Jeremy Duncan: In fact, what Jesus says is that God responds not to our shame, but to our complete lack of it. God doesn't respond because you make a fool of yourself standing at the door knocking and pleading over and over again. God responds simply because you stand there completely unashamed to be at the door at midnight. Let's pray, and then we're gonna jump into our next parable of this series. God of grace, as we come to this moment, we quiet our hearts before you.
In the middle of busy weeks and unfinished thoughts, all the things that we've carried in here with us today, we pause. And we ask that you might teach us to pray anew. Not just with words that we've memorized, but with the honesty of people who know that we need your help. Give us the courage to stand before you without pretending, without rehearsing our arguments, without trying to prove ourselves worthy of your grace. But instead, remind us that you meet us even in the middle of the night, even when we feel unprepared, even when all we have to offer is our ask.
And so, we ask that you would open our hearts this morning and our imaginations to the strange and beautiful tales that Jesus tells. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Last week, we found ourselves looking at a bit of an odd parable, an unforgiving servant who teaches us about how God plays against expectations. Today, we find ourselves with a similar type of story, a reticent friend who does not want to get up to help.
So what we're going do is we're going to read this very strange parable, but to do that, we actually have to back up the train just a little bit. This is the start of Luke chapter 11. One day, Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John is teaching his disciples to. This moment might feel familiar. It was the spring a year ago during Lent, in fact, that we spent a whole season looking through the Lord's prayer.
Now, when we did that, we focused on the version that we read in Matthew that is presented as part of the sermon on the mount. Here, we're gonna find Luke's version of the Lord's prayer. This is verse two. He said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive our sins as we forgive everyone who sins against us, and lead us not into temptation. So very familiar, also a little shorter and more concise version of Jesus teaching on prayer than we might be familiar with. But then we read this, then Jesus said to them, suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight, and you say, friend, lend me three loaves of bread. A friend of mine has come on a journey. I have no food to offer him.
And suppose the one inside answers, don't bother me. The door is already locked. My children and I are already in bed. I can't get up and give you anything right now. 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.
So, this is the parable of the unhelpful friend. And today, we'll cover the allure of predictability, and neighbors, persistence, and then finally, some audacity. However, we gotta start with a little context here. Because Luke presents this story as a commentary on the Lord's prayer. And the Lord's prayer, at least as we read it here, is a little different than the one we're probably more familiar with.
At Commons, we recite the Lord's prayer regularly together in worship. And so for me, sometimes it's actually kinda hard to read this version in Luke without adding the lines that I know from Matthew in. Feels weird. But this approach actually isn't unique in Luke. He also has a condensed version of the Sermon on the Mount.
You can find that in Luke chapter six, and we often call that one the sermon on the plane. He likes to keep things tight, I guess. However, what I find interesting here is that once again, we find Jesus telling a story in response to a question. So how many times should I forgive? Jesus tells a story.
Who exactly is my neighbor? Jesus tells a story. How should we pray? Jesus finally gives us a pretty straightforward answer, and then he tells a story. Honestly, kind of telling here that Jesus is very happy to answer a question with a story, but then even when he answers a question directly, it's almost like he's like, oh, that's not gonna be enough.
For Jesus, a story can stand on its own, but an answer can't. And think about that for a second. Jesus would rather you fumble around with a story than be handed an answer, and then even if he's gonna give you an answer, he's gonna make sure you have a story to fumble. And honestly, even that in itself should challenge some of our assumptions about God. What if God isn't as interested in correcting your theological thinking as much as God wants you to learn how to think theologically for yourself?
I mean, what are the reason could there be for Jesus, not just telling stories, but then complicating even his most straightforward moments with more stories that we still wrestle with some two thousand years later? Maybe we could say that for Jesus, the process of coming to know God is at least as important as the knowing itself. In fact, there's that old phrase. Right? The journey is the destination.
It's a cliche. Right? Also, honestly, kind of exactly what Jesus seems to be saying sometimes with his stories. The right answers or maybe here, the right prayers are less important than how we get to them. So, let's think about that for a second.
Jesus' disciples wanna learn how to pray. Apparently, this guy John has been teaching his disciples how to do it. These guys are like, well, we want in on a little of that too. And I get that. We did a whole series on prayer, specifically the Lord's prayer last year during Lent.
And we did that largely because prayer is hard. It's fraught with contradictions. And I'll be honest, it often doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean, what am I even doing here when I pray? Am I trying to convince God to do what I want, or am I trying to convince myself to do what God wants?
No. Confession. My prayers, probably a little bit of both. Ideally though, I'd like to think it's a lot more of the latter. Perhaps to be about changing me, certainly a lot more than it's about changing God.
