Desperate People

Scripture: Matthew 9.9-13, 18-26


The woman was desperate. She was sick. And she had been sick for a long time, twelve years and counting. Her illness is not exactly the kind you want to put on a prayer list. It’s a private problem. And there are all these people around. She has to fight to even get to see Him. And really, she has no guarantees that the man will even do anything for her. But she’s desperate. She says to herself, “If only I can reach out and touch him. . .maybe something of his power or I don’t know, his goodness. . .something of him will rub off on me.

This woman’s faith is so simple, so raw; and some would say, so naïve. If this woman actually came to church with her prayer request, she would be met with awkward silence. And she knows it. Churches sometimes don’t do too well with desperate people. We don’t really want people to show up in all the ragged and neon reality of their problems. Secretly, we would prefer it if people kind of cleaned up their acts on their own before they came to church, then, of course, they are welcome. We know people have drinking problems, but don’t bring it here. We know addictions abound, we don’t wanna hear about ‘em. We know relationships go on the rocks, but it’s better if we pretend all is well.

Mike Yaconelli writes about desperate people in his book, Messy Spirituality. Yaconelli writes about the “myth of fixing ourselves”:

For a period of time we were lucky enough to have a housekeeper. She would
Come in once a week to dust, vacuum, and clean every little out-of-the-way
Corner of our house. I dreaded the day she came, because my wife and I would
Spend all morning cleaning the house for the housekeeper! We didn’t want
The house to be dirty; or what would the housekeeper think?!

For some strange reason, we have been communicating this fix-it-yourself mentality
To desperate people of all stripe, including ourselves. The irony is that everyone, you and me and them, we are all desperate people, or have been at one time or another. We have all been sick, worried, low on cash, low on self-esteem, full of shame, full of doubt, full of depression. You’ve heard of “desperate housewives.” Well, how about desperate salesmen, desperate dental hygenists, desperate plumbers, desperate preachers. They may not all make for good television, but I guarantee you, they would make for reality shows that were actually real.


If our spirituality is really of the messed up variety, are we in fact, all lost causes, sinners who play at being church and being good? No. Our sin is in the hiding, just like when Adam and Eve first hid.
It’s only when we pretend that we don’t know what real problems are that we fall into phoniness and self-righteousness, like modern day Pharisees. Or like Mark Twain once described some people, “They were good in the worst sense of the word.”

If phoniness, awkwardness, and pretension are what desperate people have often received from the church, why do they keep coming back with any hope that help can be found there? Well, it’s Jesus. He seems to like desperate people. And they like him.

Take Matthew the tax collector. Jesus brings this surprising word to the tax office. Your days of trying to find meaning in money and cheating to get it are over. It’s probably not an accident that Matthew doesn’t follow Jesus to the synagogue (where he would be looked upon as phony or desperate or both), but instead has Jesus over at his house and invites some other desperate people to come too. Matthew has a party – which is, of course, the proper response when you have been desperate and God has met you in your desperation. Celebrate! Blow the joint. Give thanks.

Eugene Peterson writes, “When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn’t go off and leave us – he enters into our trouble and saves us.”


Remember, Jesus once told the good religious people that the tax collectors and prostitutes would be getting into heaven ahead of them. Is it because of the prostitutes heart of gold? No. It’s because, as C.S. Lewis writes, “Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.”

I’m thinking of creating name tags for everyone in our church. On these tags will be not only our names, but also our current desperate struggle with weakness and sin. The name tags will be big. Everyone will be able to see them from some distance. “Hey Bob, how’s it going. I see you’re still dealing with that blowup you had at work last month.” And then Bob says, “That’s right Pete. Thanks for asking. How’s your son doing with the drug addiction?” No hiding. No pretending. All our mess for the world and Christ to see.

We have desperate people in our building every day. And I’ll be honest with you, it frightens me sometimes. It’s scary when someone sits in my office and says, “Rich, I’m desperate, can you help me?” Well, I already know they’re desperate or they wouldn’t be seeking help from me. I feel very inadequate. I want to help, I do. I want to wave a magic wand and make their troubles go away. But I haven’t found that wand.


I had a former youth of mine come speak to our youth group not long ago. Jeremy was there through a difficult journey of doing and selling drugs. He served time in a federal prison, and in the midst of the mess he had made of his life, Jeremy found Jesus. Or Jesus found him. Jeremy spoke about God’s working in his life through the mess. After he was done I asked him, “What could the church (of which I was pastor) had done differently to help you make better choices and to help you through the aftermath of the poor ones?” His answer was pretty simple – “love me. Just love me. I got used to going into church,” Jeremy said, “and having people stare at me and whisper because of what they heard about me. I wanted them to love me.”

Jeremy experienced a prison conversion, and prison conversions, like deathbed ones, are sometimes met with joking and scoffing among the unreligious and the religious alike. But what that scoffing and joking is really saying is that love and faith are a joke. If they are, then they are God’s joke. And every time Jesus meets a desperate person, he smiles at them, touches them, many times heals them, and says something like, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” And he winks, as if to say, “This will be our little joke.”