It's midnight, and your cell phone rings. You jump out of your skin worried that something terrible has happened. But it's only your next-door neighbor. "Oh, did I wake you up" he sheepishly asks? "Sorry, I didn't realize it was so late."
He explains that an old college friend dropped by unexpectedly and they have run out of beer and, well, it's late. (But I didn't realize how late, sorry!) "Any beer and pretzels over at your place I could borrow?"
You've had a long day and you have an early morning meeting and you can't believe he is bothering you with this. So you hang up, roll over, and try to get back to that very pleasant dream you were having. But a few minutes later your door bell is ringing and reluctantly you get out of bed. You hand over the Sam Adams and the pretzels and tell him to have fun.
(Luke 11:5-8, with some artistic license)
I love it that when Jesus does theology he doesn't need words like eschatology or soteriology or hermeneutics. He speaks out of the experience of everyday life: he finds fodder for doing theology wherever a woman is baking bread, or a foreigner acts like a neighbor, or a friend knocks on your door at midnight.
Jesus is talking with his disciples about prayer and here the point is, I think, the same one made when he talks about the unjust judge and the persistent if annoying widow who will not go away. Our prayer is too often anemic. Jesus insists that we not be afraid to knock, to seek, to ask. We have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
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