Right? Still, I can empathize with the disciples when they're like, can you just can you just tell us how to do this? And they compare this request to what they've seen from the disciples of John. And this also is an ongoing thing in Luke. Several times already in his gospel up to this point, he has referenced a group of disciples that are following John around the same way these guys are following Jesus around.
And specifically, back in Luke five verse 33, we read a critique that John's disciples, well, they often fast and pray as do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours, referring to Jesus, well, they just go around eating and drinking. Now, Jesus steps in to defend this saying, look, things are good right now. I'm here with my disciples. We're hanging out, chilling, enjoying each other's companies. Now is not the time to fast, but that will come.
By the way, worth paying attention to this on its own. There are lots of seasons of mourning in all of our lives. It's very important for us to pay attention to them, acknowledge them. But you do not need to create more drama for yourself than is necessary. Like, it's not spiritual to be in constant struggle.
If things are good, enjoy that. Sometimes it's just appropriate to sit back and enjoy what's in front of you. Life has enough ups and downs on its own. However, this critique is also the closest we get to understanding that John and his disciples have a practice of prayer and fasting. They seem to have a very rigorous routine that perhaps Jesus' disciples are looking at with some envy.
Now, maybe you think to yourself, well, why would anyone ever want a rigorous practice of prayer and fasting? That seems like not great. I think though deep down, all of us, I mean, we want a good rhythm. Now, I know you know this about me. I especially like a good rhythm.
I get up every morning, I put on one of my two pairs of jeans, I then grab two socks from my drawer of all the same socks, I put on a black t shirt from my stack, and if it's a weekday, I put on my gray hoodie, if it's a weekend, I put on my gray button up shirt. I get a haircut every six months whether I need it or not. I sit at my desk all day Wednesday and I write, and I drink coffee on Thursday and meet with people from the community every single week. I like to get up every day knowing exactly what I am gonna do that day. It just feels great.
You, however, may not enjoy any of that. It doesn't sound great to you, which is fine by the way. Being boring is not a spiritual gift. It's fine. It's just me.
However, I do think a lot of us enjoy predictability in our lives. In fact, I know that because psychology tells us how important predictability is for all of us. From an evolutionary standpoint, the unexpected means danger. And so when things are consistent, when the environment feels predictable around us, our brains are actually wired then to slow down, to conserve energy in times of low anxiety. Friendships and relationships that are predictable and stable, that's when we feel safe to open up and tell someone about ourselves.
Routines that we know, even as something simple as your morning routine, or honestly, coming here to church and having a liturgy that reduces our mental load by reminding us, we don't have to figure everything out. Some things are already known. In fact, the whole reason that I started dressing this way about a decade ago was because there was a lot of research that told me if I could reduce choices I didn't care about, I could keep all of that creativity for things that I did. Now, by the way, if you like fashion, that is a beautiful thing to put your creativity into. So keep doing that.
The world would be very unfun if we all wore gray shirts every day. That's fine. My point here is, imagine someone came along and told you, hey, you can pray a certain way, or you can attend a particular church, you can listen to a very specific preacher, and all of your questions will be answered. You will never have to wonder about the divine again. Do this, and you will know your standing with God.
Do this, and you can be assured of your salvation. Follow these simple principles, and you too can have a confidence of a child with a permanent marker in a freshly painted room. Now, that sounds naive to think that a formulaic prayer could ever get us there. But the thing is, you can turn that corner, if someone can sell you that idea, that's an incredibly compelling offer. And so that's what the disciples want here.
They're not dying for more rules. They're searching for more structure to reduce their mental load. It's their version of my gray shirts. And to them at least, it seems like from the outside, John is offering that to his disciples. Do this and you will live.
What's fascinating to me is that Jesus seems to both understand that desire and yet still be entirely aware of its limitation. So, he offers his friends a prayer that they can pray. One, we recite here at Commons for all the same reasons that they did. The same reasons Christians have been doing for thousands of years now. But he also follows it up with a story that refuses to allow the recitation to be the end of that conversation.
That's profoundly insightful, I think. It's also the only way we can interpret the story that follows well. So here's our story. And by the way, notice here, Jesus teaches his disciples to pray for just enough bread. That immediately tells a story about not having enough bread.
Right? Like, this story and this prayer are absolutely meant to go together. But this is what he says. Suppose you have a friend, and suppose you go to him at midnight and you say, friend, lend me some bread. A friend of mine is on a journey and has come to see me, and I don't have any food to share with him.
Couple thoughts here. First, I noticed this is pretty thorough ask. Our man shows up at the door and explains, like, this is what's happened. This is why I wasn't prepared. This is why I couldn't have seen this coming.
This is why I need just three loaves of bread from you. This is why I promise it's just this once. Can you help me out? All of this to me feels very much like someone who has been rehearsing this pitch on his way to the door. I don't know if you do this.
