MATTHEW 15:21-28
At that time, Jesus went to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon." But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, "Send her away, for she is crying after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." And he answered, "It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." Then Jesus answered her, "O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire." And her daughter was healed instantly.
What would you do for your sick child? How far would you go? What kind of hardships would you endure to save your child? I think every parent here knows that they would do just about anything to save our children from harm. And that is precisely the situation presented in today’s Gospel. Today we meet a woman whose daughter, we are told, is severely possessed. This mother is in dire straits. We are told that she comes out of her lands to find Jesus. In Mark’s version of this meeting account, we learn that Jesus has intentionally hidden himself away and asked that no one share his location. But away from her home and with Jesus hiding himself, this desperate mother manages to find him anyway.
And so it is that when she finds Jesus, she cries out to him, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” And we are told that Jesus does not say a thing. And this can be a difficult thing for us to understand, so this morning I would like to explain the encounter between this woman and Jesus.
The church sees in this story an image of our own prayer life. First, it is the experience of every one of us that often, when we seek God, it seems that we find him hidden away. This can be meant in the most tangible of ways – the notion that we cannot see God or touch God. But it can also be in the less tangible ways. Doubtless there have been times in your life that God where you would say that God felt present. But I would also guess that for most of us, there have been other times, times when God feels a little more distant; and in those times we might tempted to question why we are praying at all. At these times, I am always reminded of a passage toward the beginning of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom’s book Beginning to Pray. It is a fabulous book. It is short, but powerful. I can’t recommend it enough. I will quote from it a few times this morning, but you should seek it out and read it if you haven’t. In the introduction, he says: “The day when God is absent, when He is silent - that is the beginning of prayer. Not when we have a lot to say, but when we say to God, 'I can't live without You, why are You so cruel, so silent?' This knowledge that we must find or die – that makes us break through to the place where we are in the Presence.” God’s silence brings us to the place where we are in His Presence. God’s silence is a test. Will we remain faithful? Or will we despair? God can only truly meet us when we are aware of our need for Him. And thus it is often crisis that fuels our faith, because crisis helps reveal to us that we are truly in need. And it is also crisis can make us willing to leave our comfortable homes and seek out a cure.
The Church is unanimous that in this passage that Jesus is testing this woman. And furthermore, that he is testing her with the very specific intent of making a display of her great faith for all to see. The Gospels are very consistent about making a display of the faith of the Gentiles and contrasting this faith with that of the Israelites. Jesus compliments and rewards the faith of the blind Samaritan, the Roman Centurion, and this Canaanite woman. And whose faith does he criticize? The Pharisees, the Sadducees, and more often than not, his own disciples. When Peter can’t walk out to him on the water: “Oh you of little faith.” When the disciples are confused about his parables: “Oh you of little faith.” And when the disciples cannot heal a lunatic, Jesus names their entire generation as faithless and rebukes his disciples saying, “If you even had faith the size of a mustard seed you would say to this mountain move and it would move.”
There is another great passage in Anthony Bloom’s Beginning to Pray that speaks to the disciples lack of faith. It is his description of the story where the disciples are all in a panic as their ship is buffeted by a storm, as Jesus is sleeping below the decks. Metropolitan Bloom explains that, “Then at a certain moment they lose heart, and the storm that was outside comes inside – the storm is within them too. Anguish and death no longer simply circle round, they come inside. And then [the disciples] turn to Christ and do what we very often do with God: we look at God in time of stress and tragedy, and we are indignant that He is so peaceful. The story in the Gospel underlines it by saying that Christ was sleeping with His head on a pillow - the final insult. They are dying and He is comfortable. This is exactly what we feel about God so often. How dare He be blissful, how dare He be so comfortable when I am in trouble? And the disciples do exactly what we do so very often. Instead of coming to God and saying ‘You are peace, you are the Lord, say a word and my servant will be healed, say a word and things will come right,’ they shake Him out of His sleep and say 'Don't you care that we are perishing?' In other words, 'If you can do nothing, at least don't sleep. If you can do nothing better, then at least die in anguish with us.' Christ reacts, He gets up and says 'Men of little faith!' and brushing them aside, He turns towards the storm and, projecting His inner stillness, His harmony and peace, on the storm He says 'Be still, be quiet' and everything is quiet again.”
Why do I emphasize this lack of faith so much? Because we must remember that we are the disciples in these storys – never quite understanding what is going on, often getting impatient and angry that God is not doing what we expected. Every one of these stories of the disciples is intended as a warning for us, for we here today are Jesus’ disciples. When life gets tough, does our faith shine through? Or does it prove to be less than a grain of mustard seed? And when we prove ourselves faithless, I promise you that Jesus find faith to display elsewhere. And I guarantee it will be found within those we least expect.
