Everybody Pray!
Sermon
THE CHALLENGE OF GOD'S HARVEST
Have you ever taken a long trip on one of our beautiful interstate highways? Most of us have, no doubt. The turnpike highways, where you pay a toll, have combination restaurants and gas stations every so many miles. These service plazas can be puzzling. With the same architecture and floor plan, it's hard to tell one from the other. Once a family was on a long trip and had to have breakfast, lunch and supper at these turnpike restaurants. Toward evening, as they walked into the restaurant for supper - some 500 miles from where they had breakfast - their little four-year-old boy exclaimed in bewilderment, "We've been riding in the car all day long, and here we are, back at this place again!"
We can understand the child's confusion. But for too many of us, this little story is an apt description of our prayer life as well. We've been traveling along in our prayer life for years and years, and yet it often seems as though we're right back where we started. Our life of prayer does not grow and mature. For many Christians, the whole business of prayer is still a baffling activity. They don't know for sure if they're handling it right. Prayer is awkward and clumsy for a lot of us. If we were ever asked to pray outloud for someone else, well, we might just fall through the floor.
It's quite clear that most of us could stand some additional encouragement and teaching about prayer. If this is the case, the Gospel lesson we have before us this morning is made to order. This is one of the classic true-life stories about prayer in the Bible. It begins with the refreshing implication that Christianity and the Gospel of Christ are for the whole world. It spells the beginning of the end of all human barriers to religion and prayer. From this woman in the story we learn that her goals in praying were good. We also learn from her that orthodoxy is never a prerequisite to acceptable prayer. And then she teaches us, finally, that prayer offered in faith has its reward from Jesus. Let's mature and grow now in these next moments as we discuss the inviting theme, "EVERYBODY PRAY!"
We can say, "Everybody pray!" because the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for everybody. That is one of the great messages of this story. We read here that Jesus "went off to the territory near the cities of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman lived in that region." This is the only occasion in his entire ministry when Jesus ever left the country of Palestine. Never was he found outside Jewish territory except in this incident here.
There are, of course, other reasons why Jesus went to this foreign place. But surely part of the impact of this whole incident is to impress us about the universality of prayer practice. Prayer is for everyone because the Gospel is for everyone. Christ Jesus came into this world to be savior of all the world. The message of the cross, the glories and satisfaction of Christian prayer, are meant to be experienced and shared by all people everywhere. All tribal barriers and any other kind of human barriers are on the way out wherever Jesus Christ reigns. As the famous Protestant hymn puts it:
In Christ there is no East or West
In Him no South or North,
But one great fellowship of love,
Throughout the whole wide earth.
With this grand global vision of the faith before us, we now move in and listen as this woman teaches us about Christian prayer.
One detail we notice about our teacher here. She is a woman, and she is a heathen. She is an unexpected teacher, isn't she? We want to know about Christian prayer. You and I are here to get the best help we can to improve our prayer life. We want to learn about God-pleasing and effective prayer. We want some authoritative answers and clues.
In that light this woman here seems to be a poor teacher. Not only would the fact that she is a woman still be a mental block for some, but more than that, she is a heathen woman. "A Canaanite woman ... came to (Jesus)." She was a Gentile, and therefore a heathen. What useful material could she contribute to the subject of prayer? Why should we listen to her?
Well, we do need to remember that sometimes the best teachers turn up in the most surprising places. Who are the experts in religion? Where do we find those who can effectively teach us about the Christian faith? In a way we look to ministers and priests. Surely they know what the Bible says. Surely they have mastered the doctrines about worship and prayer. Aren't the authoritative teachers the seminary professors? They have devoted their lives to a study of the Bible and its practical meaning for our life.
While all this is true, such folks are not the only teachers of our Christian faith, are they? In this connection I am happy to say that often you, the parishioners of the church, are wonderful and inspiring teachers of the faith to us ministers. I am thinking just now of an elderly man in our congregation who lives in one of the downtown hotels in our city. His course is run. In a way, his life has finished. Most of his relatives are gone, and he lives in the late afternoon hours of his life. His little room is a somber sort of place. He is filled with pride about a job and career long ended, but still vivid in his memory. When I visit him he says, "I pray a lot. It does me good. I come to the Lord with my life each day, and I know he surrounds me and keeps me. I'll never give up praying to the Lord." This man, I say, in the beauty of his humble faith, has been a great teacher to me about prayer.
