Teach Us to Pray, Part 2

Greetings

Today, I will continue to look at how Jesus teaches his apostles to pray. In the short parable that Jesus tells in verses 5-8, the disciples are presented with a terrible problem.  One of them receives a visitor late at night, but they do not have food for them.  According to Bailey, this was a serious breach of hospitality, not only for the individual, but for the whole community. (Bailey, 123)

In this story, the guest arrives late at night, and the host has no food for him.  According to custom, he has no choice but to get food from somewhere.  Without the modern convenience of 24 hour stores, he must turn to his neighbors for help. 

The man who is being petitioned initially says, “No.”  He expresses his annoyance, Μή μοι κόπους πάρεχε. (May moi kopous parache) “Do not cause me trouble,” or perhaps, “Don’t bother me,” is his first response. He and his family are in bed. Likely, these villagers live in a small one-room house with everyone sleeping together on a mat.  So getting up to take care of this neighbor would likely wake everyone in the house.  This whole situation was very inconvenient for the one being petitioned. 

In similar fashion, God doesn’t grant our every request.  He often says, “No.” Sometimes, however, like the man being petitioned here, God grants the request later.  

Jesus says that the man eventually will get up and give the petitioner whatever he needs. He doesn’t do it out of friendship.  He does it because of the man’s Ἀναίδειαν (anaideian) Ἀναίδειαν is an interesting word.  Darrell Bock tells us that the word is difficult to translate into English, but that its meaning is something of a combination of boldness and shamelessness.  According to Bock, the word does not stress persistence or repetition, as much as it stresses the boldness of the request. (Bock, 1059.) A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament defines the word as “lack of sensitivity to what is proper, carelessness about the good opinion of others.”  The petitioner did not care what other people thought.  He was desperate to get food for his guest.  

The NIV translates this word as “Shameless audacity.”  I like it and used it for my translation as well.  The man has some audacity.  He has a need and is shameless in his request, disturbing other people in the middle of the night in order to get what he needs. Remember that this is within the context of Jesus teaching his apostles how to pray.  

I notice that Jesus uses the word χρῄζει (chrēzei), or 'needs." here. The man gets what he needs.  This is not a parable about praying to get what we want, but about getting what we need. We see Jesus  instructing them (and us) to pray for their needs to be met, with shameless audacity. 

Tom