answer, and the answer is 'No!'. Presumably the idea behind the translation is that the host persists until the neighbour changes his mind.
But our Lord's teaching about prayer is that we are to be persistent until an answer is given. The suggestion here is that if we don't like the answer we've got to go on pestering God until he changes his mind. That can't be right, so there's a mistake somewhere.
The mistake may be in the oral transmission of the Greek word translated as 'shamelessness'. A very small change could turn it from the pejorative 'shamelessness' into a virtue: 'avoidance of shame'. So it isn't the host who is shameless or persistent, it's the neighbour who acts to avoid shame.
That fits well into the cultural background of the story. The neighbour knows that the host must have the bread in order to preserve the honour of the village. If he didn't produce it the news would be all round the village by the morning, and he'd be met with cries of 'shame!' wherever he went. So to avoid being blamed he gets up and gives the host all he needs.
I've talked at some length about this story because it fascinates me and I thought you might be interested. It's another example of how much you can get out of a passage in the Bible if you dig a bit.
So what does it mean for us? Firstly it tells us something about the nature of God. Jesus is saying: 'When you go to this kind of neighbour everything's against you. It's night. He's asleep in bed. The door's locked. The children are asleep. He doesn't like you. Yet you'll receive even more than you ask for because he's a man of honour, and he won't violate that honour. And the God to whom you pray also has an honour that he won't violate. And on top of that he loves you.'
Secondly, the story is a reassurance for us. If you can be confident of having your needs met when you go to a disgruntled neighbour in the middle of the night, how much more can you rely on your requests being answered when you take them to a loving Father?
Of course, the answer we receive to our prayers may not be what we want or expect, but just as a loving earthly father can be relied on not to play bad practical jokes on his son - giving him a snake when he asks for a fish, or a scorpion when he asks for an egg - so we can be confident that no matter what God may send he knows what he's about.
It was in that trust and confidence in his own Father that Jesus organised his ministry. And in the garden of Gethsemane he asked his Father to take the cup from him, to save him from the fate that he knew was inevitable. And when the answer was 'No' he put his own teaching into practice and went to the Cross in the same trust and confidence that he'd taught his disciples to have.
Worship >> Sermons >> Sermons