The Parable of the Friend at Night
And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.”
“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
- Luke 11:5-10
What would you do if your friend texted you at midnight asking for three loaves of bread? Would you give your friend what they want or would you roll over and fall back asleep?
Most of us would probably ignore the text and go back to sleep, or we might tell our friends to go to a store and figure it out themselves. That’s why this parable loses a lot of meaning in our own modern context—asking to borrow bread (or any food for that matter) is simply not something we would do at a time when our friend is assumed to be in bed for the night. For us, we may respond to this parable with: “of course we wouldn’t get up for that kind of ridiculous request.” Then the story becomes that the one knocking on the door simply wouldn’t go away, and eventually wore down the one who was trying to sleep. In the context of prayer, the meaning degrades to “I should just keep asking every day and eventually God will give in.”
The community of people Jesus originally told this parable to would have heard it very differently.
For the Jewish people of that time, hospitality was considered to be a sacred duty. In this story, that would translate to both the person knocking on the door as well as the one trying to sleep. The one knocking on the door was expected to provide food and hospitality for their own visitor, food which they didn’t have on hand. This would have naturally driven them to try to find food to offer their guest, leading them to knock on their friends door. The sleeping friend would then have the sacred duty to provide hospitality for their own friend in need by giving them the bread they required. The original hearers of this parable would have probably said to themselves “of course we would get up and provide bread for our friend.” It was a no-brainer. For them the initial response of the sleeping person would have been more out of place than the person knocking at midnight.
This raises a few important points about this parable. First, the request for bread at midnight was not a frivolous request—it was a real need tied to a sacred responsibility. Second, the sleeping friend would have been expected to help their friend at the door. Third, the persistence of the person knocking implies additional motivation past what a good friend might normally do.
Traditionally, this parable is understood in the context of prayer—inviting us to pray with confidence and persistence. This doesn’t mean persistent prayer is a magic loophole to get whatever you want. You could pray over and over again for the newest iphone, but you still have to go buy it. Instead, it teaches us that God is happy to answer our prayers when they are aligned with who we are called to be. The person knocking in this story was called to be hospitable, a call the person sleeping was able to help them answer.
In order to reimagine this parable in more of a modern context, we decided to change it to a friend who needed a place to stay the night. This is more reflective of a situation in which most of us would probably help our friends immediately. It also keeps that layer of persistence, of even if we didn’t immediately get up, we probably would if they kept calling.
What other questions is this parable inviting us to ask? What are you searching for? What doors do you need help opening? God wants to help us fulfill our calling, we only need to ask.