He Went at Midnight to Borrow Bread He Was Not Going to Eat

In the culture I come from, an empty table when somebody arrives is not an inconvenience. It is a wound.

I want to say that first, because a lot of teaching about hospitality is written by people for whom hosting is optional, and for a great many readers it is not. Somebody arrives. You feed them. That is not a decision you make, it is who you are, and being unable to do it takes something from a person that is not about food.

A friend of mine went through two years where he stopped answering his door in the evenings.

He was not unfriendly and he was not hiding from anybody in particular. He simply did not have anything to put in front of a person, and rather than be seen with nothing, he stopped being seen.

He told me about it years later and he was still ashamed, and I told him what I want to say here, which is that there is a story Jesus tells about exactly this man, and the whole point of it is that he goes and knocks on somebody's door at midnight.

The request is not for himself

Read the setup carefully, because everybody remembers the knocking and almost nobody remembers why.

And he said unto them, 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. (Luke 11:5 and 6, King James Version)

A friend of mine in his journey is come to me. That is the reason. Somebody has arrived at his house, late, off the road, and there is nothing in the cupboard.

And I have nothing to set before him. That is the sentence, and anybody from a hospitality culture reads it and feels it in their chest.

He is not hungry. He is not asking for himself at all. He is asking because a third person is at his table and he cannot do the thing that a person in his position is supposed to do.

You are inside a story Jesus told about somebody in your exact position, and He chose that situation on purpose out of everything He could have chosen, and Luke 11 makes the request an act of hospitality rather than an act of need. The same Spirit is the one who makes an ancient parable land on a modern cupboard.

What He commends

The verse that follows has been argued about for centuries and I am not going to pretend the wording is simple.

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. (Luke 11:8)

Importunity. The word means something like shamelessness, and it is the only place in the New Testament it appears.

Now here is what I think matters most, and it is not the theory of persistent prayer. It is who the shamelessness was for.

He would not have knocked at midnight for himself. He would have gone hungry and said nothing, which is what people in this position always do. What made him bold enough to embarrass himself at a neighbor's door was that somebody else was sitting in his house.

You are permitted a boldness on behalf of somebody else that you would never allow yourself, and Luke 11:8 commends exactly that shamelessness rather than rebuking it, and it is the Spirit who supplies a nerve a person does not have when the request is only for themselves.

I do not think that is a technique for getting more from God. I think it is a description of how people actually are, told by somebody who knew exactly how people are.

And it is worth noticing what the neighbor eventually gives. As many as he needeth. Not three, which is what was asked. The amount is set by the need at the table rather than by the size of the request.

You have a supply measured against a need rather than against a request, and Luke 11 says as many as he needeth rather than as many as he asked (Luke 11:8), and the Spirit is the one who does that measuring rather than anybody at either door.

What this is not

I need to fence this carefully, because a passage about asking for supplies attracts bad teaching like nothing else.

Nothing here says that praying about hospitality produces money. There is no arrangement of that kind anywhere in Scripture, and if somebody has told you there is, they were selling you something.

And nothing here says a person who cannot host has failed at anything. Hebrews says to be given to hospitality and the same book was written to people who had lost their goods. Scripture never once measures a welcome by what is on the plate.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:2)

Entertain strangers. It does not say feed them well. It says do not forget them, and the honor described in that verse is about who came through the door rather than about what was served.

You have never been graded on the table, and Scripture measures a welcome by the door being opened rather than by the plate (Hebrews 13:2). The Spirit is the one who takes shame off a person who has been carrying it about an empty cupboard for two years.