Conversations with God
Luke 11:5-8
Have you ever had unexpected guests? Deorick and Dennis Williams got included in a group text of two people they didn't know. The text read: “Lindsey and Mark Knox have given birth to a healthy baby boy, Carson Knox.” The couple was so busy texting friends and family about the new arrival that they inadvertently sent the text to the wrong phone. Regardless, Deorick and Dennis did the unthinkable: they jumped in their car and drove 40 miles from their home in Tallahassee, FL to the hospital in GA to celebrate the birth of a new child to perfect strangers. And just to add more excitement to the surprise visit, they stopped along the way to pick up some gifts for the new baby. Sound insane? The Knoxes posted to Facebook: “What a blessing these two guys were to our family. They were so sweet and kind to do this! You 2 are great guys and thank you for giving to someone you didn’t know!”
http://www.brinkofgreatness.com/wrong-text-delights-new-mom-unexpected-visitors/
Have you ever had unexpected guests? Google “unannounced guests” and you find a slew of websites dedicated to the topic and a host of Miss Manners like suggestions. One woman blogged this question, “How do you react to unannounced visitors?” She then proceeded to tell the story of her sister in law who lives two hours away but stopped by unannounced because she was in the area. When she arrived home, she found her sister in law sitting on the front porch waiting for her. Her husband was out of town for the week and she and her kids were just recovering from a bad cold, so things were especially chaotic. Her house was a disaster. She had enough dinner for herself and her girls, but nothing to offer her sister in law. While the sister in law was there, this mom spent the entire time futilely trying to carry on a conversation while wrangling her toddler and infant.” Responses to her posted question included, “If someone can't bother to call me before they get to my house, I don't even answer the door.” Another responded, “That’s just rude!” They’re not alone. The idea of dropping by someone’s house unannounced is almost unthinkable these days, and what about if it was midnight? But not in Jesus’ day. Israel is on the same parallel as Louisiana and so you can imagine how hot it gets in summer. This forced travelers on foot to avoid the hottest part of the day and instead travel in the later afternoon and evening. So it was not unusual to have someone arrive at your house after dark and even at midnight.
Now a person would arrive with expectations. To understand this parable, we need to see there are three cultural values at work in this story which everyone listening to Jesus’ story in his day would have taken for granted. The first is hospitality which was mandatory in Jesus’ culture. The extremes people went to extend hospitality to others were legendary. One example was Abraham’s response to three strangers who come to his tent in the desert and he prepares a banquet for them. The other two values are honor and shame and putting the community first in all things. Hospitality is an issue of village honor because the interests of the community always transcend that of the individual. Thus, anyone who refuses to extend hospitality to a guest would immediately be shamed in the eyes of the village. And such news would spread like wild fire throughout the village. So when this unnounced guest arrives, he is expecting a meal and a place to sleep, sending this man to the door of his neighbor asking for bread.
There are several things we learn from this parable. First, God faithfully provides. There were two elements which determined the survival of the Hebrew people in the wilderness: water and bread. Thus, bread became a symbol of God’s faithful provision to his people. It is served at every meal in Jesus’ day because it is used as your utensil. To eat, a piece of bread is torn from a loaf and dipped into the common food bowls set on the table. This dipped piece of bread is called a sop, and cannot be reused since it would defile the remaining food in that bowl. Dorito’s has it right, no double dipping! Thus, every sop (mouthful) of food requires a new piece of bread torn from the loaf. Another part of this meal tradition is that a guest can never be offered a partial loaf of bread because that would be insulting. The host must, therefore, offer a complete loaf. Since Middle Eastern hospitality traditions require putting much more in front of the guest than he could possibly eat, multiple loaves of bread are needed to properly “set the table.”
Second, God meets our needs. Now any time we come to a passage of Scripture, the very first question we should ask is, “What happened before?” In the first four verses of this chapter, Jesus responds to the disciple’s request to teach them how to pray. Jesus shares what has become known as The Lord’s Prayer, but more accurately should be called the Disciples’ Prayer. It was customary for rabbis of Jesus’ day to craft a special prayer for their disciples which summarized in a succinct manner each rabbi’s distinctive approach to interpreting God’s Word and living by the Law. These prayers were coveted by a rabbi’s disciples and prayed regularly by them. So the question is, “What is Jesus trying to teach his disciples through the Lord’s Prayer?” By incorporating daily bread into His distinctive Disciples’ Prayer, Jesus is recalling God’s provision of manna to the Hebrews in the Wilderness of Zin, https://deweybertolini.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/more-wilderness-of-zin-neve-zohar.jpg which is a place so barren that almost nothing grows. The people complainingly describe this environment to Moses as “no place for seed, or for figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; nor is there any water to drink.” Numbers 20:5 Thus, manna is literally a life or death issue and the Hebrew people are completely dependent on God for their survival. And God meets their needs every day by giving manna from heaven and providing water for the people. God will provide for your needs.
And that leads us to our third lesson: God loves and cares for you. We Westerners, with our focus on individualism, tend to identify with the person at the door because we see this person as the one with a need. However, because of their value of community, Middle Easterners more readily identify with the person inside the house because that person has the capacity to meet this sudden community need and thus preserve the honor of the village. They understand the responsibility of the person inside to do whatever necessary to meet the needs of the person at the door. So Jesus opens with, “Suppose one of you…,” or “Which one of you (ESV)…,” In other words, “Can you imagine this ever happening?” He fully expects His Disciples to resoundingly respond, “No, of course not. We could never imagine such a thing from a member of the community, especially when there is an urgent need.” The excuses put forth by the “friend” inside for not responding to this urgent community need for bread are not only flimsy, but also laughable. This story is outrageous and unthinkable in the disciple’s minds.
