“Suppose one of you has a friend.”
The Gospel has a story for us today, and it begins with that line.
Suppose one of you has a friend.
As we think about sending youth from our Diocese – and our very brave adult chaperones going with them – to Western North Carolina to continue cleanup efforts for people still, still, still suffering from the effects of Hurricane Helene, Jesus in today’s Gospel invites us to begin with this simple notion.
Suppose one of you has a friend.
In the parable, someone has shown up unexpectedly and folks are underprepared. So they go to their neighbors and ask for help. The neighbors are tucked in, comfortable, and don’t want to get up from binging Netflix or enjoying their staycation.
As with a lot of Jesus’s parables, there’s a question about which character in the story represents which of us.
Suppose one of you has a friend.
Who are the unexpected guests and why are they here? In Jesus’s day, the unexpected guest might easily be a family member or a distant relative or even a stranger, someone displaced by circumstances. Jesus knows what it is like to be the unexpected guest. When he was young, his family fled terrible events at home. I imagine they often found themselves at the mercy of strangers.
Who are the hosts, eager to show hospitality to these folks who’ve shown up at the doorstep, urgently asking their neighbors for aid? Who are the knockers? Who are the people hollering for help to the comfy people inside?
Who is the neighbor inside who – and can’t you just hear this in the story – is ready for bed but finally relents because they realize this person is just not going to go away?
As with all of Jesus’s parables, I think we’re meant to try on all the parts in this little play to see how they fit and what we might learn from each perspective. And so as you go about this week, that’s my invitation to you. Take the Gospel passage with you and sit with it. Try each role on for size and see what you think.
I’ve done just a little bit of this as I’ve been reflecting on the Scripture this week. And while I don’t have any of these characters figured out, what I can say is that each one of them has me thinking about the people of Western North Carolina, about all people lately displaced from their homes, and those doing something about it, especially the folks in this room.
Here’s what I think I can say:
One:
We are supposed to pay attention to the knocking of others.
The people of Western North Carolina have done a lot of knocking in these months after the storm and catastrophic flooding. They’ve been knocking on the doors of neighbors nationwide. On the doors of government. On the doors of faith organizations and nonprofits.
They’ve had to knock and knock. They’ve had to be persistent because their friends are sitting comfortably at home in the safety of low enough tax rates and comfortable climate policy.
Two:
We are supposed to be the ones knocking on behalf of others. In this story, we’re also the friends with the folks on our doorstep or in our headlines who are in need. I’m talking about the people of Western North Carolina. And all people facing uncertainty and displacement in countries inhospitable to certain kinds of strangers. And that list, as you know, is growing.
There are people who have unexpectedly arrived in need and it is our calling to set the table for them.
Three:
We are the ones who, this week, will be showing up on the doorstep of people – some of whom have nothing to set before us. Who, perhaps despite losing everything or almost everything in Hurricane Helene and its aftermath, will be almost tripping over themselves to make us feel welcome in their homes. And we need to let those people go to the trouble. That trouble of hospitality was so critical in Jesus’s day such that it really defined the very fabric of society. Let people welcome you. Into their homes and businesses. Into their stories. Into the breaking of bread.
All of that scrambling and being fussed over can be weird. Let it be weird. Receive with grace the gifts you will be given this week.
Four:
Suppose one of you has a friend. We don’t know much about the people in today’s story. The details are intentionally sketchy. But we know at least a couple of them are friends. And there are a few clues to what kind of friendship this is. For me, I read this story and see the deep friendship at the heart of it. After all, whose house can you show up to in the middle of the night bothering loudly and have them take you even a little seriously?
That’s a good friend who lets you knock and talk loudly through the door while your kids are asleep and still gets up and helps you out.
Good friends are like that. They will show up. Sometimes later than you might think. But they’ll be ready to go, just as those gathered here are ready to go for the people of Western North Carolina this week.
And I have to say, in thanksgiving for this group headed out today, that good friends – real friends – know that one of the surest signs of friendship is staying late to help with cleanup. And so, friends, thank you. Thank you for doing that this week.
A quick word for us folks reluctantly sitting at home not sure how to respond to the urgent thing happening at our door. Whether that’s what’s happened in Western North Carolina or what is happening to bodies and identities under duress, or those finding themselves in unmarked vans or hasty encampments, or those suffering in the long history of ruined cities along the Eastern Mediterranean. Sometimes, it’s true, we don’t know how to respond to the urgent knocking of others.
So I offer this:
Suppose one of you is the friend.
Today’s Gospel reading is a little about prayer – both how to pray and how prayer gets answered.
Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray — you’ll recognize parts of what we know as the Lord’s Prayer — and then shows them, in this story, how that works.
Begin with prayer. That’s the knock. That’s the Spirit working in and through us at all hours to stir us from our slumber.
And then keep knocking until someone opens the door. Perhaps it is God who is somewhere deep inside, needing to be stirred from slumber to give us a hand. And, like Jesus, I have no doubt that that help is on the way if we but ask.
But I wonder: what are the sounds that we keep hearing.
