THE MYSTERY OF (UN)ANSWERED PRAYER—Mark 7:24-37
Many people have had the experience of praying—passionately, even desperately—and not receiving the answer they were seeking. That can be confusing, even troubling, and we naturally ask, “Why?” Was God not listening? Is he not able to do what we ask? Does he not care? Do we not have enough faith? Were we asking for something that was not good for us or others?
Unanswered prayer is a mystery—a mystery beyond our limited comprehension as humans. Yet there is a deeper mystery—a hidden mystery of prayer. The mystery is ANSWERED PRAYER.
Why is that a mystery? Think about it: Every request we make is a request for God to change the course of history. For us, it seems simple: We pray to win the game, beat the cancer, and make our world better—but all of those prayers would change the course of history. The answer to those prayers seems simple to us, but sometimes we don’t know all that we are asking God to do.
The mystery of answered prayer is that God cares enough to fit our requests into his perfect plan for the universe and beyond.
That seems abstract, and two stories from Mark 7 bring it down to earth.
READ Mark 7:24-27.
This is a story of prayer—a passionate plea for Jesus to use his divine power to cast out an impure spirit, a demon. The woman is desperate, and every parent understands her desperation: This is her daughter, and her daughter is deeply troubled, possessed by evil.
Jesus is able to do what she asks; he often cast out impure spirits. He doesn’t lack power and authority over evil, and he doesn’t lack motivation; he hates evil and loves releasing people from its power.
So for the people in the room, Jesus has no reason not to immediately do what she asks. We identify with them; for we have sometimes felt the same way; we think we know exactly what God should do.
Yet the people in the room do not know the bigger picture. They don’t know how disruptive the woman’s request is.
(project a map of the area) Jesus had left Galilee to go to the vicinity of Tyre, in modern-day Lebanon. Why there?
Early in his ministry, Jesus healed many people, and crowds followed him wherever he went. This caused problems. The crowds in Galilee were attracting the attention of the religious authorities in Jerusalem, putting Jesus’ life in danger. Jesus would eventually be killed, of course, but before he died, he needed time to train his 12 disciples. The apostles, who would lead a church of thousands, were not yet ready; their minds were dense and their faith was weak. Jesus needed to spend quality time alone with them.
In almost every chapter, Mark’s gospel mentions the crowds that gathered around Jesus. Mark 6 tells us that Jesus took his disciples by boat to a solitary place, only to be thronged by such a large crowd that he fed 5000 hungry people. In Mark 8, Jesus again has to deal with a crowd in the wilderness—this time feeding 4000 people.
Chapter 7 comes between the crowds of chapters 6 and 8. Jesus leads his disciples out of Galilee into a gentile area, away from the messianic fever of the Jewish crowds. There, “He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it.” His plan was to spend some quality time with the twelve disciples.
The woman is oblivious to all of that, just as we might be unaware of how our prayers affect other people and God’s eternal plan.
***Suppose I pray for rain for my garden, and God sends rain. The raindrops that fall originated hours and days ago, and answering my prayer might involve redirecting the jet stream and weather fronts. The consequences of those changes are way beyond my pay grade: If God sends rain to sustain my garden, the same rain might also spoil an outdoor worship service where someone would accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior.**
Jesus has a good reason not to give this woman what she asks for. Still, his words seem harsh: “First let the children eat all they want, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
Why does he say that? The people in the room think they know. Jesus is a Jewish rabbi, and this gentile woman is breaking protocol by coming to Jesus to ask for help. Jews sometimes referred to gentiles as “dogs,” and for most of them, Jesus was just saying what they were thinking.
Maybe Jesus was just saying the quiet part out loud, but I think it was something else. I think Jesus was telling a parable—a parable about the plan of God to save the world.
In the Old Testament, God’s plan of salvation was focused on his chosen people, the descendants of Abraham. God said to Abraham in Genesis 12:2-3, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Although the ultimate goal was to bless all people, God’s covenant promises were initially focused on the Israelites.
The plan all along was to save people from every tribe and nation. In Isaiah 49:6, God said to “the servant,” the representative of Israel, “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
Yet that promise had not yet been fulfilled, and Jesus’ ministry was primarily focused on Jews. In Matthew’s account of this event, Jesus says to the woman, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” (Matthew 15:24) God’s plan was that salvation would come first to Jews, and then, after Pentecost, gentiles would be enfolded into the church, and salvation would reach to the ends of the earth.
In the mystery of God’s plan, Jesus needed to focus his ministry on the lost sheep of Israel, so that people like this woman could be saved eternally. It was a glorious plan, but it was a mystery to the woman pleading for Jesus to help her. She could not see the whole picture, and she could not even imagine the deeper mystery of the plan that would even send Jesus to the cross to overcome evil.
We know some of God’s plan, but the specifics of his plans are a mystery to us as well. Why does God not always give us what we ask for? Quite simply, the things we ask for don’t always fit into his plan! Sometimes the timing is not right, or our prayers conflict with the needs of others, or denying our request will help us grow. Sometimes, honestly, we just don’t know.
