31 - Chapter 31
CHAPTER XXXI THE MIDNIGHT PETITIONER
WE have seen the noble but heavy responsibilities laid on the citizen of the Kingdom. Is he to be left to discharge them all in his own strength? Or we may put the question in another way: what is the relation of the world in which we live to the spiritual Kingdom which Jesus invites us to enter? Some tell us we are living in an environment hostile to man’s endeavour, that the forces behind the world, of whatever nature they be, delight to wreck the pet schemes of puny mortals. Others teach that the gods, whatever gods there be, are indifferent to human joys, griefs and aspirations, that the material world, if not anti-moral, is non-moral, that man is the only friend of man. In this parable Jesus states his conviction that we are living in a responsive world in which petition is answered, search is rewarded and doors are opened to them that knock.
Here again we must be on our guard against too rigorous allegorizing. As the midnight cry, the midnight thief, the midnight petition testify, our Lord was alive to the fateful significance that may attach to the solemn hour that marks that the night has run half its course. But obviously the hour of midnight here is chosen simply as an inconvenient time at which to knock at a neighbour’s door; it has no spiritual significance. Some, again, have found a spiritual truth in the fact that the petitioner was borrowing not on his own behalf but for the sake of a friend; but this touch was necessary to give realism to the story. It was hardly likely that a man should wake up in the middle of the night hungry enough to pester his neighbour into giving him something to eat. The significance that has been found in the number three is allegorical folly; three is chosen as the number of “ breads ’ a man was most likely to ask for.
It is sometimes said that Luke has three prayer parables. As we have seen, one of these, the Pharisee and the Tax-collector, though it pictures two men at prayer, is not a parable about prayer. It is a lesson on religion conceived as Law and conveys a warning against selfrighteousness. The Midnight Petitioner does deal in a measure with prayer. When the average man discusses whether God does or does not answer prayer, he conceives prayer primarily as a request to God for some favour. But there are prayers of Thanksgiving, of Adoration, of Confession, of Intercession for others. Some Christians would deny that petition ever has any rightful place in Christian prayer, least of all petition for material favours. Our Lord does not go so far as that; he encourages petitionary prayer; but he teaches that petition must be something more than a form of words. As we saw that forgiveness is not something that can be handed over like a document, so answers to prayer cannot be bestowed like presents. This graphic and rather amusing little story by no means illustrates the whole science of prayer, but it does emphasize one important aspect of it. The petitioner knew that his neighbour, though not a paragon of kindness, was not ill-natured. He knew also that he wanted the bread and was determined to get it. So he kept hammering at the door and shouting till the door was opened and the coveted loaves handed out. A very elementary lesson in prayer, yet how little assimilated in nineteen hundred years! If we deduct from all our petitions to God, whether uttered in public or in private, those which we do not expect, or hardly expect, God to answer, and those to which we scarcely give a passing thought, which indeed we forget completely the moment we utter them, how much of real prayer is left?
If the prayer means nothing to us, how can we expect it to mean anything to God?
Moreover, in this case the petitioner himself was taking far more trouble than he was asking his neighbour to take. When his friend arrived at an inconvenient hour, instead of sleepily telling him to lie down somewhere till morning, he bestirred himself to give him a hospitable reception. Even at that untimely hour he would prepare a meal to set before him. In the case of many of our petitions there is a price to be paid before even God can answer our prayers.
Prayer is a petition, a demand if you will, not that God will work for us, but that God will allow us to co-operate with Him in some enterprise into which we throw our whole hearts. The borrower was convinced that sooner or later he would get what he asked, and find what he sought; that the door at which he knocked so persistently would eventually open. Let us, if we will, find in this parable a lesson on prayer. But surely Luke (Luk 11:9 f.) is right in applying here words of Jesus that carry us far beyond the region of prayer as commonly conceived. The asking that receives is no mere lip petition; it is a demand of the whole being; the seeking that surely finds is a search of the whole personality; the knocking to which the door is opened is no verbal knocking, it is the insistent demand of heart and soul. Moreover, the words carry our thoughts to richer gifts than loaves, to a search for something less prosaic than a meal for a friend, to a door that gives entrance to a more wondrous store-house than a neighbour’s kitchen.
We are living in an age when we have almost ceased to wonder, when we have become blase with the miracles of knowledge that are daily revealed to us, the miracles of power that are daily performed before our eyes, nay, that we ourselves are able to perform. Yet down almost to our own age nature did not tell us these things, because we did not ask her; the world hid her secrets, because men did not search for them; the doors of earth’s treasurehouse remained closed, because we did not knock at them; at least we did not ask or seek or knock in the spirit of this parable. It has been well said that it was only natural that modern science should arise in the Christian world. The faith of modern men of science is the faith of this parable, the conviction that we are living in a responsive world in which nature will give when they ask, will reward their search, will open her doors into palaces more wonderful than Aladdin’s, provided that, forsaking all other aims, they ask and seek and knock, earnestly, persistently, expectantly. Jesus does not say that we shall get exactly what we ask, find exactly what we seek, or enter the kind of store-house we expect to find. But the things God sends us are never hurtful parodies of the things we seek (Luk 11:11-13); His answers are our prayers transfigured. The parable is our Lord’s answer to the agnostic. The quest is not in vain; the world is no insoluble riddle; our Lord was speaking out of his own experience. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. If with all our hearts we truly seek Him, we shall ever surely find Him.