Many years ago in this country the slaves of the South became great teachers of Christianity when they left us the heritage of their prayers in music. How about this spiritual song that rises from the soul of an oppressed generation?
Oh, nobody knows the trouble I've seen
Nobody knows but Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen,
Glory, halleluia!
Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down,
Sometimes I'm almost to the ground, Oh, yes, Lord.
Although you see me going along so,
I have my trials here below, Oh, yes, Lord.
Oh, nobody knows the trouble I've seen
Nobody knows but Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen,
Glory, halleluia!
Such souls, I say, are noble teachers to you and me about the meaning of heartfelt prayer.
Last week a distinguished psychiatrist here in Milwaukee retired after 42 years of service. Speaking about the early years of his career, he said, "There were no psychiatric programs to speak of at the time, and what I learned was mostly on-the-job training. I still learn as much from the patients as they learn from us. Every new patient gives me more insight into life."
Oh, yes, it's perfectly clear that some of the greatest lessons in life are not learned in university lecture halls nor from books at the grandest libraries. Many a lesser soul in his life has lessons to teach you and me.
So we do not despise this heathen woman here as she dares to have us learn from her about a growing, maturing prayer life. What we observe first is that the goal of her prayer was good. She was nOt praying for herself. She was praying for her daughter. Her prayer was this: "Have mercy on me! My daughter has a demon and is in a terrible condition." Though we would classify the woman as a Canaan ite and heathen, yet there was genuine love in her heart for her own child. He goal and her motives were good. What drove her on was human concern. What consumed her prayer was the desperate need of another human being.
Perhaps you and I do not grow and mature in our prayer life because our souls are stagnant in self-interest. Not just our prayers, but our very thinking is so utterly self-centered. As pride rules our life, so it rules our thinking and effects ourprayers. Why don't we pray more for other people? I don't just mean, "God bless mommy and daddy and grandma and grandpa and Aunt Mary and Uncle Bill, and Sparky, our dog." I mean prayers that cry out for God's help to those who literally have bare cupboards or feel they are at the end of the line. In many cases it's because we have no feelings for those in radical need. They are merely television news items, spaced between commercials about the latest frozen food wonders. This heathen woman here had love. She felt another's genuine human need. Thus she teaches us about vitalized, compelling prayer. The goal of her prayer was very good.
Secondly, we learn from this woman that orthodoxy is never a prerequisite to effective prayer. The word "orthodoxy," though harmless in itself, has come in recent years to suggest a dry, formal, outward way of practicing religion. Among theologians a favorite expression is "dead orthodoxy," referring to the religious game of going through the motions. The word rekes heavily of the claim to a "right" or "correct" way of believing and practicing the Christian faith.
What seems to break through quite clearly in this text here is the fact that such orthodoxy, such laudable religious etiquette, is never something demanded of those who are searching for an effective prayer life. God doesn't hear our prayers because we've got a proper religious background.
Look at the situation here in the Bible reading. There could hardly have been anyone more unorthodox than the pleading lady we meet in this story. Remember that Jesus was found here in foreign territory - the only time, in fact, that he never left the Holy Land during his adult life. St. Matthew tells us that on this occasion Jesus went to the district of Tyre and Sidon. He further points out that the woman who approached Jesus there was a Canaan ite woman. Not only was she a Gentile, she was from the stock of a bitter ancestral enemy of the Jews. The Jews despised any Canaanite. The net result of this relationship was this: in the eyes of Jesus or any other Jew she was a most unorthodox soul. There was little if any reason to consider her worthy of God's attention and care.
And maybe that's the way the woman began to feel too, in the first moments of her encounter with Jesus here. The woman came pleading to Jesus with an earnest request that he do something about her terribly sick daughter. "But Jesus did not say a word to her," the text says. On top of that the disciples of Jesus seemed to confirm his lack of interest. "Send her away," they demanded. "She is following us and making all this noise!"
At this point the Canaanite woman may have been thinking in her mind, "You see, it is true. God plays favorites. You have to be born with a certain religious background before this mumble-jumble of prayer really works. Now I can see that the business of prayer really is a business. It's only for those who are willing to put themselves under a rigid and dry formalism. Sincerity and earnestness don't count for much. It's playing the orthodox game that matters to these religious leaders, and, I guess, that matters to God also. Cursed be the proud and prejudiced attitude of all religion! If you can't even find mercy and love in the Church, where else will you find it?"
