Prayers from the Congregation are Now Welcome
I may not be the greatest of pastors, but one thing I so in ministry that is a great and good thing: I invite the congregation to pray out loud as part of our weekly prayers of intercession.
Lots of pastors are afraid to make such an open invitation. Some folk drone on and on in their prayers. Some mumble. There is always a chance of prayers that defy doctrine.
I myself, in my private times, pray for parents or loved ones who are dead. I pray for eternal salvation for those who have not accepted Jesus as their personal savior. How heretical are these things?
And I am fully aware that most of the time most of the people in the pews feel awkward about being asked to pray out loud. One gentleman recently told me he feels he does not have it in him to open his mouth for others in church since his faith is so weak.
But I believe the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:21-28 is a powerful affirmation of the intercession from unqualified people, no matter how ill-formed or heretical. After we are told that Jesus and his disciples are Jews traveling in the gentile territory of Tyre and Sidon we are introduced, in one half of a sentence to the most un-credentialed person offering up a most inappropriate prayer: “…a Canaanite woman…shouting…”
She surely must have known she didn’t have it in herself to pray. She had at least three disqualifying strikes against her. First, Matthew calls her a Canaanite when no one was called a Canaanite in those days. Canaanites were characters in the foundation story of Israel, set a millennium before Christ. Canaanites lived on only in Jewish tradition as the proto-type of dangerous and hated enemies.
Secondly, she was a woman--a woman in a man’s world who should know her place, and definitely not be accosting a man like Jesus.
And finally, she was shouting. Pestering, not taking “no” for an answer. Her daughter is tormented by a demon, and action is needed, urgently.
Now the idea that this woman’s daughter is tormented by a demon begs for us to stop and give a thought to what is going on. How does a demon torment?
All we have to do is take a couple steps back to look at the entire gospel tradition of stories about Jesus to understand. Demons torment through the weapon of shame. This is the voice of the devil that is whispers through the voices in our guilty consciences, amplified by the voices whispered by all those who don’t understand us, but who nonetheless expose our every fault.
Demonic torment is the shame that says, “What makes you think you can pray for others? And, if you fancy yourself religious, what makes you think God can love you?”
My gentleman of a couple weeks ago thought he didn’t have it in him to offer an out-loud prayer in worship. The Canaanite woman had her three strikes against her. Her daughter may have had even more reason for shame. The demonic torment is great at tearing us down because of what we have done wrong, and even more so simply because of who we are.
It is a little troubling to read about what the disciples do. Matthew tells us they just want Jesus to brush the woman off, much like they wanted him to send his hungry 5,000 + audience away in the previous chapter.
But in this story Jesus seems even more harsh. At first he just refuses to answer the Canaanite woman’s prayer. Then he insults her.
It’s true, Jesus is simply stating the obvious: that his mission is to reawaken Israel to faith in a merciful God. After his resurrection he will signal to mission to the gentile world.
And it’s true that the Greek word for “dogs” is really the word for pet puppies that hang around the table, hungry for scraps.
But anyway you look at it, when Jesus says helping the woman’s daughter would be like taking food meant for children and throwing it to the family pets, it has got to sting.
Here is where the theology of Martin Luther can give us holy insight. Luther often felt that sting. He often felt tormented by demons who accused and said, “Who do you think you are, teaching, correcting the Pope, and leading people in worship and praying for them? Why should God love you and answer your prayers.” First feeling this sting Luther would defend his worthiness by saying his faith was strong, and he worked hard at being a good teacher and priest. But he soon realized these qualities were not worth much.
But God could turn things around. God could use the sting of feelings of unworthiness, and even the sting of the silence of God, to drive Luther deeper in his faith that all things depend on God’s grace.
So the Canaanite woman absorbs the sting of Jesus’ insult and comes back, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
The sting of Jesus’ silence and insult drives out shame and leads the woman to great humility. This kind of humility is not weakness or acceptance of sexism or bigotry. It is confident, trusting humility. Jesus has driven her deeper by his silence and his insult, to a trusting humility called faith.
“Woman, great is your faith!”
Six times in this Gospel Matthew will have Jesus telling disciples that they have “little faith.” This shouting Canaanite woman is the only character in Matthew’s Gospel that has great faith. The disciples will get eventually there only because of God’s silence and the sting of the cross. Even then some of the disciples will doubt, or “wobble (cf Matthew 28:17), but even great faith wobbles .”
In the end, one thing is certain: We may have our wobbling faith and not want to open prayer time in church to people who don’t have the polish, don’t have the good doctrine, don’t have the credentials to pray out loud for others. But God has no such hesitation. God accepts prayers by people of little faith, by people who stutter, by people who drone on and on. And when we pray for crumbs--when we pray for others in holy humility--God answers, and faith grows.
And, as I often say about these shared prayers, and about the impromptu remarks of people in the pews that I love to invite during funerals, it may seem scary at times, but this is where we find the fingerprints of God in our world.