Our lectionary readings for today are full of people in desperate situations. The writer of Lamentations, standing on a high windy, barren hillside, looks down into the deserted streets and charred remains of Jerusalem, the city that has been so full of life—but now the Babylonians have sacked it and taken the people back with them into exile in Babylon. Life as the writer knows it is gone forever.
About six hundred years after the writer of Lamentations lamented over the fate of Jerusalem, Mark shares with us the stories of more desperate people.
A woman furtively blends into the jostling, noisy crowd around Jesus. She is full of quiet desperation. She is an outcast, unclean and unwelcome because a disease that has stolen twelve years of her life and all of her money, and worst of all, her community.
Jairus is well known by the crowd, a leader of the synagogue, with every resource at his command. The people in the crowd must have been surprised to see a man of such standing in such a desperate situation that he would join the crowd throw himself at the feet of esus and beg him to heal his twelve year old daughter.
Even today, we still find themselves in desperate situations.
With their permission, I want to share with you the story of two parents in a desperate place. One morning I got a call from this couple. Their infant son had been born prematurely, and he had been in the NICU for several days. We had all been hoping and praying that this tiny newborn would beat the odds and live, in spite of his extremely early birth.
But this phone call made my spirits sink, because the mother told me that the doctors had said that the child would die, and she asked me to the hospital and pray with them.
So I did. The baby lay in the heated and covered bassinet. He was tiny. He was restless. We could only touch him through a portal on the side of the bassinet. After talking with the parents for a little while, I reached in and took his tiny hand. His miniscule palm and his perfectly formed little fingers rested between my thumb and forefinger.
Remember how Paul talks about prayer as sometimes being groaning and sighing, because we just can’t even put our desperate prayers into words? That was my prayer that morning. I had no words. I just held that tiny hand, and the tears rolled down my face, and the baby grew still and quiet. After a while, he pulled his little hand away.
Later that day, I got the call. The baby had died. The parents were broken hearted.
Sooner or later, all of us face tragedies in our lives. And today’s scriptures lay out some lifegiving ways in which we can approach these frustrating and sometimes downright awful situations that plague us.
What the writer of Lamentations, the woman with the hemorrhage and Jairus all shared was their belief that “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.” And Jairus and the woman believed that Jesus could actually heal people, based on all they had heard. Each one of these people had faith in God.
What is faith, and is faith something we can truly have in this era of skepticism? St Paul told the Hebrews that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
As Christians, we strive to have the faith that God’s love for us is steadfast and that God does not delight in the death of the living, even though death surrounds us. We hope and believe that God’s love for us is true.
How do we pray faithfully during the hard times in our lives?
I want to share with you an acrostic for faith that I came up with as I thought about how I’d try to answer that question, based on today’s scriptures.
To pray to God with faith is to pray fervently, audaciously, intimately, truthfully, and humbly.
For the letter F, the word is to pray fervently.
The prayer of Jairus was fervent. Jairus didn’t just ask Jesus for help for his daughter. He begged Jesus. The scripture says that he begged Jesus repeatedly to come and lay hands on his daughter, so that she could live.
When we pray fervently, we persist in our prayer. Paul advised the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing. Fervent prayer is focused prayer, prayer that zeros in on behalf of the people and the situations that matter most to us in our lives.
For the letter A, the word is to pray audaciously.
The woman who touched Jesus was audacious. Outcast that she was, she dared to enter the crowd, and even more daringly, she touched the cloak of Jesus. An unclean woman touching a man—scandalous and downright audacious. She took a risk.
When we pray audaciously, we pray boldly—We fervently ask for what we believe may be best for us, trusting that God will grant, as St Chrysostom says, “our desires and petitions as may be best for us.” And audacious prayer is the prayer of creativity and imagination. Albert Einstein said that “Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.” When we pray audaciously, we imagine the amazing and wonderful gifts that God has for us, and is waiting to give us gladly.
For the letter I, the word is to pray intimately.
Intimacy –touch is an act of intimacy. And touch plays an important role in these stories of faith. The woman touched Jesus, and healing power flowed out of him into her.
And Jesus took the hand of the twelve year old girl and told her to get up, and she immediately got up and began to walk about.
For us, intimate prayer is prayer shaped by time and discipline. Just as we cannot hope to have a close relationship with another person without spending time with that person, so it is with our relationship with God. The more time we spend with God in prayer, the more intimate our relationship with God becomes. God wants us to reach out, to draw near in prayer. God longs to spend time with us, intimately and lovingly, but we never realize that God is waiting to be with us if we are so busy with our daily life and work that we never find the time to sit down with God.
For the letter T, the word is to pray truthfully.
Jesus asked, “Who touched me?” And the woman came to him in fear and trembling, and told him the whole truth.” She revealed her whole identity—her uncleanness, her struggles for the past twelve years, her brokenness.
Truthful prayer becomes a possibility for us when we take a good, honest look at our lives and unflinchingly search out and identify for ourselves those places in our lives that need healing. I can tell you that the four times I have gone through the Rite of Reconciliation with another priest listening to my vulnerabilities have been painful and yet healing events in my life. The truth about ourselves hurts. But when we can be honest with ourselves about our faults, and take those faults to God in prayer, we open ourselves to receive God’s healing love.
For the letter H, the word is to pray humbly.
All three of these people pray humbly to God. The writer of Lamentations sits alone in silence as he prays, and even puts his mouth to the dust—that is, he bows down in humble prayer. Jairus falls at the feet of Jesus to ask for healing for his daughter. And the woman, too, falls down before Jesus in fear and awe.
In our day and age, humility is the most difficult of all of these attributes of faithful prayer. In our impatient culture, we are used to demanding what we want and expecting great customer service immediately. That’s the way we tend to pray too. This is what I want and need, God, and I need whatever that is right now. And if you don’t make that work out, I’m going to be angry at you and never come back to your place of business. Have you ever prayed like that before? I’m ashamed to admit that I have.
Fervent, audacious, intimate, truthful, humble prayer—this kind of prayer is faithful prayer.
Next time you find yourselves in a desperate situation, I would encourage you to remember Jairus, and woman with the hemorrhage, and the writer of Lamentations, and to engage in faithful prayer to our God, who does not delight in the death of the living. Pray to God who does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone. Pray to God knowing that God longs to heal us, and to bring us into everlasting life, beginning here and now.
This sermon would not be complete unless I ended it by returning to its beginning.
Recently I had a phone call from the couple whose little son had died. The father was elated and overjoyed to share some news with me.
Once again, they’ve been blessed with a pregnancy, and after a long search, they found a clinic in New Jersey that specializes in helping mothers who deliver prematurely to bring their babies close to term. This couple is living in hope. They have prayed for so long, through for this new child, and this little girl of their dreams and imaginations has the hope of being born, and learning to walk, and growing into adulthood, and living life to its fullest.
As the writer of Lamentations said,
“This I call to mind,
And therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end;
They are new every morning.”
Amen.