Desperate Prayer

For many Canadians, the practice of prayer is one that has been slipping over the last few years. I remember my grandmother used to kneel beside her bed and pray every night before she went to sleep. When we were children, my mother used to say prayers with us at bedtime. I had the same practice with my own children that included a long list of special people and pets needing to be brought to God’s attention every evening. However, it is my suspicion that the act of spending time in private prayer, even among those who regularly attend church, is not nearly as common as it once was.

Nonetheless, I can’t help but wonder how many frantic and heartfelt prayers have recently been flooding God’s inbox. With wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, political and economic uncertainty, rising homelessness and drug addiction … praying to God for a better, happier and more peaceful world, may well be the only available option.

The Gospel passage we read today calls upon me to say something about desperation … and desperate faith …

I don’t know if you’ve ever been really desperate. I mean really desperate …

When something so fixes your energy, your attention, your concern so that nothing else matters. It doesn’t matter the danger. It doesn’t matter the cost. It doesn’t matter the place. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks … “This one thing is the sole concern of my life!” It is urgent. It is immediate. It is everything … that is what it is to be desperate …

And experiencing this time of worldwide and local tragedy, hardship and grief reminds me of an incident – a situation of desperate prayer from my time serving at Unionville Presbyterian Church in the 1990’s …

It was a Friday morning, not long after 9 am, and I was working in my office at the church when I began to hear someone banging on the door of the church building. I knew the door was locked, so I left my office to see what was going on.

Through the glass door I saw it was a member of the church – a young woman in her early thirties.

Her head was against the door, and both fists were up beside her face, and she was banging on the door, “Let me in! Let me in!”

I couldn’t imagine what was going on. She had the look of desperation. I could tell she hadn’t come to the church with any planning. She came urgently. She came running. The dress she had on was not something you would normally wear in public. She had no shoes, only slippers on her feet. Her hair had not been combed – no make up. She had the look of desperation.

And she had the voice of desperation. I can’t tell you if she was screaming or crying or moaning … or what it was.

I opened the door and she rushed in and fell into my arms … strange sounds … I got some words … “I know she’s going to die … I know she’s going to die … I know she’s going to die …”

“Who?” I said.

“My daughter Amy!”

“What’s the matter?”

“We just heard from the doctor! She’s been diagnosed with leukaemia!”

I knew little Amy – just two years old. I’d baptized her the year before.

I said, “Can I get you some water?”

She said, “No!”

I said to her, “Can I pray with you?”

And she said, “Please …”

We went into the sanctuary. I started to pray for her … for Amy … for her family … but she interrupted me.

She didn’t just interrupt me … she took over …

She started praying herself and stopped my prayer. I think maybe I was too quiet, or too slow, or saying the wrong thing or maybe too Presbyterian.

At any rate, my prayer wasn’t getting there and she knew it.

She prayed, “Lord, you know how much I love that child. I love everything about her! I love feeding her and rocking her in my arms as she falls asleep. I love playing with her. I love every new word coming out of her mouth. Lord, you know how much I love her and how long it took for us to have her. Lord, don’t you take her! Don’t you dare take her!”

She was really talking to God!

I let her go on until she just kind of ran out of words … and energy … and then she slumped in the pew exhausted.

I drove her home and promised to stay in touch.

The next day, she called me and asked me if I could come over to their home. The whole family was there – her parents, her sister, her in laws, her husband. She had on a nice dress. She had on shoes. She’d combed her hair. She looked fine.

Before I could ask, she said, “We had a long visit with the doctor. We heard about treatments for Amy. They told us there’s a 90 percent chance she can be cured. They sound so hopeful …”

And then she smiled and said, “I’m sorry about that crazy woman yesterday.”

I reassured her, “Well, you weren’t crazy.”

She said, “I guess I just wanted to make sure God heard me!”

I said, “Oh! God heard you!”

She had been desperate. She had God by the lapels – both hands – and was screaming in God’s face, “Listen to me!”

That’s desperation … that’s desperation … and I guess God heard! Amy went through her treatment. It was hard, but she was cured. She is now a lovely young woman …

Desperation … desperation runs down the street knocking on every door. Desperation stops strangers and says, “Help me!” Desperation is screaming and waving the arms wildly. Desperation will take no answer but, “Yes.” Desperation doesn’t care how I look, what anybody thinks. What this costs. Where I am. “I don’t care.” One thing has to be done! That’s desperation.

