Jesus,
help us. Show us how you are offering to help us through your living Word today…in The Name of The Father and The Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
A Canaanite woman, a non-Jewish woman who had no business even approaching any Jewish man let alone Jesus—the disciples even tried to get him to send her away—came and knelt before Jesus, saying, “Lord,help me” (Mt15.25).
The Second Best Prayer in all the gospels says my friend the Mad Padre (alias The Rev Dr Michael Peterson—hirsute, bow-tie wearing, model airplane making, war-gaming, erstwhile Padre in Her Majesty’s Royal Canadian Armed Forces)—actually he was talking about the version of that prayer in Matthew 8.5 when the disciples had to wake Jesus to calm a storm through which he had been sleeping. “Save us, Lord,” they said which, after all, is all that we ever really need whatever else we might be asking for. Her wording was a little different but her meaning and her need was the same—demons had stirred up such a storm in her daughter’s head so that she was in real danger of being swamped and sinking into deep demonic oppression. Maybe she’d heard Jesus was good with storms. “Lord, help me,” she prayed.
The Best Prayer, of course, says the Mad Padre, is The Lord’s Prayer—the one Jesus gave us when the disciples asked him how to pray—but that’s for another Sunday. It’s also a bit long for when things are urgent and the demons are in your face. The Canaanite woman was afraid that the storm in her daughter’s soul was going to destroy her so she expressed herself accordingly with just three words. Lord, help me!
So, today let’s see what today’s readings can teach us about how to most effectively wield the second best one!
I wonder how often Joseph prayed something like it in the long years of separation from his family and until he realized, as we just heard, that God, in his wisdom and mercy, had sent him on before his brothers through all his trials and adventures to preserve life and be a blessing (Gen45.7)? And Paul must have prayed it frequently not only because his anxiety over his Jewish sisters and brothers in today’s Romans reading but also through all the imprisonments, beatings, lashings, stonings, shipwrecks, danger, sleeplessness, hunger, thirst and pressure (2Cor11.23-28) he had to endure.
When the Canaanite woman and the disciples in the boat prayed the Second Best Prayer they received help and were delivered immediately. Joseph and Paul must have been helped in their moments of storm, too, but there was a lot they still had to go through. I’m reminded of that verse about Jesus praying for help in Hebrews:
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. 8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. (Hebrews 5:7–8 (ESV)
…loud cries and tears, but Jesus didn’t get what he wanted. Yet it says he was heard.
If that can happen to Jesus and Paul when they prayed The Second Best Prayer—where they weren’t helped in the way they wanted—what can we ordinary folk do when we pray The Second Best Prayer and nothing seems to happen.
That must be when faith in The Best Prayer—The Lord’s Prayer—has to kick in with how it expresses all the wisdom and purposes of God the Father.
But in the meantime it can’t hurt to be like the Canaanite woman who wouldn’t give up—to kneel before Jesus in submission and in our need, just as she did, and to use her words—over and over again if necessary—Lord, help me!
Help me to trust in your steadfast love, goodness and mercy even when you are silent, it feels like you’ve been sent to someone else and there are not even any crumbs that I can see under your table (Mt15.23-27).
Lord help US! Help us to follow the faith-filled example of that determined Canaanite woman who knew that the help she needed could only be found in our Lord and Saviour,
Jesus.
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