Faith and Perseverance—the Two Sides of Effective Prayer
A sermon based on Mark 5:21-43
by Rev. Frank Schaefer

I recently asked the kids during our Time with the Young church whether they believe that God can do miracles today and I just loved the answer Kyle had. He said: “God can do anything he wants to do.”   Out of the mouths of babes comes the pristine truth of faith.  It’s so simple and yet, so true: “God can do anything he wants to.”

We adults have a tendency to make things more complex, don’t we? On the one hand we do believe that God can do anything, even raise the dead.  But on the other hand, neither of us probably ever witnessed a supernatural healing.  Still, we pray almost every Sunday for the healing of our folks who are ill and sick; we even pray for the healing of the ones that have cancer. 

What makes praying in faith so difficult is that sometimes God heals, sometimes God allows people to die, sometimes, it seems to us, God doesn’t do anything about a situation of suffering—it may continue for a long and difficult time.

But we do believe that when God really wants to, he can do anything, in the words of little Kyle.  That’s why we believe in prayer for healing—even though we may know and accept that God does not always heal—at least not in the way we want God to heal.  However, we do believe that somehow our prayers make a difference—at least sometimes, or even most of the time. And sometimes we rethink healing and take a different perspective on it.  I’ll never forget what a dear brother once shared in a testimony in Sunday school.  He said: “we prayed to God to give mom perfect health, and He did.”  Everybody in our group knew that he was talking about his cancer-ridden mother who had died less than a half year prior to his sharing.  That’s certainly a Godly perspective to take on healing.

This morning, we have two examples of Jesus’ healing ministry. They are both unusual.  One is a healing that happened that took place without Jesus’ initiative. In a sense, it was a pre-emptive healing. The other one, was a healing that came so late that it was more of a resurrection from the dead.  Both instances have to do with timing: one was early the other one came late.

The first healing takes place in a woman that never even stops Jesus or requests a healing of him.  Somehow she has a strong belief that if she could only touch the hem of his garment, God would heal her.  Perhaps we can understand her faith a little better if we put it in the right cultural context.

            The hemorrhaging woman would have been considered ceremonially unclean in first century Judea.  So, according to the law of Moses, she was not allowed to touch anyone and was probably not even to come near a rabbi or priest.  And she knew that the reverse was true also: Jesus, being a rabbi, could not touch her.  So she had to come up with a way to secure a healing secretly--out of the eye of the public. By touching the hem of Jesus’ coat, she probably figured she got around all the religious laws and the social taboos.  If you think about it: it was rather ingenious.  She did all in her power without overstepping the boundaries in her way and she believed that that action was going to be enough to heal her.  Perhaps she thought that God would honor her efforts and take it as a symbolic action of her faith.

No wonder Jesus was so impressed by this woman’s faith—and may I add: cleverness. Jesus tells her: "your faith has healed you.”  So, while little Kyle’s theology is true,--i.e. that “God can do anything he wants to do”—it is also true that there is something we can do.  According to Jesus God seems to want to see a show of faith.  Sometimes it might be a symbolic action like the one by the hemorrhaging woman, at other times it might be a simple prayer of faith.

            The healing of Jairus’ daughter teaches us something else about faith in God’s healing.  Jesus says to the leader of the synagogue, Jairus: “Do not fear, only believe.” Remember that these words were spoken after Jairus received the message of his daughter’s death.  God expects us to keep our faith—even when things look dismal, even when the cause looks lost.  According to Jesus we need not only present our prayers of  faith, before God, but we must also persevere. 

If you want to take a lesson in perseverance, you should hear the testimony of one of my best friend’s mother.  There was a time when she prayed herself to sleep many nights, worrying about her son (my friend) who for most of his young adult years got into a very troubled lifestyle.  He came home at all ungodly times of night; he got into drugs and whatever else comes with this type of life.

She couldn’t talk sense into him and he did not want to have anything to do with the church or with God any longer during these troubled years.  Today, he occasionally shares how during this time in his life he would come home in the early morning hours and as he passed mom’s bedroom door to get to his room, he would often hear her pray and weep.  He knew she was praying on his account and this made a deep impression on him—even if it was subconsciously.  Years later he cleaned up his life and eventually he followed God’s call and became a pastor.  An example of the perseverance of a praying mother—the most powerful testimony of persevering prayer I know.

The good news this morning is that even if God does not always restore us or our loved ones in ways that we anticipate, we may rest assured that God nevertheless does hear our prayers. And in his way and in his time God will answer the prayers as they are prayed in faith and with perseverance.  Amen