The Parable of the Friend at Midnight

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"And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples."¹ Jesus answers the request first with the words that came to be called the Lord's Prayer, and then, without pause, with a story. "Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him?"²

A Midnight Request

Hospitality in that culture was not a courtesy extended when convenient. It was a duty owed, and failing a guest brought shame on the household and, by extension, on the whole village that had allowed it to happen. Travel at night to avoid the heat of the day was common enough that a late arrival was no surprise, but a host with three loaves as his entire evening's supply and a guest already inside his door had a genuine emergency, not a minor inconvenience he could set aside until morning. Borrowing from a neighbor to meet a guest's need was itself an ordinary practice, and there was nothing unusual in the request. Three loaves were a modest amount, no more than one guest's meal required, and asking a neighbor rather than a stranger kept the request inside a relationship where such borrowing was normal. What was unusual was the hour.

The Reluctant Friend

"And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee."³

The household described here was a single room shared by the whole family, where a door once barred for the night was not reopened without disturbing everyone inside. Doors of that kind were barred as a matter of ordinary security once the household settled for the night, so opening one again meant more than turning a handle; it meant lifting a bar and waking whoever slept nearest it. The friend's refusal is not malice. It is the ordinary reluctance of a man asked to undo, at an inconvenient hour, work he had already finished for the day. Jesus does not soften the refusal or make the friend more generous than the story requires him to be. The force of the parable depends on a friend who has a real reason to say no.

The Argument From Persistence

"I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth."⁴

Friendship alone does not move the man out of bed. What moves him is the neighbor's importunity, a shameless persistence that will not be turned away by a first refusal. This is an argument long used in Jewish teaching, reasoning from a lesser case to a greater one. If a reluctant friend, disturbed and unwilling, will eventually rise and give what is needed because the asking will not stop, the argument does not end with the friend. It exists to be carried further, to a Father who is not reluctant at all.

From a Reluctant Friend to a Willing Father

Jesus draws that further step himself, in the sentences that follow the parable without a break. "And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened."⁵ The three verbs, ask, seek, knock, describe increasing effort, and each is matched to a promise that does not diminish as the effort grows. He completes the comparison with a second argument of the same kind, this time from a father and his own child. "If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?"⁶ The friend at midnight, reluctant and roused from sleep, was never the model for how God answers prayer. He was the lesser case set beside the greater one, and the greater one is a Father who does not need to be reasoned out of bed.

A Teaching Given More Than Once

Matthew records Jesus giving this same threefold instruction on a separate occasion entirely, in the Sermon on the Mount, in words close enough to be the same saying remembered from two settings: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened."⁷ This was not a passing thought attached once to the parable of the friend at midnight and never repeated. It is a settled part of what Jesus taught about prayer, given on more than one occasion in nearly identical words, and each time paired with the same reasoning: a human father who is imperfect nevertheless gives good things to his children, so a Father who is not imperfect can be trusted further still, not less.

The God Who Does Not Sleep

The psalmist had already ruled out one difference between the friend and God that the parable leaves its hearers to notice on their own. "Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."⁸ The friend's objection, the shut door and the children already in bed, describes an inconvenience that cannot arise in God's case at all. There is no hour at which He must be roused, no household to disturb, no rest that a request would interrupt. What the parable asks of a man who prays is not a technique for overcoming divine reluctance. It is the same steady practice Paul commends to two different churches in almost the same words: "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving,"⁹ and, more briefly still, "Pray without ceasing."¹⁰ Persistence in the parable answers a friend's real unwillingness. Persistence commended to the church answers no unwillingness in God at all. It is simply how a request is kept before the one who was always ready to hear it.

The writer to the Hebrews names the same posture without a parable to carry it: "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."¹¹ The boldness commanded there is not the shameless persistence of a neighbor who will not take no for an answer. It is the confidence of someone approaching a throne where mercy is not in question, only the moment it will be given. The parable teaches the posture from the lesser case. The writer to the Hebrews states it directly from the greater one.

A reluctant friend can be moved by enough knocking. A Father who already delights to give does not need to be moved at all. He needs only to be asked.

Luke 11:1, KJV. ↩
Luke 11:5-6, KJV. ↩
Luke 11:7, KJV. ↩
Luke 11:8, KJV. ↩
Luke 11:9-10, KJV. ↩
Luke 11:11-13, KJV. ↩
Matthew 7:7-8, KJV. ↩
Psalm 121:4, KJV. ↩
Colossians 4:2, KJV. ↩
1 Thessalonians 5:17, KJV. ↩
Hebrews 4:16, KJV. ↩