When I was working in West Africa back in the 1980s, the roads were terrible. The few tarmacked ones were full of potholes and patches, while other roads were little more than dirt tracks carved out through the bush. Even if they had once been properly graded, successive rainy seasons had done their worst. All this, coupled with the necessity of crossing rivers where the ferry might or might not be working, meant that long journeys could be unpredictable.

On one occasion I had to drive from Bissau, our capital city, to the town of Ziguinchor, across the border in Senegal, where it was much easier to buy essential supplies. My journey went smoothly until I heard an ominous rumbling sound from one of the wheels and found that I had a puncture. So I put on the spare, and continued – it delayed me a bit but wasn’t really a problem. Late in the afternoon I was approaching the Senegal border on a very bad road, and it happened again: another flat tyre, on a different wheel this time. This was bad news! I nursed the vehicle along very slowly, but it was no good; I’d simply have to hope that someone else would come along and help me out – which wasn’t very likely that late in the day.

However salvation appeared in the shape of a lorry – moreover, a lorry with air brakes. The crew jumped down, connected my tyre to the compressor, and pumped it up. We drove in convoy for a few miles, by which time the tyre was flat again, and repeated the process. Eventually we crossed the border and reached the nearest town, where the lorry men directed me to a workshop where I was able to get the tyres fixed.

But what would I do now? It was too late to continue my journey; I was in a strange country where I didn’t speak the language and there was no hotel. I knew there were some American missionaries (from a different organisation to mine) living a few miles away but I didn’t know where. The man who repaired my tyres knew them too and gave me directions which I hoped I understood. I set off; it was dark; there were no signposts; yet by some miracle I found the missionaries’ house, deep in the bush. And what did they do when I turned up unexpectedly, hot, sticky and probably a bit grumpy? They welcomed me with open arms, got me fed and washed, and gave me a bed for the night. Turning me away wasn’t even an option.

The scenario in the parable we heard is rather similar (and let’s make it personal). Late one night a friend of yours, who has been travelling, arrives unexpectedly at your house. He’s tired, dirty and hungry after his journey and you want to give him something to eat – indeed you see it as your hostly duty. But there’s a problem: the cupboard is bare, the fire is out, fridges and all-night kebab shops have yet to be invented, you might just be able to scrape together a dry crust and a few shrivelled-up grapes, but nothing more. So what do you do?

Well, there’s only one thing for it. Despite the lateness of the hour and the inconvenience you know you’re going to cause, you nip round to your neighbour’s house and knock on his door. At first nothing happens; so you knock again. Eventually a window opens and a bleary-eyed face peers out: “Who’s out there? What’s all that knocking? What on earth do you think you’re doing? You’ve woken the kids and now we won’t get them down again for hours! Couldn’t it have waited till morning?” Your neighbour is clearly not best pleased.

You explain the situation, your traveller friend’s hunger, your embarrassment at not being able to feed him. “Huh!”, comes the reply, “That’s your problem, not mine, You should always put some food by, just for this kind of eventuality”. And he shuts the window. So what do you do now? There’s only one thing for it: you knock on the door again – harder. This time the window flies open and some choice words fill the night air. You plead with your neighbour, and eventually he relents: “Look”, he says, “I can see that I’ll never get any peace and quiet till I give you what you want. So wait at the door, I’ll give some bread – and then bugger off home and leave us in peace!”

My language may have shocked you – but I used it on purpose as this story would have both shocked Jesus’ listeners (I’ll tell you why in a moment) and got them rolling with laughter. But what does it mean? We can see that it’s placed in the middle of a passage about prayer (at least, that’s where Luke the edfitor has chosen to put it). And it seems to indicate that we need to be persistent, even brazen, in our praying: that’s how we’ll get the answer we seek from God. “Keep on nagging God”, the story seems to say, “Eventually he’ll get so fed up with you that he’ll have to give in, even if it’s only to get you off his back”.

I don’t know about you, but that seems to be a very unsatisfactory way of explaining this parable. It’s unsatisfactory because it portrays God has a grouchy old man who doesn’t really want to help us but will do so, grudgingly, if we pester him enough. Is that the sort of God we want to believe in? And does it tie up with the words that come straight after this story, words which tell us that God is a Father who loves to give good gifts to his children? I don’t think it does.

And this is also an unsatisfactory way of thinking about this parable because it turns prayer into a mechanical exercise: if only I pray loud enough and hard enough and long enough, God will ultimately get so fed up that he’ll give me what I want. Now, Jesus does indeed talk elsewhere about persistent prayer, for instance in the difficult parable of the Unjust Judge. And it’s probably true that most of us aren’t good at “prayer without ceasing”: we just mutter short prayers that last a few seconds or minutes. Nevertheless this reading of the story does make us feel that the key to getting our prayers answered is to keep going as we’ll eventually get to a place where God cannot ignore us.