So the questions plague us also. Our prayers sometimes go unanswered. Our noble spiritual yearnings do not take shape. Even our prayers for the needs of other people seem to fall on deaf divine ears. We begin to wonder whether we know how to pray at all. Is there something I missed along the way of my religious instruction? Am I praying the right way? Are there certain words or forms I'm supposed to be following? Why am I lacking in religious insight? Why did I get stuck being born into the wrong spiritual family?
But in the process of his encounter with this heathen woman, Jesus sweeps aside such self-accusing, though understandable, spiritual reasoning. Here he makes it very clear that orthodoxy is never a prerequisite for effective prayer. One does not have to be born Jewish. One does not have to have the proper religious upbringing from birth. You don't have to be in certain sacred buildings or certain holy countries before your prayers will be effective. Folding the hands or closing the eyes a certain way will not mean much in itself either.
But your earnestness and your faith - that will count for everything! Jesus tells this woman, "You are a woman of great faith! What you want will be done for you." The implication is that Jesus was amazed. He was amazed that in a foreign country, among such unorthodox people, such a "religious" woman as this should be found. To Jesus she was not religious because she went to a church with Gothic architecture and a historic liturgy. She was not religious because she knew all the catechism answers or served on the proper parish committees. She was religious because she gave up all other hope and placed herself under the unqualified care of Jesus Christ. She didn't just surmise, "A few select people can pray to God and he will hear." No, she had the faith which says, "Everybody pray! Even I, the least qualified by all outward standards, can ask God to help me, and he will hear me."
There is every reason for you and me to have the same kind of faith - and even more - as this woman had. You and I know what kind of mercy and concern God can muster for us. We have seen God's sheer grace played out for us at the cross of Jesus Christ. You know how much God feels for you and stands with you. Recall the scene of Jesus hanging upon the cross on the mount of Calvary. He really gave himself over for you and me, didn't he? We say that Christ "suffered and died" for us. What does that mean? Part of it surely means that the cross is the ultimate expression of God reaching info our personal lives for a saving and rescuing purpose. Just because he is the loving God, he gave his only Son into death for all of us. And "if God is for us, who can be against us?" If God is for us, it is altogether worthwhile to pray, to daringly stack all our cards with him, and to resign our needs to him in complete faith and trust. That's what our leading lady in the text here did. For that, she is a good teacher.
So everybody pray! Have good goals as you pray. Don't ever stop praying because you think you lack something in the eyes of God. Take a good dose of looking at the cross of Christ before yOu pray. See his love for you there. Pray with a large and daring faith. Then rejoice in the word that Christ speaks, "What you want will be done for you!"
We can understand the child's confusion. But for too many of us, this little story is an apt description of our prayer life as well. We've been traveling along in our prayer life for years and years, and yet it often seems as though we're right back where we started. Our life of prayer does not grow and mature. For many Christians, the whole business of prayer is still a baffling activity. They don't know for sure if they're handling it right. Prayer is awkward and clumsy for a lot of us. If we were ever asked to pray outloud for someone else, well, we might just fall through the floor.
It's quite clear that most of us could stand some additional encouragement and teaching about prayer. If this is the case, the Gospel lesson we have before us this morning is made to order. This is one of the classic true-life stories about prayer in the Bible. It begins with the refreshing implication that Christianity and the Gospel of Christ are for the whole world. It spells the beginning of the end of all human barriers to religion and prayer. From this woman in the story we learn that her goals in praying were good. We also learn from her that orthodoxy is never a prerequisite to acceptable prayer. And then she teaches us, finally, that prayer offered in faith has its reward from Jesus. Let's mature and grow now in these next moments as we discuss the inviting theme, "EVERYBODY PRAY!"
We can say, "Everybody pray!" because the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for everybody. That is one of the great messages of this story. We read here that Jesus "went off to the territory near the cities of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman lived in that region." This is the only occasion in his entire ministry when Jesus ever left the country of Palestine. Never was he found outside Jewish territory except in this incident here.
There are, of course, other reasons why Jesus went to this foreign place. But surely part of the impact of this whole incident is to impress us about the universality of prayer practice. Prayer is for everyone because the Gospel is for everyone. Christ Jesus came into this world to be savior of all the world. The message of the cross, the glories and satisfaction of Christian prayer, are meant to be experienced and shared by all people everywhere. All tribal barriers and any other kind of human barriers are on the way out wherever Jesus Christ reigns. As the famous Protestant hymn puts it:
In Christ there is no East or West
In Him no South or North,
But one great fellowship of love,
Throughout the whole wide earth.