But what about prayers that seem so obviously good—prayers to defeat evil and make things right?
These unanswered prayers are hidden in the mysteries of God’s will for us. For example, if all our prayers were answered, so that we never felt the power of evil, we would not see evil as being so bad! As it is, we don’t see the depth of evil until we face cancer, betrayal, unfairness, addictions, human trafficking, or wars. Evil is real, painful, and wrong, and unacceptable for eternity, and when we experience it, we know that we need redemption! Maybe that is one reason our prayers are unanswered. It was one of the reasons a prayer of Jesus was unanswered, as he prayed in the garden, “Father, if you are willing, let this cup pass from me.”
Unanswered prayer is a mystery, but there is a greater mystery: ANSWERED PRAYER.
READ Mark 7:26-30.
Why did Jesus do what she asked? Was it because her answer was so clever, or she was so desperate?
Maybe part of it was what she did not do. She did not get angry or pout. She did not make demands. She did not say, “It is not fair to show favoritism to certain people.” She did not line up a bunch of people to vouch for her as a worthy person. She did not try to go viral on Facebook to force God to defend his honor by answering her prayer.
She asked God for the crumbs. Clever, but I think it was more than that. I think she recognized Jesus’ harsh answer as a parable of God’s plan of salvation. Most people did not understand Jesus’ parables, but the woman understood that even though gentiles like her were not yet blessed in the same way as the Jews, God still loved them. She trusted in God’s mercy and grace.
Maybe she also knew a story from the Old Testament, for Mark says she was born in SYRIAN Phoenicia, and in Kings 5, the prophet Elisha healed a Syrian man, Naaman, of leprosy. Naaman did not deserve to be healed, for the Syrians were sworn enemies of Israel. Yet God mercifully healed even that man. If God could heal that Syrian, couldn’t he also help a Syrian like her?
When the woman asked for the crumbs of Jesus’ mission to Jews, she was anticipating all who would later join the feast of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus promised in John 6:37, saying, “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”
Whatever the reason, Jesus answered her prayer, and her child was released from the grip of evil. Then, Jesus had to deal with the consequences of casting out the demon. He had gone to Lebanon to spend time alone with his disciples, and we can imagine the crowds gathering around him again. His plan to spend time teaching his disciples was disrupted by answering the woman’s prayer request.
Answered prayer is not always as easy for God as we imagine. In this case, the answer to the woman’s prayer disrupted God’s plan of the ages, which he adapted to grant the prayer request of this woman—one of those whom some Jews called “gentile dogs.” Amazing!
The real mystery is not unanswered prayer, but answered prayer. God adapts his eternal plan to the requests of ordinary people like us!
Yet God still had a plan, and Jesus knew the Father’s plan was for him to spend quality time alone with his disciples.
READ Mark 7:31-37.
(show map again) Jesus is again trying to get away. He leads his disciples into a mostly gentile area, which was less pious and less possessed by messianic fever.
The deaf man is an interruption, which does not seem to fit into God’s plan for Jesus. We could certainly understand if Jesus found some way to say, “Sorry, not today. I’m not feeling it.”
Yet Jesus finds a way to fit the man’s needs into his plans. He takes him inside, where we see the compassion and sensitivity of Jesus. He communicates to the deaf man without words, putting his fingers into his ears, and then touching his tongue. He looks to heaven as he sighs with compassion for the man, and he commands restoration.
Then, trying to control the disruption, Jesus commands the man and his friends not to tell anyone. They do, of course, and the crowds gather again.
Why did Jesus do it? It wasn’t the deaf man’s faith; he didn’t even ask Jesus for anything—only his friends did. It wasn’t that he was clever or articulate; he couldn’t even speak.
Why did Jesus heal the man? Compassion, mercy, grace—yet it disrupted the eternal plan of God. Or did it? We don’t know all of the mysteries of the eternal plan of God, or the mysteries of why God answers prayer as he does.
There might be a clue, however, in Isaiah 35. In a wonderful prophecy of the redemption of all things, Isaiah 35:5-6 says, “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.” The Greek translation of this passage used a word for “mute” that was rarely used, and Mark used the same word to describe the deaf man standing before Jesus.
The healing of the man, who was deaf and mute, was a sign that God’s future kingdom was breaking into the present, in the person of Jesus. Verse 37 says, “People were overwhelmed with amazement. ‘He has done everything well,’ they said. ‘He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.’” God fit this answer to prayer into his glorious plan!
We too ought to be overwhelmed with amazement when God answers our prayers. His answers to our humble prayers are enfolded into his grand plan of salvation—a plan far beyond our pay grade, deeper than we can comprehend.
If God grants what we ask for—healing for cancer, a good grade on the test, the strength to love our family, a promotion at work, or even world peace—the mystery is that God has moved heaven and earth to fit our prayers into his glorious, eternal plan. He cares enough about us to do that!
So pray. Pray boldly, humbly, confident that God does answer prayer, in ways beyond our understanding.
Hallelujah and amen!
