All this hedging about whether or when he used drugs may well come back to haunt him. If he would just go ahead and confess the points at which he is most likely vulnerable now he can set the agenda.  His silence about those issues may put him in the position of having to defend himself on much more hostile terms after someone else finally digs up the truth.  Why not just go ahead and confess where he feels most vulnerable?

Which is somewhat the position I find myself in this morning.  I'll have to admit that I never feel more vulnerable when trying to define God to others than when I run into His silence in the face of overwhelming human need.

The silence of George Bush about his past is understandable enough to anyone who has past shames they hope are never are recalled.  But, the silence of God to human suffering? How do you deal with that? How do you explain a supposedly all-loving God in the face of indescribable human need?

On the one hand, the text we have read this morning tells us of a woman who came begging to Jesus to help her with her demon-possessed daughter.  And, Matthew recorded that, "he did not answer her at all." Beyond that, when Jesus finally did answer her, He all but called her a dog.  This is a side of Jesus with which we are not as familiar or comfortable.  A side that seems almost out of character from the one we want to believe to be full of grace and mercy and hope.

On the other hand, in a place not far from where Jesus didn't answer this woman and in this very day's headlines, over 10,000 have died because of the Turkish earthquake not to mention the 35,000 others who are missing and it appears were just pancaked in the rubble.  How do you explain the apparent silence of God when the earth begins to tremble and people die faster than they can be counted?

There is perhaps no greater difficulty for Christians than trying to understand and explain the silence of God in the face of human need over against the scripture's portrait of Him, in Christ, as full of grace and love and mercy.  Yet, silent He sometimes is.

Well, it is in this very text that I think we find one clue to our dilemma of how to respond when it appears that God does not.  And, in this woman, perhaps, a role model, as well, of what faith in God behaves like in the presence of God's silence.  A woman who, like any parent whose child is suffering, has discarded any concern for her own dignity and resorted to begging for help.

A woman who just won't give up until Jesus does something.  Even His silence can't silence her.  She has come to Him believing that He has what her daughter needs and has literally made a pest of herself so much so that the disciples, perhaps embarrassed by the spectacle, finally urge Jesus to just "send her away, for she keeps shouting after us."

Which may be our first clue about how faith manages the unmanageable.  Faith doesn't draw permanent conclusions on the basis of temporary experience.  Faith doesn't try to explain that for which there is no explanation.  Faith just keeps believing beyond what is most readily apparent.  Jesus' immediate response, or lack of it, did not deter this woman's long-term commitment to getting the healing her daughter needed from Him.

So, maybe it is here that we have the first idea about how to explain the silence of God.  Don't.  Don't try to define God to yourself or others on the basis of what He is or is not doing in any one moment.  Don't let one experience with God, or your perception of that experience, redefine all of your other experiences with God.  When He has not chosen to reveal what He is up or respond to your pleas don't assume that means He never will.  Faith is never an explanation for what God is up to.  Faith is trust in God regardless of what He is up to whether it makes definable sense to you or not.

The Kansas Board of Education voted a couple of weeks ago to exclude the theory of evolution from the basic biology curriculum in the Kansas public school system.  Christians everywhere are applauding.  But, why?  What are Christians so afraid of when it comes to evolutionary theory?

Perhaps they are afraid that a non-believer is going to try dismantle their child's faith on the basis of scientific theory.  And, that is indefensible logically and morally.  Or, perhaps they are concerned about the presentation of what is no more than theory as though it were fact and in such a way that excludes God from having been at the helm of whatever happened in creation.  Understandable and legitimate concern for any person of faith, no doubt.

But, is not the way Christians sometimes respond to what is sound scientific discovery also not as indefensible sometimes? When Christians try to explain all matters of creation from scripture alone, as though the Bible were a book of science, are they not asking God to speak where He has chosen to remain silent?

When I was in high school I took on a paper route and my dad helped me every morning.  From 4:30 to 6:00 a.m. we would roll and throw some three hundred papers from the back seat of his company car.  Then, when we got home, we'd sit in the living room.  Dad read scripture and then we prayed.  And, then we discussed theology.  Without question, some of my basic theological foundations were laid in those early morning hours of informal seminary education.

