The cardboard sign read, “Laid Off.”  The man holding the sign looked to be in his forties though I suspect he was younger. He was at the Malbis Exit on I-10.  I was fifth in a line of cars waiting to turn north onto Hwy #181.  The light was red and it seemed to stay red for an awfully long time.  I thought it would never turn. 

Though weather beaten, the man appeared healthy enough.  His clothes were old and dirty.  For the longest time, he stood three car lengths in front of me.  He didn’t make eye contact though I had the distinct feeling that any movement on my part would bring him in my direction—so I stared straight ahead. 

He walked a car length toward me, stopped, and accepted a banana from a guy in a pickup truck. A slight smile crossed his face.  I eyed the traffic signal and pressed my door lock.  He started walking toward me again, still smiling—maybe it was the banana or the thought of it. 

“Laid Off,” his sign read. It wasn’t a very big sign. In fact, I had to wait until he was close enough to read it. Sometimes signs like that read, “Will work for food.” Or they identify a destination: “Pensacola, Tampa, New Orleans.”  His sign read simply, “Laid Off.”  He could have been a plumber, a carpenter, a welder.

The light changed, the line lurched forward, and our momentary communion ended.  

The spry lady standing at my front door wanted to know if I would give money for her nephew.  She showed me a school picture of a boy 6 or 7 years old. She explained that he had died from a lung disease.  In her right hand, she clutched a worn spiral notebook.  “Here,” she said turning the page.  “These are the names of everyone who has given. Some of them are your neighbors.  When I get enough money I am going to bury my nephew and the newspaper’s going to publish the list.” 

I asked how much she needed. “Three-hundred more and I’ll have enough.”  I gave her a twenty. “Have a Blessed Day,” she said. And off she went.

Two weeks ago I was coming down Springhill and stopped at Catherine. It was mid-afternoon. Walking between the waiting traffic was a little old lady in a faded dressed draped over skin and bones.  She had her hand out.  She carried the weight of the world.  Her hand was out. 

 

“A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about [Jesus], and she came and bowed down at his feet. The woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged [Jesus] to cast the demon out of her daughter.”

“…in the region of the Decapolis.  They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged [Jesus] to lay his hand on him.”

The words translating beg in these stories may also be translated as beseech, inquire, request, call, or more simply, ask.  As with most translations, context influences word choice.  In chapter seven of Mark, the first context suggests urgency—a mother with a sick child. The second suggests a persistent, protracted, life-long problem. Both stories depict desperation. The word, beg, is well chosen.

In the first story, a woman hears about Jesus, who did not want to be heard about, and goes to him for help. Mark says Jesus was in the region of Tyre, west of Galilee.  While in Tyre Jesus “entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.”  Mark does not explain why Jesus sought anonymity. Maybe he was tired and needed rest.  Maybe he needed to “lay low.”  Authorities from Jerusalem had only recently been to Galilee so perhaps Jesus slipped out of town because the heat was on.  Or maybe his clandestine venture into the land of the Greeks was Mark’s way of saying, “Jesus really did have a mission to the Gentiles and you just haven’t heard about it because he didn’t go public. But he actually went to Tyre and Sidon and then the Decapolis.”

Whatever Mark’s reasons, Jesus does not “escape notice.” A Syrophoenician woman “immediately heard” about him and sought his help. 

A mother with a sick child keeps her ear to the ground.  If your child is sick, you’ll do  anything. What wouldn’t a parent do? You exhaust all resources—that’s what you do. 

Calvin observes that the woman exhibited “a certain implicit faith” even though she “had not received direct teaching from any master” nor was she informed by a “distinct knowledge of sound doctrine.”  What does the woman know of Jesus? She’s not “churched.” At this point, there is no church, no formal teaching, which is Calvin’s point.  People can have an “implicit faith” without church. A mother who takes her child from clinic to clinic and doctor to doctor has “a certain implicit faith.” A parent with a sick child keeps hoping, searching, seeking.  “Maybe this will be the cure.” Parents do that. They don’t give up. They don’t stop trying.  They have faith.

