Have you ever had a prayer answered?
Have you ever cried out for mercy? For help? And received it?
It can be a humbling and overwhelming experience.
Have you ever had a prayer go unanswered?
Have you ever cried out for mercy? For Help? Only to receive silence and darkness? Or to outright be told, “No.”?
It can be a humbling and overwhelming experience.
Answered prayer and unanswered prayer are both part of the life of faith, of the ongoing relationship with our Lord, a relationship that always grows deeper and deeper, more and more challenging, more and more comforting while at the same time more and more unsettling.
I know a man who was not a person of prayer or any regular faith practice.
Just sort of the average American consumer who worked and purchased those things he was expected to purchase, year after year.
He grew very ill, until he almost died, and for the first time he asked God for something, the first time ever, and the next day he was given the gift of life, the phone call, an organ donor that matched his blood type.
He was devastated, suddenly he saw that most of his life he had been coasting on the surface, missing the tremendous depths that uphold all creation.
He cried in grief, in shame, in joy and thanksgiving.
Answered prayer can be a humbling and overwhelming experience.
I once knew a man, who was a person of tremendous depth, prayer, joy, a committed servant, not just another American consumer of the latest catalogue, but a person who lived life as a gift, who shared that gift, who made a difference to the world.
He grew very ill. Everyone prayed for healing. The phone call never came, an organ donor was never found. He died holding on to his prayer book.
He died years ago. There is still a tremendous emptiness where he used to be.
Needless to say God didn’t get much fan mail this time.
Unanswered prayer can be a humbling and overwhelming experience.
Miracle stories.
They always leave me with unanswered questions.
Why were these healed and why not those? That kind of thing.
I suppose miracle stories are intended to unsettle us in that way.
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
There were ten people standing politely and legally at a distance.
People with leprosy were required to stand at a distance and warn others who they were. They were truly outcast from society, from culture, from family, from the believing community, from the economy. They got by on scraps tossed out from a distance.
Jesus heard their prayer, their cry for help, and they were healed.
They had to be certified by a priest that they were now healed.
But one came back, praised God, lay at Jesus feet, and said thank-you.
And here is the kicker, he was a Samaritan, not even really Jewish, an outcast despised people.
The only one who came back was one of those no good Samaritans.
It’s a shocker, kind of like if we said only a member of the Taliban or Al Queda came back. It is meant to stir up our guts and our bile.
Where did the nine go? We are left wondering.
Why did the truly nasty one come back and give prays and thanksgiving? We are left wondering.
Then we are left wondering which one would we be, one of the nine? Or the nasty one who came back?
Miracle stories unsettle us. They are meant to. God is up to something.
The faith that saves.
Jesus says that the faith of the one leper has saved him.
As opposed to the faith of the other nine who were healed, who did what Jesus said, to go see the priest and be certified as cured.
The one who disobeyed Jesus and fell in worship and thankfulness before him has the faith that saves.
The nasty Samaritan who can’t even do what he’s told, with out groveling in thanksgiving, overwhelmed in devotion and love to Jesus, is the one that shows us saving faith.
That nasty Samaritan is held up as the example of faith, of true discipleship, not the Pharisees, not the Apostles, but the outsider, the outcast, the nasty one is the only one who lives a life of thanksgiving, a life of saving faith. Faith is all about being thankful, and only this one has it.
Do we have that faith that saves?
Do we have that thankful worshipful heart, adoring Jesus for setting us free?
Do we realize that we are the nasty outcast who has suddenly been handed the gift of life?
Does it take a miracle to live in thanks?
Or does it simply take a first step, and then another?
Miracle stories.
Answered prayers.
Unanswered prayers.
They comfort us, they disturb us.
They make us ask hard questions that can’t really be answered.
They draw us deeper and deeper into faith until we simply fall over in praise, and our lives become an offering up of thanksgiving to the Lord who sets us free.
Even at the grave we make our song.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Thanks be to God!