I practice conversations in the shower all the time. They're not even real conversations I'm ever planning to have. They're just random scenarios that pop in my head, and I think about all the witty and clever responses I would offer if they ever actually happen. Will I ever do I ever get to use these carefully constructed retorts in real life? No.
Not yet. Does it feel like this guy has been practicing this ask in the shower? Yeah. It does. Second, I noticed Jesus uses the word friend a lot in the story, like conspicuously.
Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him and you say, friend, a friend has visited me. I need some help from you. That feels very deliberate. And perhaps, because the ask feels so rehearsed, and the fact that the friend responds so coldly, all of this makes me think that maybe part of the point here is that these friends don't see their relationship the same way. Maybe that feels familiar?
Too familiar? We've all gone for a hug and got a fist bump at some point. Right? Maybe you found yourself short at some point. It's a little bit embarrassing, kinda humbling.
You pulled yourself together, you put yourself out there, you asked for some help, and maybe someone said, you know, I can't get involved right now. Let's be honest, asking for help is hard. Right? Which is probably why it feels like this guy has been rehearsing this question. He doesn't want to ask in the first place.
He certainly doesn't want to be turned down. And particularly in a culture like ours, where self sufficiency is drilled into us as a life goal from a really early age, needing help is bad enough. But then inconveniencing your neighbor by showing up in the middle of the night. Well, mean, that's a decidedly uncomfortable place to be. Now, I have a neighbor, two neighbors actually, one on either side.
But one of my neighbors is an older guy, and actually he just moved out of this house into a permanent care facility this past week. But he's been our neighbor for the past decade. He's lived alone during all of that time, and he would call and ask for help regularly, all kinds of things. I need some help with my computer, or I need some help with my plumbing. I need some help.
Can you shovel the snow? It's piled up a little bit too high. In fact, Rachel and I were talking this week, now that he's gone, we said goodbye to him as he moved out, we were wondering if we could have done more to help over the last couple of years in particular. But to be honest, we were always really happy to help. He was a great neighbor.
He was always very kind to my kids, always ready for a chat across the fence. And yet still, every time he would call, he was always apologetic. I hate to ask Jeremy, but can you help me with insert whatever project here? Except here's the thing. I was always genuinely happy to help.
I I wanted to go over and help him, but I knew why he would apologize. Because if I had the choice, would absolutely prefer to be the one woken up in the middle of the night by my neighbor than to be the one who needed to go over and wake him up in the middle of the night. And that's not really healthy, is it? We have all of us, myself, my neighbor, you, probably. We've been conditioned by a culture that tells us being strong, independent, self sufficient, that's the goal, and that help from your neighbor should be a last resort.
It's embarrassing to go and ask. And yet, if that's true, which I think it is, then why does Jesus tell us a story about a guy who finally does it and then gets a cold shoulder when he finally knocks? Well, as is often the case, there's at least a couple ways to read this story. And one option is to imagine that the story is all about persistence. It's not really a story about asking, it's a story about asking again.
And to be fair, might be something to that. Trusting that you can speak for yourself, ask for what you need, even in the face of apathy, I think that is important for all of us to learn. In fact, one of the things that can very quickly kill a relationship over the long term is when one or both of the parties don't know how to ask for what they need from each other. And yeah, sure, it would be nice if our partner knew us well enough to give it to us without an ask or at least on first ask, but in my experience that rarely happens. So learning to ask clearly and repeatedly when necessary, I I think that is a superpower sometimes.
And maybe, we could even say there's something to that when it comes to prayer. I know people who have very diligently, faithfully prayed for something for years. There is a profound beauty there in trusting in God's goodness, refusing to give up no matter what. At the same time though, all of us have prayed for something that didn't work out no matter how many times we asked. Right?
One of the least favorite parts of my job is also one of the great privileges of my life. The fact that I have journeyed with some of you through profound loss. Relationships that broke or careers that faltered. Bad things that happened to really really good people that didn't deserve them. And so, yeah, there's a time for faith and persistence, but the truth is asking, it won't fix everything that assails us even if we are persistent.
We get sick, we lose our faith, we die before it should ever make sense. And the simple fact is, that someday, every one of us will pray for one more day, and no matter how much we want it or plead for it, we will not get it. So I'm not sure it's just as simple as what Jesus is really teaching us here, that if you just pray long enough, eventually it'll happen. And I think part of our problem here is that we're actually doing too much with the story. Let me read you a couple translations to show you what I mean here.
Suppose you have a friend, suppose you ask for help, suppose he says not right now. And then the message translation says, but if you stand your ground knocking and waking all the neighbors, he'll finally get up and give you whatever you need. The New Living Translation says, but if you keep knocking long enough, then he'll get up and give you what you need because of your shameless persistence. Both of those parables are being read in a way that it's you who's really waking up the neighbors and making a racket, persisting and annoying your friend long enough that you finally get what you want. My question though is, does that really sound like God?