When Jesus entered Tyre, the Syrophoenician woman “immediately hears” about him. She doesn’t waste any time.  Even though Jesus doesn’t want to be heard about, she finds him, goes to him, kneels at his feet, and “begs” him: “Free my daughter.” 

The woman is desperate. She begs.

 

The second story is only slightly different. Again, Jesus is in the land of the Gentiles, the Decapolis, the “ten cities” on the eastern shore of Lake Galilee. Some people from that region bring a deaf man with a speech impediment to Jesus. They beg Jesus to lay his hands on him.  The friends are desperate. They’ll do whatever it takes to help their friend. So they beg. Jesus took the man aside, “away from the crowd.”  He looks up to heaven, sighs, and says to the man, “Be Opened.” And immediately the man is healed.

 

Begging seems so beneath human dignity: “Too proud to beg,” we say, “too humble to crawl.”  Begging not only seems beneath human dignity, but counter to God’s mercy.  It seems beneath the character of God to imply that God will be merciful only when we beg. Likewise, that we must we reach a point of desperation before God will act.  What Jesus says elsewhere about prayer supports both objections.  “When you’re praying,” Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “don’t heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask.”  Likewise in the same sermon, Jesus offers, “Ask, and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you.”

Prayer doesn’t require a lot of fancy words. It doesn’t require a particular posture, attitude, or mindset.   God is not moved by the intensity of our entreaties. Here’s how Jesus put it, “Is there any one among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake?  If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” 

According to Jesus, prayer is not predicated upon the one who prays but upon the One who answers, the One who listens, the One who gives. Does that mean God answers all prayers and that we always get what we ask for or what we pray for others?  The short answer is No. 

I’ve got a bad back.  I pray regularly for God to make my back better.  Some days it’s better than others. And maybe one day is will be perfectly normal, but mostly I think my back will be my back.  I realize there are some things I can do to make it better, like watching my posture and exercise. Some things I do, like lifting the lawnmower out of my pickup, make it worse. Who knows, some day I may even have to have surgery; meanwhile, I pray and I try to take care of my back.  Maybe, that’s too modest. Maybe, I’m not asking for enough. Maybe, I haven’t reached the point of desperation.  Maybe, if my faith were greater, maybe, if I’d beg, I’d get a different answer. I don’t know.

Like you, I’ve heard the clichés: “When God closes a window, he opens a door.  God never puts on us more than we can carry.  God doesn’t give us what we ask for but what we need.”   I hear these explanations but still wonder why God wouldn’t want my back to be better. I wonder why God wouldn’t want that laid off worker to have a job.  I wonder why God wouldn’t want that child to have a proper burial and why he died in the first place. I wonder why God wouldn’t help that old woman standing in the street and why she ended up there in the first place.  

Such wonders make me believe there is such a thing as the “silence of heaven.”  The Psalms surely express it. Consider Psalm 6: “Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing; O LORD heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror. My soul is also struck with terror, while you, O LORD—how long?”

Or consider Psalm 13: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?”

Those psalms are prayers.  And they ring true don’t they?  I mean, haven’t you prayed and prayed, haven’t you begged and nothing happens, nothing changes?  

Jesus was a praying man. When he prayed for the deaf man, he looked up to heaven and sighed.  Was Jesus begging then? Was he desperate?  “Heal this man!”  

If not then, then what about on the cross when he cried out:  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  That sounds like desperation.  It sounds like begging. It sounds like Jesus knew the silence of heaven, but he kept on asking, he kept on praying, he kept on trusting. 

Prayer can’t be tied up in a neat ribbon.  “Pray this way. Use these words. Get your heart right—sit, stand, fold your hands. And you get results.”  Prayer is not magic and God is not a magician. God is our heavenly Father who knows our need before we ask and our need in asking. So, we pray and keep on praying at all times and for everything. We ask.  We sigh. We beg. We look up. We bow down.  We pray. And we keep on praying.  Amen.