One of the discussions my father and I frequently had was about the Christian response to the theory of evolution.  And, in those discussions, my father helped me to construct a way of believing that did not discard thinking along the lines of one simple premise.  The Bible is a book of faith.  It is not a scientific textbook.  It does not tell us how God did what He did in creation anymore than the text we read this morning clinically describes the physio-spiritual process by which Jesus delivered a young girl from a demon's grasp long distance.

The scripture simply says that Jesus' response to the woman's faith was to say, "woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.  And her daughter was healed instantly." Matthew nowhere records the woman sticking around to ask Jesus, "how did you do that?" My best guess is that she really didn't care how.  What she did believe was that Jesus had what her daughter needed and that if He brought it to bear she would be healed.

For her, faith was not an explanation.  For her, faith was simple confidence in the power of God through Christ.  And, that is exactly what the Bible was written to give us.  And, what the Bible does tell us, in light of this magnificent thing we call creation, is Who did it and even a little bit about why He did it.  "In the beginning, God . . ." the first book of the Bible says.  "In the end, God . . ." the last book says.

In the beginning and in the end and everywhere in between God is and God is at work albeit at times in ways that appear silent to us.  God started it and God will conclude it and the One who birthed us into being is the One to whom we will ultimately give account.

As long as Christians stay in the territory of who and why they have something to contribute to the conversation that is always relevant and transforming even in the world of science.  It's only when we get into the how's that we tend to start speaking for God in places He, most often, has chosen to remain silent.

Occasionally, when I am trying to discipline the boys, (not that I would have any fresh memories of that even though we did just get through driving 2,500 miles in eleven days with them stuck with and sometimes to each other in the back seat) occasionally they will try to head me off at the pass by putting words in my mouth.  Right before justice is served they will say something like, "you can't do that because you said . . ." and then proceed to put words in my mouth that never came out of it.  "You said!" I've heard them say hundreds of times when I hadn't said! They are learning that nothing infuriates their father more than to be misquoted by his children for their own selfish purposes.

I sometimes wonder if God doesn't feel the same way.  Christians do no more harm to the kingdom cause than when they try to speak for God in ways He has not chosen to speak for Himself.

When I stood in the Garden of the gods at the foot of Pike's Peak I remembered two profound, yet simple, affirmations of the faith my father gave me when I stood there looking at rock formations so awesome and beautiful they even caused the ancient Indians to believe in a supreme being.  First, God did it.  My faith allows no other explanation.  And, second, whatever God is up to, He's not in any hurry.  Who cares if it took millions of years or an instant in time, a question the Bible doesn't answer, as long as we affirm, by faith, who did it and why, the purpose for which the Bible was written?

Listen to the apostle John's explanation of the purpose of what we know of as scripture especially as related to Jesus' miraculous powers.  He wrote these words right after recording the incident where Jesus, recently resurrected from the dead, mysteriously appeared to His disciples in a room where the door was locked and there was no physical way for Him to enter.

John said, "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:30-31) The Bible was not given to us so that we might understand.  It was given to us, according to the apostle's own witness, so that we might believe.

Which is why I think the story we have read this morning is in the Bible in the first place.  It's a witness of faith and what faith looks like and how faith keeps on being faith when there is no apparent reason to do so.

We don't know why Jesus was silent at first, for sure.  We can only speculate.

Perhaps He was tired.  He had just spent time arguing with His own people who should have known better that what ought to concern them more is the filth of a man's heart not the filth of his hands.  Maybe He was just exasperated at their inability to be aware of the more significant issues of the kingdom.  And, He kind of acted tired in the way He seemed to snap at the woman.  Or, maybe He was just very focused.  "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," He reminded His disciples and the woman.

But, whatever His physical state or spiritual focus, this woman got Jesus' attention by the way she responded to His comment that, "it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." Fair enough, she said, "if all I can get are the leftover crumbs of your attention and power, even those crumbs are all I need."

That did it.  That's all Jesus needed to hear from anyone.  She had a simple faith in who Jesus was and what He could do.  That's all Jesus ever needs to know about any of us.  Not so much what we understand but who we are trusting.

When He figured that out about this woman He gave her access to the power of His kingdom.  And, He will do the same for you, too.  Besides, when you think about it, when our silent God finally does break His silence, what more could you possibly want to hear Him say to you than, "your faith is great! Let it be done for you as you wish"?

Amen.