Does the divine need to be badgered into waking and disturbed from slumber, annoyed into listening? Is that what prayer is all about? Remember, the context, this is very much a parable about prayer, so is that what it's telling us? And again, I think the problem here is we're actually just doing too much. Because where the message has us waking up the neighbors, and the NLT has us knocking again and again and again, the NIV, which I read the first time, it's actually much closer to the original Greek.
And there we simply read, I tell you that 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 get you what you need. Do notice the difference? It's subtle. I think it is important though. In Jesus' actual version of the story, there is no second knock.
There's no scene where you wake up the neighbors. There's no drama at all, in fact, here. It's just a commentary on the motivation for the response that you receive. In fact, you get what you asked for on the first ask, all three loaves. It's just not because of friendship, it's because of audacity.
So imagine the story one more time. Jesus says, suppose you have a friend that comes to town, and suppose you don't have anything to offer, and suppose you go to your neighbor in the middle of the night and you ask for some help. Now, look at the start of verse seven. You probably suppose that he's gonna say, dude, it's midnight. I'm in bed.
Leave me alone. Now, look at the start of verse eight. I tell you prayer's not like that at all. See the problem is, we come into the story imagining that prayer is like a transaction between ourselves and our neighbor. And the question then is, have we been a good enough friend to warrant inconveniencing them in the middle of the night?
But Jesus is telling us that prayer is something fundamentally different from all that. Prayer is about a relationship where there is no cost benefit analysis, no back of a napkin ROI. There's only our shameless audacity to be there. And for me, it's that phrase. That's the key to the whole story.
I think when we hear shameless, immediately, what do we all think of? Shameful. We imagine ourselves standing in the street, banging on the door, making a scene, persisting and demanding until our chagrined neighbor does finally come down and help us out of pity. Shameful. That's not what Jesus says at all though.
In fact, what Jesus says is that God responds not to our shame, but to our complete lack of it. God doesn't respond because you make a fool of yourself standing at the door knocking and pleading over and over again. God responds simply because you stand there completely unashamed to be at the door at midnight. This story is not meant to illustrate prayer as this laborious task, Where you ask and you ask and then you ask again until one day finally you get what you want. This story is meant to show that prayer is different from any other relationship you have in your life.
There's no argument to be made in prayer. There's no defense to be mounted here. There's no transaction to appeal to. There is simply the goodness of God and the audacity to stand shame free, full of need before the divine. That's all prayer is.
You remember how the whole story started? Jesus teach us to pray just like the disciples of John. Those disciples that we see going around fasting and praying so diligently all the time. We want a mechanism like that so that we can know our prayers are gonna be as valid as theirs. And Jesus says, okay.
Well, here you go. Here's a prayer you can pray, but please understand, no matter how well you memorize this, or how perfectly you rehearse it, no matter how precisely you perform these words I give you, there is no transactional mechanism by which you can force the response you want. There is only you showing up at God's door asking for help in the middle of the night. That's all prayer will ever be. And to be honest, maybe that's a little disappointing for you.
I bet it was for some of the disciples. I think they probably wanted a magical rite that they could recite. A way to be more confident in the outcome of their objectives in prayer. But the real beauty of grace is that once we come to the terms of the fact there is no technique to bend God to our will, then all we are left with is the invitation to stand naked and unashamed before God and trust that well, maybe that's gonna be enough. This story isn't about how to get your prayers answered.
It's a story about three loaves of bread for goodness sake. Who cares? The story is about the posture that we're invited to take before the divine. Trusting that God is not like a neighbor we need to win over. God is something far more graceful and something far less tamable.
Someone we can't bend to our will because we did it right, but someone who invites us to stand unashamed in all of our need whenever it arises. Let's pray. God, we come. We offer prayers. And sometimes we're not even sure what they are.
But we pour out emotion and need, joy when that's appropriate, mourning when we feel it. And we offer this to you unashamed because we know we're invited. And so for those moments where we've tried to turn our prayers into something, a mechanism, a transaction where we can get what we want from you or maybe from someone else, We repent of that, and instead we ask that you would slowly shift our imagination. Prayer not as a way to get to somewhere new, but prayer instead is a way to come before you, to recognize our need, to know that we are not self sufficient, and to be completely unembarrassed by that. To stand before you and before community, needing help and knowing that this too is part of our dependence on grace.
Help us to see that as a source of strength, not of weakness. And then, turn that into the ways that we turn toward each other, for help and support, knowing that this too is part of how you have shaped, formed, and created us to need each other. May all our prayers point us back to that same grace. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Jeremy Duncan: Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials CommonsChurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel, where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.