I don’t know if any of you have ever been desperate. Most of us – I guess all of us here live in a house of faith. We trust in God. We believe in the message and ministry of Jesus. We worship.

But the house of faith in which I live, compared to so many others, is such a comfortable house. My faith is not put to the screaming test. I’m not often seen grabbing God by the lapels and yelling in God’s face. The house of faith in which I live, and some of you live, is … I think … fairly comfortable.

And that’s wonderful when we’ve been blessed that way. But I hope we understand. I hope we appreciate, some people don’t live in a house of faith like that. Their house of faith is a shack thrown together in the desperation of midnight. That’s all they have. That’s desperate faith …

King Saul, the first king of Israel – a man of grand qualities – tall, nice looking man, of the tribe of Benjamin, a warrior, a leader in religion. He’s a man of prayer. He sometimes prophesies. But he has these terrible experiences of distance from God. Very emotional and very upsetting. In times of crisis he wants to talk to God and it seems … God isn’t there.

He calls in the priests and says, “Give me a word here from God!”

They say, “There’s no word …”

He lies down and says, “Maybe I’ll dream of God … maybe I’ll dream a word.”

He tries everything.

And then one day – desperate - this great man of faith, slips off in the dark of night and asks a fortune teller about his fate … a man of God going to a fortune teller? - trusting his life to a crystal ball or some leaves in a teacup? Or playing with cards … trusting his life to that?

He’s desperate …

A couple with a child limp in their arms, go to see every specialist in the country and then to Europe and then to England. Finally, a few weeks later they’re found in South America in a little village, with their child, while an old man is stirring some stuff in a pot and putting in leaves and roots and they say, “Anything! Anything!”

They’re desperate …

I wanted to tell you about these stories today, because I think they help us get a grasp on the Gospel reading for today …

Jesus and his followers – the twelve – were going north through Israel and had come to the border where Israel joins, what today is Lebanon – in the region of Tyre and Sidon.

And there’s a Canaanite woman there – we would say “a Palestinian woman.” She sees Jesus and the group going through the street and she begins to yell, “Jesus, Son of David, Lord! Have mercy on me!”

But Jesus doesn’t even break his stride.

“Jesus, Lord, Son of David – Have mercy!”

He doesn’t even turn around and look.

“Jesus, I have a little girl - tormented by a demon!”

That’s the way they spoke then. I don’t know if today you took her to Sick Kids, they might say she was autistic. They might say she had epilepsy … but in those days, “tormented by a demon.”

“Jesus, Son of David, Lord, have mercy …”

He doesn’t stop …

The disciples say, “Lord, tell her to get away. She’s embarrassing and bothering everybody.”

She cries out, “Lord have mercy.”

Finally Jesus turns to speak to her, and he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

She’s a gentile woman!

“Lord have mercy on me!”

He says, “You don’t take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.”

But she says, “The dogs get to eat what falls off the table!”

And Jesus says, “Wheww! What faith! What faith! (pause)… you go home. Your little girl is alright.”

She was desperate …

She didn’t care that Jesus was going somewhere else. She didn’t care that he was busy. She didn’t care that she was a woman and he was a man. She didn’t care that she was a Palestinian and he was a Jew. She didn’t care that all those men tagging along behind Jesus were telling her to shut up. She didn’t care if anybody heard. She didn’t care what anybody thought … only one thing was important, “My little girl is sick. I cannot give up.”

I hope nobody here is ever that desperate …

I mean arm flinging, screaming, knocking on every door desperate. I hope nobody here is ever that desperate!

But I hope you’ll understand if I say, there will come a day – someday … none of us will escape it … when we will become at least a little bit desperate. It will come to us all …

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you know what desperation does? Desperation trims our life of all the excess junk, and only one thing is important.

“Who cares about the house? Who cares about the furniture? Who cares about the car? Who cares about the vacation? Who cares whether I’m wearing designer clothes? Who cares?”

“One thing is important!”

Now, I don’t want to wish pain on any one of us, but there will come a day when we will be desperate …. desperate enough to suddenly realize, “There’s a lot in my life that’s just worthless … that just doesn’t matter.” There will come a day when you or I may well take God by the lapels and look in God’s face and say, “I will not turn you loose until you bless me …”

I trust … in that moment … we will have the faith to know … God is listening …