I said a few moments ago that this story would have shocked Jesus’ listeners. The idea of the person travelling so late would have seemed strange in a society which more-or-less lived by the sun: no-one had torches, headlights or electricity, which meant that night-time travel was risky and dangerous. Who knew where a robber might hide, ready to pounce; more prosaically, how could you see your way on a moonless and cloudy night? I very much suspect that travel was something you did in the cool mornings rather than later in the day.

However, that’s not the main reason for this story to be shocking to its listeners. If you were here last week you might remember me saying that hospitality was regarded very highly in this society; it was indeed shameful not to offer it. As one commentator on this story puts it, “The Oriental responsibility for his guest is legendary … The host must serve his guest and the guest must eat.” So the first man, unprepared as he is for guests, has committed a terrible faux-pas, even though he does all he can to welcome the traveller. And the second man, who initially refuses to help at all but is only interested in his own convenience – well, his behaviour hasn’t just brought shame on himself but on his whole village; the honour of the entire neighbourhood has been besmirched and you can just imagine everyone else on his street giving him the cold shoulder. His behaviour, which we might in Britain think perfectly reasonable, is in fact outrageous.

Before I tell you what I think this parable is saying, I must say three more things about it. Firstly, I’ve said more than once that the friend keeps knocking at his neighbour’s door. But that’s wrong: in fact he merely speaks to him as he doesn’t want to wake the rest of the household. In Middle Eastern culture, it’s only strangers who knock: this man doesn’t need to, as he’s a friend whose voice will be instantly recognised. It’s of course a moot point whether the neighbours hear him or not – but I don’t think we should imagine that there was a loud hullaballoo with windows opening all down the street.

Second, I’d like to return to this idea of persistence. It’s easy to see where the notion comes from: for Jesus says, “I tell you that even if he will not get up and give you the bread because you are his friend, yet he will get up and give you everything you need because you are not ashamed to keep on asking”. This then seems to be underlined by his words, “Ask” (or, literally, “keep on asking”), “and you will receive; seek” (or, “keep on seeking”), “and you will find; knock” (or. “keep on knocking”), “and the door will be opened to you”.

But there’s actually no suggestion in the story that the neighbour only gets up because his friend keeps on calling, quite the opposite in fact. Yes, he’s irritated and cross; but he also knows where his duty lies. And there’s more: scholars now think that there is a better way of translating this passage: one which doesn’t say that it’s the friend’s persistence which makes this man get up, rather his desire to limit the damage to his reputation. He’s already brought shame on himself by protesting; that can’t be undone, especially if his neighbours have heard. He’s now come to realise that things will be far worse for him if he goes back to bed and does nothing.

And there’s one last issue to do with our translations of this story. They tend to begin by saying, “Suppose you have a friend …”: that’s a bland or neutral sort of introduction. But the same Greek words are translated in other places as “Who among you …?”, and that’s a loaded question. So, for instance, Jesus says, “Who among you, having a slave ploughing or tending sheep, will say to him when he comes in from the field, ‘Come and sit down to eat’?” – this has the implied answer: “None of you!” Equally he asks, “Who among you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it?” Again the implied answer is: “No-one”. And even in this chapter Jesus says, “What father among you whose son asks for a fish will give him a snake?” Yet again the answer is, “No-one – don’t be so daft!”

So here the question is, “Who among you has a friend like the man in this story who says, “Don’t bother me, I can’t give you anything?” To which the answer can only be: “None of you has a friend who’d behave like that”. For Jesus isn’t saying, “If you ask your friend and at first he says ‘no,’ keep on asking him until he says ‘yes’.” Not at all; his comment is, “If you ask your friend when your facing this kind of emergency, of course he’ll say ‘yes,’ won’t he?”

I think that knowledge totally changes our views of prayer and of God. No longer is he an irascible deity who can’t be bothered with us and will try anything to wriggle out of answering our prayers. Nor is he a heavenly being who we must pester and harass if we’re to get his attention. That’s not how Jesus’ hearers would have understood this story; in fact they’d have realised he was saying that that is precisely what God isn’t like. And, while the friend is miffed at being woken at midnight and only helps because he doesn’t want to be shamed, God – our heavenly Father, as Jesus reminds us earlier in the chapter – is totally unfazed by our audacity in praying at any time and situation, and loves to answer.

I know that his story doesn’t by any means solve all the mysteries of prayer or all the questions we may have about it. It doesn’t aim to. But it does tell us something about God’s character, and that we need not be ashamed at praying at any time, in any emergency, and even when the predicament we’re in is our own fault. For he is indeed “our Father”, he knows our weaknesses and our failings – yet he keeps on loving us as his creation, his children and his friends.