We have all been inconvenienced.  Hopefully, it hasn’t been at midnight.  But, you know, any midnight call . . . it’s coming from someone who feels as if there isn’t anyone else to turn to, no one else who would take the call, listen, or consider.  Oh, why me?  A midnight call means there is a relationship.  Oh, why me?  Maybe it’s not the best or the healthiest, but it’s good enough, durable enough, that this person feels like he or she can call upon you and not be sent away with a kick and a curse.  Maybe there’s no one else to turn to.

“Jesus said to them, ‘Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread”’” (11:5).  So, Jesus wants us to suppose you’re asking a friend, not a stranger or just an acquaintance, like one of those neighbors you know by name but haven’t gotten to know so well: we seem to have a lot of those.  Three loaves?  That sounds like a lot.  There’s a real need, a big need.  Your friend doesn’t know who else to turn to.  He turns to you.  “[A] friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him’” (11:6).  So, your friend has been surprised by a sudden event—an awkwardly-timed arrival.  Surprised at midnight; now you are, too.

Hospitality was of the first importance in the ancient world.  It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around it.  Oh, probably most of us could rummage around in our fridge, cabinets, or pantry and pull something together.  Nothing special, but something.  This one who comes to ask doesn’t even have that much.  Unprepared?  Maybe.  Desperately poor?  Could be.  There were a few times in my early years, as I was told, when my mother wasn’t just sure what we’d be eating, that week; I guess there’s always oatmeal, or saltines.

At any rate, there is a lack that your friend cannot fill but that you might be in a position to, if you were willing.  He assumes you are able to, since you’ve never given any indication otherwise.  You’ve always been a decent, even generous friend, before.  Sometimes, we get called to be generous and patient, even if we’re not exactly feeling it.  Jesus knows: “And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me.  The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed.  I can’t get up and give you anything’” (11:7).  Yeah, that’s a tough situation you’ve got there, for sure, but—it’s too late; I have to work in the morning; you’re waking the baby.  Have you tried the neighbor on the other side?  You’ve got a lot of nerve!  We can all always find reasons not to help; they aren’t all bad reasons.  Maybe I’d just be encouraging my friend’s irresponsibility and lack of forethought?  Time to grow up, get some maturity!  It’s for your own good that you’re forcing me to say no!

“I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need” (11:8).  Oh, yes.  There are those who figure that out, fast.  “Shameless audacity”—I’m not sure I’d want to be known for shameless audacity.  Feels like desperation, maybe even a lack of dignity, an absence of self-respect.  Just a hot mess.  Still, when it’s just that important to you, are you really going to give up, especially if you’re convinced, convicted, that I have the bread to give?  We’ve all done a little pleading and wheedling in our time, I suppose: made ourselves look a little pathetic.  If we get our request, even though we’ve made ourselves look foolish in the process and irritated people . . . well, do the ends justify the means?

You’ve just got to ask, though, regardless of how asking makes you feel.  If you hate to ask, or are afraid—if you let such feelings prevent you—you’ll never know.  Pride doesn’t just go before a fall.  Pride can get in the way of all manner of blessing.  When the need is real, even urgent, will you actually let pride stop you from asking?  We’re not mind readers, here, no matter how very nice and convenient that might be.  We’d like to be better heart readers, but that needs some help, too.  We aren’t closed to helping; we just aren’t always sure how to help.  You’ve just got to ask regardless of how asking may make you feel.

Jesus tells us as much: “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (11:9).  Because Jesus is talking, after all, about what we bring to God: our need, our complicated situation, our inability to meet it adequately; our lack, our lapse, our failure, and our hope.  That’s big—acknowledging that we don’t have what is necessary to meet a challenge or difficulty.  It feels just a little . . . shameful; it sort of wounds our pride, asking for help.  Now, there’s no shame in finding yourself in a tight spot, if you haven’t gotten there irresponsibly.  But even if you have, a tight spot is a tight spot.  Beloved, it is always going to be need, the keen awareness of our need, that drives us to God.  Where there is no sensed need, we drift away.  I need Thee every hour, the old hymn sings.  Amen!

