Answered and Unanswered Prayers

For the past year, I have been doing my best to walk between two extremes in regard to answered and unanswered prayer. Shortly after Alyssa's diagnosis last fall, I called an old friend with nothing but questions. Why Alyssa? The Smelley family? The rest of the crew? These are all God-fearing people who faithfully served God day in and day out through good times and bad. I wanted God to heal Alyssa, physically, and not just live in the suffering with her. My friend asked me, "Do you want God to heal everyone?" My answer? "Yes. Yes I do." What I really want is for God to step in and miraculously heal disease and war and faminine, and somehow that answer is exactly right in that it is precisely the desire for God's kingdom to come in its fullness. The Christian faith is not complete without the return of Christ.

Still, we do not yet live in that kingdom. We live on earth, and we are faced with tragedy (Will Wiersma, Wes Nishimura, Nate Fawell), illness (Uncle Don, Wilma Wilson, Leslie-Ann Malan), and death (Alyssa Smelley, Gus Gustavson, Fred Bauersfeld, Larry Holloway). I think that often we are faced with opposing choices. 1) Trust that God has already healed... If you have enough faith... God answers our prayers... or 2) God doesn't care about... God doesn't stop unjust suffering... God is not just. Loss of faith.

I'm not satisfied with either option.

This morning, the two worlds of healing and no healing, answered and unanswered prayer collided. In two weeks I will be preaching my first sermon in five years... on Job. Forty-two agonizing chapters of unjust suffering and brokenness. In chapel this morning, I cried through the entire sermon as Bishop Carder preached on Job 23. The innocent sufferer who cries out to God... A God who didn't prevent the adversary from inflicting the suffering. The world of unanswered prayer. Then I moved into planning my youth group lesson this week. I'm doing a series on the ways God works in the world. The people pray, and the Berlin Wall falls, Apartheid ends, nine miners are rescued alive. The world of answered prayer.

I have always had a problem with people who tell me that God will heal if the person asking has enough faith. It is dangerous. But I wasn't sure why I thought it wasn't true. After all, Jesus has only words of acclamation for the faith of the people who ask for healing. Job provides my answer: It isn't about us; it's about God. If the basis for healing is OUR faith, it isn't God, just as in salvation where if the basis is us, it isn't God. If it is about our faith, then we become magicians who can bring about wonders, and it is no longer the Lord who works the miracles. Besides, what do you do with the faith of hundreds of people who pray for a miracle and do not get it? Last year, I had a friend tell me that they were praying for Alyssa's healing. She has moved towards Pentecostalism and belief in miraculous works, which certainly do happen. Do not misunderstand me. God does heal. God does tear down dividing walls and break cycles of injustice. My problem was not that God is performing miracles in California, Washington, and the rest of the world. My problem was that she told me that we have to thank God for already doing the healing, and he will. That still makes us the ones who control the healing, but it also leaves us with a bigger problem. What do we do when the healing doesn't happen?

Jesus told us that we can move mountains with a mustard seed of faith. This is not a trick or a slight of hand where a small seed represents a huge amount of faith. The mustard seed is small, like the tip of a pen or a watchscrew. Jesus is not saying that we have to conjure up faith to ask for GOD to do big things because it is up to GOD. He has that power, but he still sometimes chooses not to heal. Not to do big things.

The common answer is that God knows better for us when he chooses not to answer our prayers. That he has a better plan or a more wonderful solution. We have problems here too. Is it better that a college student feels so lost and hopeless that he commits suicide? Better that a 23-year-old is killed in a car accident? Better that a 15-year-old dies of cancer? Better that family members suffer and grieve? Dr. Geoffrey Wainwright told us, "We cannot believe that God gives illness." It is not a better solution. It is a product of our fallen condition and our fallen world. When the kingdom comes, these things will pass away. "And I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with humans, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

I don't know that I have a way out of this maze yet, although I think that Job may actually provide our solution. Dr. Ellen Davis taught us that Job is one of only two men in the Old Testament who are said to be "possessing of integrity." Even Job's wife tells him to let go of his integrity and curse God and die. Instead, Job holds on to his integrity by holding on to God and asking him questions and talking to him. To let go of his integrity would have been to let go of his faith. Job teaches us that it takes great faith to cling to God when the miracles do not come. He is the only one in the book to do so. Job also teaches us that the dangerous things which God has created are beautiful because they are created. The death and destruction they cause are not beautiful, but the rain, the hail, the lightning, the lion are all good because God has created them that way. There is a beauty in the unpredictability of God's creation because there is also an unpredictability in God, and it is beautiful in God as well. It includes his mercy in choosing Israel as his people to spread his light to the nations. It includes his decision to humble himself to become incarnate in the form of a baby. Finally, it includes the suffering of God on the cross, where he joined us as an innocent suffering, and who, like Job, was redeemed out of that suffering through the resurrection. It is precisely this dangerous unpredictability which provides the grace which covers all of our sins with the blood of Christ and reconciles our relationship with the one who created us.

It takes great trust to cling to a God who is unpredictable in a world that is fallen and broken when suffering strikes and the miracles do not come. Lord, I trust! Help my lack of trust!