With this grand global vision of the faith before us, we now move in and listen as this woman teaches us about Christian prayer.
One detail we notice about our teacher here. She is a woman, and she is a heathen. She is an unexpected teacher, isn't she? We want to know about Christian prayer. You and I are here to get the best help we can to improve our prayer life. We want to learn about God-pleasing and effective prayer. We want some authoritative answers and clues.
In that light this woman here seems to be a poor teacher. Not only would the fact that she is a woman still be a mental block for some, but more than that, she is a heathen woman. "A Canaanite woman ... came to (Jesus)." She was a Gentile, and therefore a heathen. What useful material could she contribute to the subject of prayer? Why should we listen to her?
Well, we do need to remember that sometimes the best teachers turn up in the most surprising places. Who are the experts in religion? Where do we find those who can effectively teach us about the Christian faith? In a way we look to ministers and priests. Surely they know what the Bible says. Surely they have mastered the doctrines about worship and prayer. Aren't the authoritative teachers the seminary professors? They have devoted their lives to a study of the Bible and its practical meaning for our life.
While all this is true, such folks are not the only teachers of our Christian faith, are they? In this connection I am happy to say that often you, the parishioners of the church, are wonderful and inspiring teachers of the faith to us ministers. I am thinking just now of an elderly man in our congregation who lives in one of the downtown hotels in our city. His course is run. In a way, his life has finished. Most of his relatives are gone, and he lives in the late afternoon hours of his life. His little room is a somber sort of place. He is filled with pride about a job and career long ended, but still vivid in his memory. When I visit him he says, "I pray a lot. It does me good. I come to the Lord with my life each day, and I know he surrounds me and keeps me. I'll never give up praying to the Lord." This man, I say, in the beauty of his humble faith, has been a great teacher to me about prayer.
Many years ago in this country the slaves of the South became great teachers of Christianity when they left us the heritage of their prayers in music. How about this spiritual song that rises from the soul of an oppressed generation?
Oh, nobody knows the trouble I've seen
Nobody knows but Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen,
Glory, halleluia!
Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down,
Sometimes I'm almost to the ground, Oh, yes, Lord.
Although you see me going along so,
I have my trials here below, Oh, yes, Lord.
Oh, nobody knows the trouble I've seen
Nobody knows but Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen,
Glory, halleluia!
Such souls, I say, are noble teachers to you and me about the meaning of heartfelt prayer.
Last week a distinguished psychiatrist here in Milwaukee retired after 42 years of service. Speaking about the early years of his career, he said, "There were no psychiatric programs to speak of at the time, and what I learned was mostly on-the-job training. I still learn as much from the patients as they learn from us. Every new patient gives me more insight into life."
Oh, yes, it's perfectly clear that some of the greatest lessons in life are not learned in university lecture halls nor from books at the grandest libraries. Many a lesser soul in his life has lessons to teach you and me.
So we do not despise this heathen woman here as she dares to have us learn from her about a growing, maturing prayer life. What we observe first is that the goal of her prayer was good. She was nOt praying for herself. She was praying for her daughter. Her prayer was this: "Have mercy on me! My daughter has a demon and is in a terrible condition." Though we would classify the woman as a Canaan ite and heathen, yet there was genuine love in her heart for her own child. He goal and her motives were good. What drove her on was human concern. What consumed her prayer was the desperate need of another human being.
Perhaps you and I do not grow and mature in our prayer life because our souls are stagnant in self-interest. Not just our prayers, but our very thinking is so utterly self-centered. As pride rules our life, so it rules our thinking and effects ourprayers. Why don't we pray more for other people? I don't just mean, "God bless mommy and daddy and grandma and grandpa and Aunt Mary and Uncle Bill, and Sparky, our dog." I mean prayers that cry out for God's help to those who literally have bare cupboards or feel they are at the end of the line. In many cases it's because we have no feelings for those in radical need. They are merely television news items, spaced between commercials about the latest frozen food wonders. This heathen woman here had love. She felt another's genuine human need. Thus she teaches us about vitalized, compelling prayer. The goal of her prayer was very good.
Secondly, we learn from this woman that orthodoxy is never a prerequisite to effective prayer. The word "orthodoxy," though harmless in itself, has come in recent years to suggest a dry, formal, outward way of practicing religion. Among theologians a favorite expression is "dead orthodoxy," referring to the religious game of going through the motions. The word rekes heavily of the claim to a "right" or "correct" way of believing and practicing the Christian faith.
