Sun 17 Aug 2008
Getting Help from God
Posted by Dave under Sermons
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David Orendorff, Matthew 15:21-28
When Jesus says to the Canaanite mother, “O woman, great is your faith,” what is he talking about? What makes her faith so great? As far as we know she never lead anyone to Jesus or God. She doesn’t start a church. She doesn’t even belong to the right religion. There is no report of her saying, “Thank you.” We never even hear of her again. So what is so great about her faith? All she really has going for her is that she so loves her daughter that she will not be denied help.
I have first hand experience of such a mother. I have Vickie’s permission to tell this story. Vickie is great a mother to our daughters. You have heard the advice, “Never come between a sow and her cub.” I tell you, the same is true for Vickie, and, I imagine, for most mothers. Do not, I repeat, do not come between Vickie and her child. One example is enough.
We went on vacation leaving Erika, who was high school age, behind for a week. We were then to meet her at Taco Bell in Missoula and continue our vacation. We got to Taco Bell and waited. We waited an hour, but Erika did not come. We got worried. It was raining and all kinds of awful thoughts came to our minds. Vickie could wait no longer. She began to call places in Helena where Erika might be. The phone was exposed to the rain. Vickie didn’t care.
When she tried to reach the house in which Erika was staying the line was busy. She waited 5 minutes, tried again, and again, and again; still busy. She called the operator. The operator refused to help. Suddenly US West found itself between Vickie and her cub. Vickie called the operator again. She was angry and relentless. She wanted help, not a recital of company policy or law. She wanted help and she knew these people could give it. I tried to say something about patience and understanding. I was then between Vickie and her cub. I went back to the car. Finally Vickie got the help she wanted and we learned that Erika thought we were meeting the next day.
The Canaanite mother near Tyre and Sidon is no less a lover of her child than Vickie. And though the disciples and Jesus refuse to help, she will not give up. She knows Jesus can help if he will. She expects results, not some silly religious and racist rules. She knows that she cannot heal her daughter because she has tried everything. She is so desperate and so determined that she, a woman, approaches men in public; that she a Canaanite approaches Jews. When insulted and called a dog, she loves her daughter so much that if she must be a dog then she will have the crumbs under the table.
This anonymous woman teaches us four things about having a great faith. First she knows that she cannot help her daughter. A great faith admits it needs help. Secondly, she knows God can help. A great faith expects God to act where suffering needs healing. Thirdly, she asks God and anyone who will listen for the help her daughter needs. A great faith asks for the help needed. And finally, she turns the control of healing over to God. A great faith accepts what God gives.
This sermon may not be for everyone here. It is written for those among us who know we need help; who cry for mercy; those whose children suffer, those whose parents suffer, those whose friends suffer, those who suffer. This sermon is for those crying for help. All others may take a nap. But to those who suffer I offer this good news, this gospel; God helps. It is no more complicated than that. The good news of Jesus Christ is that God cares (read loves) us and helps us with our lives.
It would seem obvious that the people who show up here on a Sunday morning would be the ones who believe this simple truth. But it has been my experience, both in conversation and in honest self reflection, that believing and trusting God to help is difficult for many of us. It doesn’t seem to be so much an intellectual difficulty as it seems to be an emotional difficulty.
Yet, people as diverse as business leaders and psychologists have come to believe that whether we call our help God, or luck, or the purple force, something in the very nature of the cosmos is on our side, helping us. Some power, whatever we name it, is assisting us through life.
I have previously quoted Joseph Jaworski, a successful attorney and business leader now training others about leadership. Jaworski’s book Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership is written for the pragmatic and hardheaded business world. Jaworski is writing to a generally non-religious and secular audience about the phenomenon of mysterious help and trying his darndest not to mention God. At one point he resorts to speaking of “The Supernatural Assisting Force” or SNAF as the Leadership Team began to call it. When toward the end of his book he is point blank ask about God in business he quotes Carl Jung, “Induced or not induced, God is present.” This thought was so important to Jung that he placed it above the door to his home.
Whether we call on God on not, whether we even know to call on God, God is present in our lives, helping us.
Daniel Goleman in his work on emotional intelligence, comes to the conclusion that people who are content, joyful, and successful believe, like Jaworski and Jung, that what they truly need they will receive. It is an optimism that says, “In the end, even in death, I will receive what I truly need.” Goleman contrasts this attitude toward life with those Eeyores who remain miserable believing they will never get what they need and that suffering will be the last chapter of their biography.
