This is a true story. I got off work, went out to my car, hit the button for the doors on my remote unlocker – as usual. Nothing happened. I tried it a few more times, battery must be dead. I stand there for 10 minutes, mashing the little button, hoping for enough juice to open the doors. Nada.
I was mortified. I was so in a habit of opening the doors with my remote fob that I entirely forgot that keys could be used to unlock cars manually. He started laughing so hard I thought he was going to have an aneurysm. After he stopped laughing, he told me there was no charge. The story he’d have to tell was worth the drive out.
Jesus tells two parables about someone asking a favor at a late hour. They teach us a lot. Maybe you remember the first one, there was a man knocking on a friend’s door at midnight, wanting to borrow some bread. The friend yelled back, Don’t bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything. But he does. Jesus says: “I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.”
Jesus message is this: “ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Doesn’t it feel good knowing that constant prayer will get the door opened?
Well, hold back that feeling for a while. Look at this Sunday’s Gospel. Here again someone is knocking on the door late at night, but receives nothing. The master of the house says, I do not know where you are from. The one knocking reply: “But we ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.”
Look carefully at those words: These people are mere casual acquaintances, if that. Something like this: we liked what you did, and now we want more!
The master says, I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!
Ouch. What about “ask and you shall receive”? As if to rub it in, Jesus says,
There will be wailing and grinding of teeth when you see the saved ones—
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets—looking down from heaven
while you are being cast out!. Locked out of heaven’s gate is no joke.
What is going on here? Is Jesus just in a bad mood? We know that he is “making his way to Jerusalem” when he tells this parable, walking straight into the crucifixion, and maybe he is just anxious.
Yet notice that, in his prior parable, even though the owner opens the door just to get the noise stopped, the interruption was being caused by a friend—even if a rude one—who would not stop asking for what he needed. That parable told us to keep asking God, our friend, for what we need, even though he may be a bit grumpy.
But in this parable, the people outside are not friends and in fact they have no relationship at all to the man in the house. The parable states that they knew about him only from parties and from the streets. They did not come to his house at a reasonable time and begin a friendship. No amount of midnight knocking will make up for it.
What is the message? That God keeps the door open long beyond what we would expect, all the way to the end. But if we are too busy partying and dancing, then finally there is nothing he can do. He has to accept our decision to stay outside.
Serious question to ask someone you know who doesn’t come to church except at Christmas. Why don’t they want a friendship with Jesus? Let them know it’s never too late to start the relationship. After all, we don’t want anyone to be locked out of heaven’s gate?
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that they get to know God now. Let us not procrastinate or make excuses until we get to heaven’s gate and have nothing to show for ourselves.