What seems to break through quite clearly in this text here is the fact that such orthodoxy, such laudable religious etiquette, is never something demanded of those who are searching for an effective prayer life. God doesn't hear our prayers because we've got a proper religious background.
Look at the situation here in the Bible reading. There could hardly have been anyone more unorthodox than the pleading lady we meet in this story. Remember that Jesus was found here in foreign territory - the only time, in fact, that he never left the Holy Land during his adult life. St. Matthew tells us that on this occasion Jesus went to the district of Tyre and Sidon. He further points out that the woman who approached Jesus there was a Canaan ite woman. Not only was she a Gentile, she was from the stock of a bitter ancestral enemy of the Jews. The Jews despised any Canaanite. The net result of this relationship was this: in the eyes of Jesus or any other Jew she was a most unorthodox soul. There was little if any reason to consider her worthy of God's attention and care.
And maybe that's the way the woman began to feel too, in the first moments of her encounter with Jesus here. The woman came pleading to Jesus with an earnest request that he do something about her terribly sick daughter. "But Jesus did not say a word to her," the text says. On top of that the disciples of Jesus seemed to confirm his lack of interest. "Send her away," they demanded. "She is following us and making all this noise!"
At this point the Canaanite woman may have been thinking in her mind, "You see, it is true. God plays favorites. You have to be born with a certain religious background before this mumble-jumble of prayer really works. Now I can see that the business of prayer really is a business. It's only for those who are willing to put themselves under a rigid and dry formalism. Sincerity and earnestness don't count for much. It's playing the orthodox game that matters to these religious leaders, and, I guess, that matters to God also. Cursed be the proud and prejudiced attitude of all religion! If you can't even find mercy and love in the Church, where else will you find it?"
So the questions plague us also. Our prayers sometimes go unanswered. Our noble spiritual yearnings do not take shape. Even our prayers for the needs of other people seem to fall on deaf divine ears. We begin to wonder whether we know how to pray at all. Is there something I missed along the way of my religious instruction? Am I praying the right way? Are there certain words or forms I'm supposed to be following? Why am I lacking in religious insight? Why did I get stuck being born into the wrong spiritual family?
But in the process of his encounter with this heathen woman, Jesus sweeps aside such self-accusing, though understandable, spiritual reasoning. Here he makes it very clear that orthodoxy is never a prerequisite for effective prayer. One does not have to be born Jewish. One does not have to have the proper religious upbringing from birth. You don't have to be in certain sacred buildings or certain holy countries before your prayers will be effective. Folding the hands or closing the eyes a certain way will not mean much in itself either.
But your earnestness and your faith - that will count for everything! Jesus tells this woman, "You are a woman of great faith! What you want will be done for you." The implication is that Jesus was amazed. He was amazed that in a foreign country, among such unorthodox people, such a "religious" woman as this should be found. To Jesus she was not religious because she went to a church with Gothic architecture and a historic liturgy. She was not religious because she knew all the catechism answers or served on the proper parish committees. She was religious because she gave up all other hope and placed herself under the unqualified care of Jesus Christ. She didn't just surmise, "A few select people can pray to God and he will hear." No, she had the faith which says, "Everybody pray! Even I, the least qualified by all outward standards, can ask God to help me, and he will hear me."
There is every reason for you and me to have the same kind of faith - and even more - as this woman had. You and I know what kind of mercy and concern God can muster for us. We have seen God's sheer grace played out for us at the cross of Jesus Christ. You know how much God feels for you and stands with you. Recall the scene of Jesus hanging upon the cross on the mount of Calvary. He really gave himself over for you and me, didn't he? We say that Christ "suffered and died" for us. What does that mean? Part of it surely means that the cross is the ultimate expression of God reaching info our personal lives for a saving and rescuing purpose. Just because he is the loving God, he gave his only Son into death for all of us. And "if God is for us, who can be against us?" If God is for us, it is altogether worthwhile to pray, to daringly stack all our cards with him, and to resign our needs to him in complete faith and trust. That's what our leading lady in the text here did. For that, she is a good teacher.
So everybody pray! Have good goals as you pray. Don't ever stop praying because you think you lack something in the eyes of God. Take a good dose of looking at the cross of Christ before yOu pray. See his love for you there. Pray with a large and daring faith. Then rejoice in the word that Christ speaks, "What you want will be done for you!"