A cynical and sad life believes bad things happen. A joyful and powerful life believes “Grace Happens.” A great faith believes that God wants to help and is helping.
The signs of God’s love surround us. Life is a miracle. I breathe because of God’s breath into me. I love because of God’s love in me. I eat, sleep, play, work, am a husband and father because of God’s sustaining presence. I am healed over and over. I have the physical and emotional scars to prove it. And by God’s grace I am transformed, made more like Jesus, because God, with my cooperation, transforms me.
And still, with all these reasons to trust God, I sometimes still find it difficult to fully trust God’s love of me and all the creation. John Wesley had a similar struggle. It was particularly acute after a failed ministry in Georgia where he literally had to flee Savannah in the cover of the night. Back in England he sought the council of Peter Boehler. Wesley was particularly concerned about how he could preach when he was so without faith himself. And so he asked Boehler,
“Should I stop preaching?” He (Boehler) answered “By no means.” I asked, “But what can I preach?” He said, “Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.”1 John Wesley, Journal, 4 Mar 1738
We are asked in a great faith to act as if we trust God, and God’s desire for healing, before we have seen any definitive (whatever they might be) signs. Sometimes it is necessary to act as if a thing is true when we don’t feel it is true. Sometimes it is necessary to act as if God is with us, loving us, healing us, when in truth we feel abandoned, unloved, and dying. Sometimes it is necessary to show up to worship and praise God when in our heart of hearts we want to curse God. Sometimes we must drive ourselves to offer gratitude when what we really want to do is whine.
Jerry Bechtle, a friend and United Methodist pastor, was once with Father Haffey when Haffey got a call from a drunk that needed to be taken home. Jerry and Haffey went and found Joe. They took him home. As they were about to leave Haffey reports that Jerry turned to Joe and said, “Joe, do you ever pray for help?” Joe said, “I don’t know how to pray.” Jerry said to him, “It’s easy.” And grabbing his lips he moved them up and down saying, “Jesus help me.”
Sometimes we simply must move our lips, by force if necessary, and pray, “Jesus help me.” Sometimes, like the mother from Canaan, we just have to have help and so we reach into whatever might be and to whomever there is to save our child.
But remember the fourth thing this loving mother teaches us about a great faith; when crying for help we are surrendering our wills to God. This is a control issue and it is scary for the majority of us. We have been abused by false powers and destructive promises so we approach surrender with great caution. We don’t want to be like the man with the withered hand who prayed vaguely, Lord make my hand like my other hand” and then had two withered hands.
We are like the two fathers in the Fantastiks who faced with the problems of their teenagers sing of the advantages of gardening, “Plant a radish, get a radish, never any doubt. That’s why I love vegetables, you know what your about. Plant a carrot, get a carrot, maybe you’ll get two. That’s why I love vegetables, you know that they’ll come through. But with childer’en, its bewilderin’, for as soon as you think you know what you have got, its what’s it’s not.” We want our healing to be like planting vegetables, not like raising children.
We want God to heal our daughter by our definition of healing. We don’t want a good experience of hospitals; we don’t want to know our child is advancing science for someone else’s child; we don’t want to be told that suffering will strengthen our souls. We do not want the crumbs from the table. We want our daughter well!!!! Anything less is God’s failure.
But look again at the Canaanite woman. Had she been us she would probably have said, “Look, Jesus, you can do this, so send the demon out of my daughter, make her a good little girl.” She would have been very specific about what the healing would be. But instead she first seeks mercy, and then names the problem, “Have mercy on me Lord, son of David, for my daughter is taken by a demon” and then simply “Help me.”
Our family seems to have been attacked by cancer in the last few months. I have very strong opinions on what God ought to be doing about it. And when my desires rule I get miserable. But when I trust that God is healing, even if the healing involves death, then I know peace and I am peaceful with those I love, particularly the ones who are suffering. When I am willing to take whatever God gives then I am ready to receive the healing God gives.
A great faith admits the need for help. A great faith trusts that there is help to be had. A great faith says, “God help me.” And a great faith says, “If I can have just the crumbs from under the table…” expecting that even by the crumbs God will do something great and that whatever God does, it will be right, it will be good and it will be of love.
By worship, study and service a great faith grows in us. May we love our children and all children with a great faith so much that like the Canaanite mother and Vickie we persist until there is healing.
Amen and Shalom.
[1] John Wesley, Journal, 4 Mar 1738