Linking this parable to the Lord’s Prayer, the person inside the door represents Almighty God who is never inconvenienced when you call upon him, and who never sleeps. Jesus is saying that when you have a true, sudden need, make it known immediately to our Father (Luke 11:2a) who will respond because it is an issue of honor and God will maintain His honor at all costs. Our God is not just a God of promises but promises fulfilled. God’s love and care for you goes way beyond whatever affection the person inside the house might have for his friend at the midnight door. He is loving. He is trustworthy and He will always respond to our needs because of who he is. And that leads us to our fourth point.
Fourth, when we pray for our needs, we can pray confidently. Our Father indeed hears those who come to Him. For the first 1500 years, the church translated the word ‘anaideia’ to mean shamelessly. Only in the last 500 years, has it been incorrectly translated to mean persistently. The reason is that for the first 1500 years, people, including those in Jesus’ day, focused on the person inside the door in this parable but with the rise of the Enlightenment and the change of focus from the community to the individual, people began to focus on the one knocking at the door. There is no evidence in this story of persistence being demonstrated or even needed by the person at the door. In the Middle Eastern context of mandatory hospitality and village honor/shame, the “shamelessness” refers to the friend inside the house. Thus, the emphasis is much more on confidently making your request known to the One who can quickly meet that need.
Jesus is teaching that when we bring our needs to God, not our wants or desires but needs, we can be confident that the need will not only be responded to immediately, but will often be met in a more expansive way. God knows full well all the other needs that come with this situation. Furthermore, God has the resources required to respond to these greater needs. Just as it was mandatory to always give much more food to the stranger at your door than he/she can eat, we can be assured that our need will be met and we will be given much more than we asked for or needed. While the person at the door only asks for bread, this petitioner will get much more from his friend inside. To appropriately honor this guest, the village will need more than bread to properly set the table. But also the best drinking goblets and tableware and the best meats, cheeses, fruits and vegetables. Hence the expected appropriate community-oriented response is He will “give him as much as he needs” and more! So don’t be surprised if you get more in response to your request than you asked for!
There is a second lesson in prayer for us because of our confidence in who God is and what God has promised and it’s this: we only have to ask once for that need to be heard and be fulfilled. In this parable, there does not seem to be more than 60 seconds between the spoken request at the door and the acknowledged response from the person inside. An immediate need is responded to immediately. Instead, Jesus teaches us that one needful request is sufficient. We don’t need to pester God with repeated prayers for our needs. Therefore, you can confidently pray for what you truly need right now, once, and then focus your prayers on other things of the kingdom.
Chris Jeffries tells the story of Roy who was feeling frustrated that he was not able to do what he felt he was born to do. So he prayed for Our Father to change something. Then there was a knock at the door and they met two strangers, a married couple. They invited them in and sat them down at their table, where they had just finished lunch, and the reason for their trek up our long and steep drive unfolded. 'Well, we were driving along here and we don't quite understand it, but we were compelled to come up your drive.' They had noted that it was a Christian retreat centre, but that meant little to them. They made them a cup of tea, always a good place to start, and then talked in general terms about the centre for a while and finally explained to them that this is a place where lives get changed because God is real. They then gave them a tour of the grounds showing them the garden across the swiftly flowing stream and a beautiful view of the valley and surrounding hills. They took in the stone corridors of the main retreat centre and then entered the final room at the back, which happened to be the chapel. There, they seemed to sense something of the presence of God, although they might not have been able to articulate what was happening to them. They sat down rather speedily, rather heavily, as if their legs had gone a little weak. He then said: 'We have a rule here about how we respond to our visitors. We like to bless them before they leave. May I bless you?' They had no problem with that, so I simply said: 'I bless you in the name of Jesus, to know God, his purpose for your life, and his blessings on you and your family and the situations of your life. Amen.' They started to weep. The sense of the presence of God seemed tangible. Roy quietly let himself out of the chapel so they could have some time to themselves and let God do what he wanted to do for that couple. A little later they came and found Roy, full of gratitude and rather shaken by what was for them the unexpected sense of God's presence. And before they left, he had the opportunity to share a little more of the good news of Jesus.
And then Chris Jeffires writes, “On the face of it, this isolated event would not have seem like an answer to Roy's prayer. But nothing quite like this had happened before and perhaps it should have made him wonder. It turned out later that this was the beginning of the answer to why Roy was at this retreat center and there was more to come - much more. Roy could not see this at the time. Probably we are all the same, I know I am. I ask for something but don't expect the next thing that happens to be the first stirrings of the Father's response. Sometimes I have the faith to ask, believing that he will do something, yet somehow I expect his answer to be within the bounds of my hopes and expectations. How silly! Often (perhaps always) he does far, far more than we can ever hope or expect (Ephesians 3:20). So next time you pray for something, expect to be surprised by the answer. You don't know how, or where, or when the answer will arrive; you don't know if it will be in the form you suppose. All you know for sure is that it's likely to be more than you expect, not less….(And) Always remember, Papa (our Father) won't give you what you want, he'll give you what he knows you need. He'll give you what he wants, he'll give you what will further the growth of his Kingdom, he will stretch you and develop your character. He is Love and he is also very wise.” Amen and Amen.
