Matthew 15:21-28; Luke 18:1-8 - Prayer for Our Children 10-8-07
One of my heroes from South Carolina died last week: Harry S. Dent. Harry Dent helped Senator Thurmond make some needed changes and he also helped Richard Nixon win the south in the 1968 elections. He left eh Nixon administration after the first term unscathed from all the problems and corruption. He is not my hero because of his politics, though they put him in the public eye. At the time I remember he talked about the world would not change for the better from politics alone. He went back to school and got a theological degree and began his own ministry and missions work. At his funeral this past week he was remembered by his children not for his work or his politics, but for his love for his children, wife, neighbor and God. It was his persistent love for his family that made him so heoic.
Our story is about a woman who loved her child, and made a request to Jesus on her behalf. We do not even know her name, but she is a heroin for her faith and her love for her child.
1) She Cared-. This woman went out of her way to come to God and was willing to embarrass herself because she cared about her child. A caring parent has a harder time watching their child suffer, than suffering themselves. She cared about the evil that was afflicting her. If your child or grandchild has had problems with drugs, or problems with bad influences, or if they have given up on God- this woman is a model for you.
When Ruth Graham was concerned about her wild son, Franklin, and the seemingly unending evil that afflicted him, she prayed, “I think it harder, Lord, to cast the cares of those I love on you, than to cast mine. Yet we are growing older, and we have learned that at last you are merciful and true- you who have not failed me, will not fail mine.”
2) She brought attention to her situation-
There is a lot being written today about selling yourself, drawing attention to yourself. But this lady was trying to get God to recognize her child was afflicted with some kind of evil.
In this case the woman shouted in the midst of the entourage accompanying Jesus.
A good parent needs to lift up their child to God- when sick or not. God knew her child. God was the one who made the child’s body. Those skilled obviously could not help the woman or the child. She was willing to put her pride, her faith on the line in order to get help for her child.
My son is allergic to peanut butter. He had accidentally eaten some when he was very little and was having an antiphyllactic reaction- that is his windpipe was closing- and soon he wouldn’t be able to breathe. We were in the emergency room. The lady there basically said, “Take a number and sit down- fill out these insurance papers.” I was taking the tack of filling out the papers, when my wife let all the nurses and everyone else in that ER know that this was a real emergency.
Someone who knew what they were doing saw what was going on, and took my son and wife back and saved his life. Today, children are dying by the hundreds- not to some disease of the body, but their eternal souls are being killed by immorality, by negligence. Some are pickling their souls by alcohol, drugs, or some other addiction. Someone needs to cry out to God for help, like this Canaanite woman did.
3) She did not give up- even when God was silent.
The amazing sentence in this passage is that Jesus was silent. His silence is surprising and it is a loud silence. That he did not respond, tells even more about the importance of persistence in coming to God.
There are times when God seems silent. But in the long run God speaks and acts. As the woman was persistent and continued to believe she could get help from Jesus for her child. She was someone that Jesus described as having “great faith.” So we need to persist, have hope, and be patient through the silences. God the Father was silent on the cross (cf. Psalm 22:2- “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer.”). But God spoke loudly in the resurrection.
In fact, the disciples said that something had to be done about her because she kept shouting after them. In some ways, this is a reminder of Jesus’ teaching about prayer. He said in Luke 18 that a woman persistently came to a judge who wasn’t just to ask for help. Jesus said that the judge responded to her because she was persistent, even when he didn’t care. He was talking about God’s responding because of our persistence.
I have always believed the persistence and perseverance is for our benefit, not because God doesn’t hear us. Blaise Pascal said, God grants us power to pray because God wants to gives us “dignity of causality. When I was a boy, my father would put me in his lap when he drove the boat. He didn’t need my help, but he wanted me to be involved with him. I don’t know that the woman understood why God wanted her to pray, but she did persist in her prayers.
4) She did not give up when church people said she should.
Some of the church people (the disciples) were rude if not downright mean to this woman. It is a crying shame that anyone in the church should be mean. In some ways, Jesus seemed to join them at first. But I really believe Jesus was getting down on their level to pull them up. The disciples said, “Send her away.” Her reply was not to them, but to the Lord—“Lord help me.” I really think when people are being critical, the best reply is not in argument (it’s hard to reason with people who can’t/won’t understand). The best reply is to take it to God. Her faith was not in the disciples or their organizational skills or the new institution of helping they had established. It was in the Lord. In the end, we don’t want people to trust in the church or our organization. We want people to trust in God. He is our real help. When others- even good people say, “Don’t bother the master any more.” Don’t listen to them. Jesus said be persistent in your prayers.
I saw Dennis the a few weeks ago. People gave up on Dennis. His own parents gave up on him. He couldn’t read or write, or get a job because he was disabled at birth. His own parents gave up on doing anything for him. The church people thought he was nice, but they didn’t think of anything he could do with his life—except for Headlee. Headlee and his wife took Dennis under their arms and fed him supper, and slowly taught him how to read and write. Dennis still cannot hold more than a part-time job, but every other morning he comes to our preschool and reads childrens’ stories to the kids. He’s been doing it for fifteen years.
There is one wonderful example of a mother’s prayers in history- they are the prayers of Susannah Wesley. She had 19 children- some of them died young, but she still had so many children she didn’t know what to do. She was obviously a busy lady- no washing machines, no dish washers, no microwaves or frozen dinners. Her husband was a minister who was too busy and not at home much. But she made sure the household was organized so that she could do one thing for two hours a day: pray! John and Charles Wesley were two of the greatest ministers in that country’s history- and I believe it began with her two hour prayers. We live in such a secular culture, and even a secular church that we cannot understand praying one day for two hours, much less two hours a day. Back in those days they couldn’t understand watching an electric box for two hours a day. We have replaced time spent in prayer by time spent in entertainment. The results on society are evident. However, Susannah Wesley’s prayers changed a nation that was heading toward a French Revolution’s nasty engineered destruction. Luther used to say when he was the busiest, that was the time he would pray the most. We really are too busy not to pray.
On this World Communion Sunday, we need to remember children all over the world who are being brought to Jesus by their parents. When we baptize a child here we agree to care for them and pray for them. Parents agree to pray as well. I invite you, I beg you to pray for your children- bring them to Jesus. Don’t give up. Amen.