A Homily for the Second Sunday in Lent
Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.
—St. Matthew 15:27
In the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke, when Jesus is about to leave Galilee for Judea and Jerusalem, he sends seventy-two of his disciples ahead of him; and in the course of instructing them for their mission, he says:
Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you.
Tyre and Sidon, two port cities in what is now Lebanon, represented the Gentile (non-Jewish) world. They are contrasted with the Jewish towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida (and a bit later on with Caperaum, Jesus’s own city). In those Jewish towns, Jesus had preached and worked miracles, and yet the people persisted in sinfulness and unbelief.
In today’s Gospel lesson, we find Jesus in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. Nowadays, those cities are in Lebanon. The people there were (and are) Syro-Phoenician; another name for the people was Canaanites. They were Gentiles, not Jews, descendents of the sea peoples of the ancient eastern Mediterranean. Jesus went to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon after the miraculous feeding of the multitude with five barley loaves and two small fishes, apparently to have a respite from the crowds.
Saint Matthew tells us about only one person whom Jesus met during this trip, and that is the Canaanite (or Syro-Phoenician) woman with the sick daughter. Indeed, someone reading Saint Matthew’s Gospel could easily think that Jesus made the trip just to meet that woman, just to have the encounter we heard about today.
In the story of this encounter, we see a side of Jesus that is not quite in accord with our Sunday School picture-books. Jesus speaks dismissively, even harshly, to the woman. He seems to compare her, and all of her countrymen, to dogs. But Saint Matthew was writing some fifty years after the Resurrection, long after the Church had embraced Gentile converts. Why did he include this story in the Gospel.
Clearly, the story has a bearing on the relationship between Jews and Gentiles and the Church. That is of direct interest to us because almost all of us twenty-first century Christians are Gentiles.
A pagan woman comes to Jesus and begs for him to have mercy on her sick daughter. At first, Jesus pays no attention to her. When she persists, he tells her that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, that is, to the Jews. But the woman will not be put off. She insists, she even banters words with Jesus. Ultimately, he recognizes her faith, and on account of her faith he pronounces her daughter healed.
The Canaanite woman, in a sense, represents the whole Gentile world. Tyre and Sidon, among Gentile cities, were singled out for a special curse. Through the prophet Joel, God said:
What have ye to do with me, Tyre and Sidon, and all the coasts of Palestine? Will ye render me a recompense? And if ye recompense me, swiftly and speedily will I return your recompense upon your own head, because ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly, pleasant things.
More than most of the Gentile world, Tyre and Sidon were historic enemies of the Jews.
The encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman mirrors the encounter between God and the Gentile world. God revealed himself first to the Jews, and only later to the Gentiles. When the Gentiles saw the wonderful works of God, they sought him out. God chose the Jews to be his special people; but the Gentiles chose God. In the story of today’s Gospel is played out in miniature the story of God and the Gentile world.
At first there is hostility; God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God who by the hand of Moses led the children of Israel out of captivity in Gentile Egypt; the God who brought the remnant of Israel back from captivity by the waters of Babylon in Gentile Iraq. The Gentiles, the nations, had made themselves God’s enemies by making war upon God’s people.
But God has also shown mercy upon the Gentiles. He spared the Gentile city of Nineveh, that great city, when it heeded the warning of the prophet Jonah and repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. God does not turn away those who come to him in faith and repentance.
And so it is with the Canaanite woman. Her faith is great. She does not claim Jesus’s favor as a matter of right, like the lost sheep of the house of Israel, like the children seated at the master’s table. But she appeals to Jesus in faith, and prays for his mercy, and so her daughter is healed.
In addition to its being about God’s mercy toward the Gentiles, the Church has long taken this story to be a teaching about prayer. So it has been explained in sermons from the time of Saint Augustine, at the beginning of the fifth century, to our own Bishop Cahoon.
What we see most in the petition of the Canaanite woman is persistence. She will not be put off; she will not be discouraged.
The German priest Martin Luther, in a sermon for this Sunday preached in the sixteenth century, pointed out that Jesus never said “no” to the woman. First, he ignores her, he acts as if she is not even there. Then, when she persists, he tells her that he has been sent to the lost sheep of Israel. These responses (or this lack of response) might easily be taken for a refusal; but Jesus does not actually refuse her request, he just postpones it. It would be easy for the woman to become discouraged, to lose faith, to turn away and look elsewhere for help for her daughter. But she does not, she perseveres, she persists, she insists.
This is what our prayer should be like. We lift up our cares and concerns to God, we ask for help in need, sickness, and other adversities. And sometimes it seems as if God does not even hear us. Other times, God may seem to put us off, may seem to indicate that our concerns are not the same as his concerns. When this happens—when our prayers go unanswered, or are answered in a way that does not seem most expedient for us—it is easy to become discouraged, to lose heart, even to doubt. But the lesson of the Canaanite woman is that these are the times when we should redouble our effort, to pray with even greater intensity.
Our prayers should, like hers, be characterized by persistence and perseverance.
Another characteristic we see in the prayer of the Canaanite woman is humility. She never suggests that Jesus owes her anything. She comes to him in humility, and when he says that it is not meet to give the children’s food to the dogs, she accepts the comparison, and reminds him that even the dogs are allowed to eat the crumbs that fall from the table.
We may well be reminded of the parable of the Pharisee and the publican at prayer. The Pharisee stands tall and reminds God how religious he is, praying regularly, fasting often, and giving alms to the poor; but the publican bows low and prays, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” It is the publican’s prayer that is effective. We cannot earn God’s favor, either by religious exercises or by good works. But God, in his mercy, hears the prayers of the humble.
In our corporate prayer, as a community, we repeat the words of the Canaanite woman at every Eucharist: “we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table, but thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” This is how we should approach God in prayer, not trusting in our own merits, but in his manifold and great mercy.
Jesus recognizes the sincerity of the Canaanite woman’s humility, which came from faith. “Woman, great is thy faith.” And he heals the woman’s daughter, as she asked.
And so, from this Gentile woman in a Gentile land, we learn at least two things about effective prayer. It must be persistent, even when there seems to be no answer or not the answer we would like. And it must be made in the humility that comes from faith.
May we learn these
lessons this Lent, and apply them all the days of our life.
Church of Our
Lady of Walsingham
Corona, California
07 March 2004