I was in the emergency room visiting someone, when a woman’s voice crackled through the din: “Is there anybody here to care about me?” The voice was of a person in pain not only in body but in mind: nobody will help.
“Is there anybody here to care about me?” There was no one. The hospital was slammed, the doctors and nurses where shouting and scurrying, and they could not keep up. “Is there anybody here to care about me?”
The particularities change, but that question that is on all of our minds as we sojourn through a world gone wrong, a globe fractured by abusers and abused. “Is there anybody here to care about me?”
The Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel (Matthew 15:21-28) hopes she’s found an answer to that question. “Jesus will care about me.”
But her hopes slam into God grim and foreboding. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely demon-possessed.”
“But He answered her not a word.” Why is He like this? Why does He not answer her? Why does He not answer you?
What is happening in our prayers? Can we change the mind of God? Can we change anything?
Abraham pleaded with God that the city of Sodom be spared if 50 righteous men could be found in the city, then is bold in talking God down from 50, to 45, to 40, to 30, to 20, to finally 10. In the end, the city is destroyed anyway after Lot is rescued.
Moses cried out, and God held off on destroying Israel when they had rebelled in the wilderness.
St. James says that we should pray for the sick, because the prayer of a righteous man avails much.
But then we have other passages, much more sobering, much more in accord with our own experience. “O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; And in the night season, and am not silent.” (Psa 22:2 NKJV) God does not hear, does not answer. “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?” (Psa 13:1 NKJV)
Thus it seems. You pray, and He does not answer. You keep at it, but things grow worse. “Perhaps,” a nagging voice says, “perhaps it is because you are worthless.” Or perhaps it is because you are doing it wrong. A better technique, the right formula of words, will make things different.
“To You I will cry, O Lord my Rock: Do not be silent to me, Lest, if You are silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit.” (Psa 28:1 NKJV) On and on this goes. Perhaps there is no God at all? Maybe Marx was right, religion is merely an opiate for the masses. Maybe Nietzsche was right, and your lack of will, your inability to strike out and take what is yours is just your own weakness.
Why does He not answer?! What the Canaanite woman felt in today’s Gospel is unknown. But when Jesus did not answer her, ignored her, seemed to treat her with contempt, she persisted.
When Jesus says that He was not sent for the likes of her kind, her response is worship, which is a literal, bodily action of throwing herself on hands and knees, with her face in the dust. “Lord, help me!”
That should suffice. But she receives only insults. Not from the disciples, who gape in astonishment; but Jesus Himself calls her a dog.
Now perhaps you feel ill-treated in your life. Your work, your spouse, even your church make you feel disregarded, disliked, unimportant, unheard, uncared for. And God does not answer. He treats you as a dog, or as with Jacob, comes at you like a fighter bursting from the corner as the bell rings, ready to pummel you, kick you, pin you to the ground.
God is a strange God; alien, altogether unlike syrupy praise music or sentimental hymns. “What a friend we have in Jesus”? This Friend appears—when He appears at all— more a sparring partner, drill sergeant, or out-and-out enemy.
It all drives us to the point of saying with the Psalmist, “I am feeble and severely broken; I groan because of the turmoil of my heart.” (Psa 38:8 NKJV) Again and again the Scriptures counsel, “Wait.” But I do not think this simply means that if you are patient enough, your life will get better.
As months pile up into years, as hairs grow gray and opportunities disappear, never to return, what then comes of our waiting? “I am weary with my crying; My throat is dry; My eyes fail while I wait for my God.” (Psa 69:3 NKJV)
Why does Jesus answer this woman in the Gospels, and not, so it seems, you? Is it because she’s better at being patient, or humble? I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with her problem. Her daughter is not just sick. She is, the mother says, “severely demon-possessed.”
Madness! Who believes these antiquated superstitions anymore? I do. I don’t see demons in every shadow or rustling of leaves; but if you do not see the power of evil forces at work in the world, you aren’t paying attention. Our Lord Jesus came into the world to destroy the words of the devil. Last week we heard how Jesus overcame the devil’s temptations. Today we see Him beginning to overthrow the devil’s work. The world is filled with madness and sadness, crime and sickness.
So if the Lord doesn’t seem to be answering your prayers, making everything just as you would like it in this life, ask yourself if you have been baptized. There the devil was renounced and the Holy Spirit given.
What more do you want? More of that. And resurrection. That’s what we pray for. That’s what we wait for.
In other words, we wait for Easter, and we are following Jesus there, with a path that goes through Good Friday, through suffering and death.
Everything you now suffer, everything you now endure, everything that now troubles you, is designed to point you away from all the things you are coveting, all the things that have become idols. Food, fame, lust, winning the game: your priorities are eschew, and your prayers are misplaced. Discard them all and start anew, with the Canaanite woman. Just say to Jesus, “Lord, help me!”
The Lord will answer this prayer, and in the end show Himself your true friend.
Preached at Immanuel on March 1, 2015