Melito’s poetry reaches exceptional peaks in his choice of words: “In the palpable darkness hid untouchable death, and the wretched Egyptians were grasping the darkness, while death sought out and grasped the Egyptian first-born at the angel’s command.”[8] He recounts with dramatic tones the confusion and desperation of the first-born who were powerless against the angel of death – one hopelessly trying to deceive death, another frantically grasping the darkness around him and holding onto an empty flicker of hope.

Melito is not a familiar name today. Until the last century, we could only find a mention of him in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, mostly in connection with the controversy over the day in which the feast of Pascha (Easter) was to be celebrated.
Eusebius tells us that Melito was a “bishop of the church of Sardis, and a man well known at that time.”[1] He lists him among Christian writers who flourished in those days and who passed on to new generations “the sound and orthodox faith received from apostolic tradition.”[2] He paired him with Irenaeus and “others which teach that Christ is God and man.”[3]
Eusebius also mentioned several of Melito’s writings which were influential in his day, including an apology to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and a letter on the canon of the books of the Old Testament.
Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, also mentions Melito and his death, which seems to be around the year 190. According to Eusebius, Polycrates described Melito as “the Eunuch who lived altogether in the Holy Spirit.”[4]
As the centuries rolled by, few people took notice of this important bishop. That is, until the twentieth century, when some discoveries of a homily by Melito stirred some scholars’ attention. The first discovery was made in 1932 by Frederic Kenyon, who found portions of the then anonymous homily inside a fifth-century codex. The identification was made in 1940, when Campbell Bonner located six papyri leaves in the University of Michigan which belonged to the same codex. A couple of decades later, an almost complete Greek copy of the same homily was found. Three decades later, this was followed by a copy in Coptic. Most scholars date the homily around AD 160-170.
Paschal Homily
Melito began his homily after reading Exodus 12 to his congregation – possibly during a celebration of the Paschal week (which, at that time, was kept as a single celebration). “Therefore, well-beloved,” he said, “understand how the mystery of the Pascha is both new and old, eternal and provisional.”[5]
According to Fr. John Behr (editor of the Popular Patristic Series, where we find the best translation of Peri Pascha), the homily, broken into lines as a poem, should be read out loud – the way it was heard by its early listeners. Only then can the reader fully enjoy its musical, poetic, and dramatic qualities.
Melito’s images are creative and effective. For example, the people of Egypt reacting to the death of their first-born children, are presented as a mother “stricken with woe, not outwardly only but inwardly. Not only were her garments torn, but also her delicate breasts.”[6] But the image is not complete. As this wailing mass of people surround Pharaoh, he becomes “clad in all Egypt like a tunic of grief.”[7]

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God’s timing is not ours. For another thing, God promises to answer our prayers by at least giving us “Spiritual good things” in response. And if God answers our prayers, then we no longer have any reason to give up praying on account of unanswered prayer, because there is basically no such reality for Christians. God works every time Christians pray!

Not long ago, a man came up to me after a sermon I preached on prayer to tell me that he was no longer interested in praying. His wife had died a few years earlier, and, in the months leading up to her death, he had prayed earnestly for the Lord to spare her life. But God had not answered, and his wife died. His question to me on that Sunday morning was, “Why should Christians pray if God doesn’t answer our prayers?”
This question is one that should be very familiar to us all. We have no doubt all had experiences just like the one this bereaved young man had. We may not have lost a spouse, like he did, but we have certainly prayed and had those prayers seemingly go unanswered. This young man’s question is one that all of us have wrestled with, at least to some degree: “Why should we pray if God doesn’t answer prayer?”
I want to suggest that Luke 11—among other places in the Bible—teaches us that God does, in fact, answer prayer. Isn’t that the obvious take away from Jesus’s words in verses 9 and 10? In verse 9, for instance, Jesus says: “And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” It is interesting to me that Jesus doesn’t say “might” here but “will.” The one who asks willreceive; the one who seeks will find; and the one who knocks will have the door opened. And then—as if that wasn’t clear enough—Jesus follows with verse 10 to drive the point home even further: “everyone who asks receives,” everyone “who seeks finds,” and to everyone “who knocks it will be opened.”
But how can Jesus actually be saying this? Doesn’t He realize that God doesn’t always answer everyone who asks, seeks, and knocks? What about the person who asks for $1 million? Surely Jesus doesn’t mean to suggest that this person will always “receive” $1 million. As the only perfect theologian ever to walk the face of the earth, Jesus no doubt knows what James would later tell us explicitly, namely, that we can’t “ask wrongly, to spend it on our passions,” and expect that we will always receive what we ask for (James 4:3). Jesus no doubt knows that; and, yet, I find it fascinating that He doesn’t feel the need to say everything He knows here in Luke 11. He has no trouble leaving His statements about prayer unqualified and giving the impression, at least in these verses, that God always answers every prayer we make by giving us exactly what we ask for. Why would Jesus do this?
I think Jesus is responding to our question, “Why should we pray if God doesn’t answer prayer?” He is responding to it by saying, “God does answer prayer.” He answers every prayer we make—because everyone who asks receives; everyone who seeks finds; and to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. But Jesus is quick to explain that while God answers every prayer we make, He doesn’t necessarily do so on our timetable or by giving us exactly what we ask for. This is what Jesus spends the rest of His time unpacking in Luke 11, as we will see.
The first thing Jesus wants us to understand in what remains of Luke 11 is that God doesn’t always answer prayer on our timetable.
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I once heard a pastor relate the story of a conversation he had with a fellow passenger on a lengthy transcontinental flight. The pastor struck up a friendly dialogue with the man sitting next him. “What do you do for a living?” the man asked. The pastor shared that he had been in the ministry for many years, spoke of some of the specific blessings and challenges he had experienced, and then asked the man what his profession was. “I’m an actor,” the man replied. Knowing that acting can be a difficult and brutal industry to break into, the pastor inquired, “Have you had any success in that field?” The man answered, “Yes, I’ve had a pretty good experience so far.”
Afterward, when this fellow passenger got up from his seat, a lady nearby leaned over to the pastor and said, “What an opportunity, for you to get to sit next to him!” The pastor, not understanding the woman’s excitement, asked, “Why? Who is he?” The woman looked at him in disbelief and then simply said, “That is Tom Cruise.”
A Remarkably Unremarkable Man
Imagine sharing personal space with one of the most famous Hollywood stars in history, and not even being aware of the significance of the encounter! Yet, the people of Jesus’s day had an infinitely more momentous opportunity to rub shoulders with Immanuel himself. The town’s people watched Jesus grow up in Nazareth, and the Jewish leaders sat and visited with the young boy Jesus about religious questions in the temple. All the while, however, many of those with whom Jesus interacted had no idea that they were in the presence of the Messiah himself!
Among those who knew Jesus—or at least knew of Jesus—before Jesus began his public ministry, was a man named John. John was actually a member of Jesus’s own extended family. You see, a few months before Jesus’s own miraculous birth there was another remarkable birth. The baby—born to faithful Zachariah and Elizabeth—has come to be known as John the Baptist.