St. Paul Lutheran Church, Minden, Nebraska
Sunday sermon – 14th Sunday after Pentecost - Sept. 6, ’09
“Help Me! Cry of Desperation!”
Text: Mark 7:24-31
Desperate! What might you think of when you hear the word desperate? At one time I used to have a brightly colored poster in my office that showed a boy swinging on a rope with a huge knot at the end of it. The poster said, “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot, and hang on.”
That’s one definition of desperate – falling behind, hanging on, running out of options, coming to the end of your rope!
Another definition of desperate is “driven to or resulting from loss of hope; rash or violent behavior because of despair.” Example: a desperate spouse takes matters into her own hands.
There’s a comedy-drama series on TV starting its sixth season this fall called “Desperate Housewives”. All I really know about the show is what I’ve read - that it’s a show set in an upscale suburban neighborhood and “follows the lives of a group of housewives as they work through domestic struggles & family life while also facing the secrets, crimes, and mysteries hidden behind the doors of their beautiful & seemingly perfect suburban neighborhood.”
Yes, there’s “made-for-television-desperation.” But closer to home in our own seemingly calm, stable community and all across rural
America there are parents, farmers, husbands, wives, teenagers living lives of “quiet desperation,” people desperate for affection, desperate for understanding, desperate for love, desperate for relief.
Maybe someone you know is in desperate need of a job to save a mortgage, or someone is in desperate need of money to pay medical bills; or imagine parents going through doctor after doctor in desperate need of help to save a sick, sick child.
That’s what’s going on in the Gospel reading for this Sunday. In the middle of Mark 7, a mother, a Gentile mother, a Syrophoenician woman with a very sick child at home seeks out Jesus in a house where Jesus didn’t want anyone to know he was at. When the desperate mother finds Jesus, she falls at His feet and begs Him to heal her little daughter who is possessed by an unclean spirit.
How desperate is the mother?
Jesus said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
With that seemingly harsh “I-don’t-have-time-for-you” reply Jesus was saying to the woman His mission & ministry was first to God’s people, the Jews, the children of Israel. Secondly, Jesus knew in the eyes of most Jews, Gentiles or non-Jews were considered, unclean, on a par with street dogs, mongrels, scavengers.
You wouldn’t expect it from Jesus, but He said it, “Stand in line, woman, end of the line for you. The children of God get fed first. If there’s any left over, the dogs get it.”
Still, even that seemingly harsh rebuttal didn’t stop this desperate mother. “Of course, Master,” she said, and quickly added “But don’t dogs under the table get scraps dropped by the children?”
One little insight into what’s going on in this text is that in responding to this Gentile woman who was a non-Jew, an outsider – the traditional Jewish word for dog meaning a mongrel, or mutt, or scavenger who lived off people’s garbage does not show up in the Greek text but the word used for dog is a word meaning a house pet or puppy. That may be what this mother picked up on as she continued to beg Jesus to help her - hearing Jesus compare her to a yipping puppy - which was a bit of a plus and not a harsh put-down.
However the woman understood Jesus comment, with her persistence, with her great leap of faith, with her cry of desperation, “Lord, will you please help me!” with all of that Jesus was impressed.
“You’re right woman. You ARE something else. Be up and on your way! Your daughter is no longer possessed & miserable. The demon is gone from her.” (from THE MESSAGE)
What a miracle; what a relief! A humble, desperate, determined, believing woman goes home & finds her daughter well. Prayer answered. Desperation over! Non-Jew, Gentile, outsider, under-the-table-puppy that she was, thru no worthiness or merit on her part, that Syrophoenician woman experienced the Kingdom of God in the presence, in the word and promise, in the person & power of Jesus Christ!
That’s the point of this sometimes hard to understand story! It’s not just another miracle story, or that Jesus is a “panic button” that people can push when nothing else works, but in this story the Kingdom of God truly comes to an outsider. The point of this story is that Jesus attracted both Jews & Gentiles who were at the end of their rope, desperate people needing help, needing compassion in the worst kind of way, and Jesus ended up helping them.
The point of the story is also that nothing has changed. The living Lord Jesus, crucified & risen from the dead, still attracts & reaches out to people who cry our and are hard-pressed, helpless people at the end of their rope.
If we, as one small, tiny part of Christ’s church would be faithful to love God, love others, and follow Jesus, we must take care to be open to those who are in desperate need, whatever their gender, religion, or ethnic origins, whatever their need, whoever they are.
Maybe, because we live such normal, comfortable, fairly well-off lives, it’s hard for us to imagine ourselves ever being desperate.
Then again, maybe some of you have been there. Maybe some of you are there right now. The pain & suffering is getting old. A loved one, a child, a parent, a spouse isn’t getting better. Someone prays, “Lord, God, Jesus, Savior, help me, help us!” And that is a prayer Jesus hears & answers, sooner or later, one way or another.
May we not lose sight of the fact that Jesus finally helped the woman, unclean, unworthy outsider though she was.
Which leads me to say: Imagine the mothers, unwed mothers, first-time mothers, desperate third-world mothers, who give birth to infants & have absolutely nothing for their new born sons or daughters. Whether it’s the mothers fault or not the babies have nothing. “Help me!” That’s the cry, like puppies under a table, mothers pleading not for themselves but for their babies, their children. I going to tell you, the ladies of our LWML would welcome you to come and help them assemble layettes this coming Wednesday night. As you can see in the bulletin announcements for this Sunday, a lot of items needed have been collected or purchased. Can you help? There’s a desperate need.
Second, imagine, with the help of information available through World Vision, little children whose parents are suffering & dying of HIV and AIDS, and the children have no one except their poor grand-parents to turn to for supporting them. Several World Vision children have already been adopted by members in our congregation, one by our Sunday School. 8 more names & profiles of children are on a table waiting out in the narthex. $35 hardly buys a week’s groceries in our country but $35 can provide for a child’s basic needs in a poor country for a month.
I know there’s no end to the desperate needs of helpless children & families that are out there, but that’s not to say we can’t help.
Today’s Gospel suggests that all desperate people inside or out-side the church are people close to the heart of Jesus.
Let today’s story of a desperate, Gentile mother, and the needs of new mothers who have nothing, and stories of little children whose parents are taken by deadly diseases, and boxes & boxes of hand-tied quilts, let this all remind us of the seriousness, the resourceful-ness, the riskiness of loving God, loving others & following Jesus. .
I don’t expect we will ever see a made-for-television comedy drama titled “Desperate farmers” / “Desperate factory workers” / ”Desperate teachers & school administrators”, but life being what it is, sooner or later we too will know moments, times of desperation when it helps to believe & to pray & to remember:
Praise the Lord high above; Praise the Lord high above,
For He stoops down to heal you, Uplift and restore you;
Praise the Lord high above!
Thankful hearts raise to God, Thankful hearts raise to God,
For he stays close beside you, In all things works with you;
Thankful hearts raise to God. (from Lutheran Service Book, “Have No Fear”, no. 735)