Faith is the acknowledgment of need.  Need drives us to God, so too faith: the knowledge, the conviction and experience that God is not like a reluctant neighbor whom we’re terribly inconveniencing at midnight.  Or that we had better not come back again anytime soon.  If we go to God at all, we go knowing that God already knows, and knows we will come again, many times, maybe even daily, shame-faced, even a little desperate.  And Jesus, in and through whom we see and know our Father in heaven, assures us: “everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (11:10).  But we must ask, we must seek, we must knock.  Have you ever just signaled, signaled, signaled, yet the person whom you thought you were signaling so clearly just doesn’t seem to get it?  Stupid people!  How obvious do I have to be?!  We can sometimes think we’re being so obvious when we’re really not.  We’re not mind readers here.  Nor can we simply gesture towards God in some vague, general way, thinking why won’t He come.  Have you ever received without asking?  Sure!  Sometimes, what you received was just the thing you needed most.  God is always offering us all a priceless gift, so very dear and costly to Him.  And there remain those who take a quick glance at what is offered and say no thanks.

Nearly forty years ago—am I that old, now?—the Irish rock group U2 sang “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”  If you listen carefully, it’s kind of hard to know whether Bono is singing about love for a woman or love for God—typical with many of their songs.  It’s a love for which he has struggled, exerted great effort—he’s been working at it!  Yet he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.  So, does he give up, turn his attention elsewhere, tell himself it isn’t worth it, it’s just impossible, asking the impossible?  No.  He continues to stretch, to reach, to climb mountains and scale high walls, seeking.  He would not do that if he did not believe that what he was looking for was there, really available—if he could only find it.  We search and search, only to dance the circle and find ourselves back again, facing what was always there already, once we have eyes and heart to see.  If we seek, let us also pray for eyes to see and hearts to know.

And if that seeker, that asker, finally does arrive at the door?  If the door has written on it, in large letters, “Knock,” will we just stand there, wondering what it means?  Stand there, feeling rejected and defeated?  Stand there, afraid?  Whether as invitation or command, the next step seems rather clear: knock.  “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” (11:11-12).  Snakes and scorpions, again.  God does not give poison for food.  The only one who does that is this world, this fallen world, the fallen hearts in it, convinced that poison is true food, true drink.  Imbibing the poison and casting seeds of poison, like weeds to left and right.  Take a look out there, beloved: we are a sick people, physically, mentally . . . spiritually; we act as if poison were food, as if what kills us will bring us health—or we just stop caring.  People are quick to reject out of hand the one thing that gives true hope because it does not conform to their clouded vision for how life ought to be.  The only man ever immune to this malady was Jesus.

“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (11:13).  Well, how do you feel about what Jesus says, there?  Did you hear him?  “If you then, though you are evil.”  Dang.  Jesus does not call those people lovely, kind, decent human beings.  I mean, we all know who the kind, decent ones are, right?  And we all know who the rotten SOBs are.  My cousin on facebook reminds whoever is seeing his posts, all the time.  He sure knows!

“If you then, though you are evil.”  Dang.  Mean Jesus.  Why does he have such a low opinion of people?  The old sourpuss.  Come on, Jesus, have a little charity!  Who here is really going to hear these words of Jesus and say, “you know, he’s right: we are evil”?  But maybe you and I, maybe we just might, just might, grudgingly acknowledge that, once in a while—once in a great while!—we sort of go all stubborn: “stiff-necked,” Scripture calls it.  It’s those times when we want what we want, when we won’t listen because we know what God’s Word says and we don’t, in that moment, care.  We want what we want.  We’re right and they’re wrong, including God, if He points a direction we don’t choose to go.  God pledges Himself by His Spirt to help those who want what God wants.  He vows to help them want that, too.  God always cares; He shows it as he blesses us, sometimes by busting us, always by lifting us to His healing, by His Word, for His glory.  Not our glory.  His.  For His glory, He blesses us, so that all shall know the true character of God who takes what is regarded as of little value and causes us to know our true value.  Praise Him—His mercy, His grace, His love.