So the woman’s first test is Jesus’ silence, but it is not her last test. When she proves that she cannot be stopped, Jesus finally responds. And Jesus responds with a very off-putting remark, the kind of remark this Canaanite woman was quite likely the expecting to receive from a Jewish Rabbi. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” She doubtless knew that Gentiles were largely considered unclean by Israelites, and even more so that it was unseemly for a woman to approach a man in public. But this woman courageously approached anyway, because she was in crisis.
And when she is not deterred, he gets even harder. “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” And this would certainly appear to be his final word, but this concerned mother asked one more time. But more than asking again, she humbly bears the insult for the sake of her daughter. She doesn’t reply, “How dare you call me a dog!” She accepts this insult with grace and asks simply for the dog’s due. She asks for the crumbs. For she understands in her heart what the disciples could not comprehend – that just as a mustard seed can move mountains, that crumbs, when they fall from Christ’s table, have the power to save.
Again, the Church portrays these Christ’s reproofs here as tests. I thought it would be good at this point to read you St. John Chrysostum’s take on this interaction: “Justly did Christ say, ‘For judgement I am come.’ The woman practices high self-command, and shows forth all endurance and faith….With this intent did Christ put her off, for He knew she would say this; for this did He deny the grant, that He might exhibit her high self-command. For if he had not meant to give, neither would he have given afterwards, nor would He have stopped her mouth again. But as He does in the case of the Centurion, saying, ‘I will come heal him,’ that we might learn the godly fear of that man…and as He doth in the case of her that had the issue of blood, saying, ‘I perceive that virtue has gone out of me,’ that he might make her faith manifest; and as in the case of the Samaritan woman, that He might show how not even upon reproof she desists: so also here, He would not that so great virtue in the woman should be hid. Not in insult were His words spoken, but in calling her forth, and revealing the treasure laid up within her.”
As Chrysostum points out, to meet Christ is to meet our Judge. This is the same Lord who allowed Satan to test Job. Every struggle in life is a test, an opportunity to show our faith or our lack thereof. In the Lord’s prayer we say, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Another common translation reads, “Put us not to the test, but deliver us from evil.” Evil, hardship, these things are tests for our faith. This is the decision put before us time and again – Will this trial grow my faith? Or will it snuff it out? Again, I will read just a bit from Beginning to Pray: “To meet God face to face in prayer is a critical moment in our lives, and thanks be to God that He does not always present Himself to us when we wish to meet Him, because we might not be able to endure such a meeting. Remember the many passages in Scripture in which we are told how bad it is to find oneself face to face with God, because God is power, God is truth, God is purity. Therefore, the first thought we ought to have when we do not tangibly perceive the divine presence, is a thought of gratitude.”
In our story today, the Canaanite woman did come face to face with God and she showed her true mettle. How many of us have allowed little grievances with our friends, or our family, or our church, to cause great schisms? How many times have we heard a word we didn’t quite agree with, or a song that didn’t quite please us, or a greeting that wasn’t happy enough, and we take these things as excuses to abandon our community? I know as well as anyone these struggles. Community is never easy. But the faith of this woman is to be admired and emulated.
The miracle in today’s Gospel is not the healing of the daughter. Jesus is the ruler of the heavens and the earth, casting out a demon is nothing for him. But the human heart is a thing that God leaves to its own devices. God allows each and every one of us to decide how we will respond to these tests. And the faith this woman displayed to the world was nothing short of miraculous. The Disciples had been given everything and, prior to the miracle at Pentecost, are repeated declared to be of little faith. But this woman; this Canaanite woman! Jesus hides from her. Jesus reproves her. And nevertheless she persists. It is this kind of faith that every one of us is called on to emulate.
I would like to end by returning to my first question. What would you do to save your child? What would you do to save your family? And I would like to remind you where this Canaanite woman found her faith. Here faith was found within her love for her daughter. Look around you here – you are surrounded by your brothers and your sisters. Every one of us has needs, great and small. Look at your families and your friends – I guarantee many of them, likely every one of them, stands around you in need. Learn to love to your neighbors, your friends, your family. Make their sufferings your sufferings. “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.” For just as the Canaanite woman found faith within the love of her daughter, you may find your own within your love of friend and neighbor. It can seem immodest to work for our own reward, but it can be liberating to work on behalf of one we love.
In today’s epistle, Paul wrote to Timothy, “Remember…the gospel for which I am suffering and wearing fetters like a criminal. But the word of God is not fettered. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus with its eternal glory.” Paul says here that he is willing to endure imprisonment and eventually even death for the sake of his brothers and sisters. May we follow the example set by St. Paul and by the Canaanite woman. For if we can muster even a sliver of their faith, a crumb, a mustard seed of faith, we can be assured that Jesus will use it to move mountains.
Amen.