The Secret of Great Faith

Sermon for 13th Sunday after Trinity (Yr A)
St Mary Magdalene’s Church
Sunday 17th August 2008

Introduction
I wonder whether any of you have ever had a puppy for a pet? I never have done – I had several cats as a child – but never a puppy.

I’ve been told by friends though that despite being incredibly cute, they’re also terrible pests when there’s any food around. Little, organic and noisy waste-disposal units, they follow you around hoping for a bit of your food – even if it’s been only 5 minutes since they devoured their own food, Pedigree Chum or whatever…

This I can well believe, since I do have a dog of sorts in my house. Our son Caleb, you see, is a sort of dog! You see, the name Caleb, in modern Hebrew (or at least the closest equivalent, Calev) means ‘dog’. And indeed, Caleb, like a small yelping puppy, is constantly pestering Sara and me whenever we have any food in our hands.

Food, or drink, that we have prepared and intended for ourselves, ends up being demanded by him – and very often (provided it won’t harm him), we give in to his requests, and he gets to eat a bit of our meal (usually pieces of toast and honey at breakfast).

What then are we to make of the yelping Canaanite ‘dog’ mentioned in or Gospel reading today?

The Shock Of The Story
The first thing to observe is just how shocking Jesus’ actions in the story appear to be. The Jesus we think we know – merciful, gentle, loving and accepting of all – appears on our first reading to refuse to heal the Canaanite woman’s daughter simply because she is not Jewish; and to add insult to injury, goes on to describe her as a ‘dog’.

While this shocking reading may be accurate at one level, it also reveals to us how much we ignore aspects of Jesus’ character and actions in the gospels wherever they don’t conform to the comforting image of him that we each carry around in our minds.

Jesus often withdrew from the crowds; he often withheld healing from both Jews and Gentiles. Jesus got angry and thrashed a whip around in the temple courts, overturning tables. Jesus made cutting remarks while scribbling in the sand, shaming a crowd of the self-righteous, and causing them to skulk away from the women caught in adultery – and to her he issued to simple, yet sharp, command ‘go and sin no more’. A church advertising campaign a few years ago summed it up nicely when they published Christmas posters saying: ‘Meek and mild – as if.’ Our comfortable pictures of Jesus sometimes need challenging.

Jesus was the messiah, the anointed one, the chosen one of God, who would restore God’s people Israel to his purposes. And the purpose of God for Israel, right from the very beginning and the making of the covenant with Abraham, was that through Israel ‘all nations on earth will be blessed, because [Israel] has obeyed [God].’ (Gen. 22:18)

But Israel had not obeyed God, they had not kept the covenant, and it was for this reason that Jesus was sent to be a shepherd for the ‘lost sheep of Israel’ (Matt 15:24). When the lost sheep of Israel were recovered, and the new covenant established, God’s chosen people Israel would become a blessing to all nations. The 12 tribes of Israel are reconstituted in the 12 apostles, and through their resurrection community, the church, God’s peace, hope and love has been carried into all corners of the world.

But it all starts with Jesus being the messiah who would restore Israel to God’s purposes. And maybe the truly startling thing in this passage is that the Canaanite woman seems to already recognise this. For she addresses him: Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me.’ (Matt 15:22) And this title, ‘Son of David’, is a messianic title. It means ‘the one who will be a true king in the line of David’. It recognises that Jesus is sent for Israel, not the people of the Gentile nations in the vicinity.

And yet she is undeterred. Although she knows well that the Jewish leaders of the day viewed the Gentiles as ‘dogs’, and probably even more so, Gentile women, yet she persistently cries out after Jesus.

And her persistence leads me to think of a related subject, that of our relationship with God in prayer.

Persistence In Prayer
The Canaanite woman cried out to Jesus for mercy, for healing for her daughter. She probably cried out of desperation, maybe even as a last resort. Maybe she had visited the local priests of the Canaanite people, and maybe offered sacrifices to the Baal gods – the nature divinities of the ancient near east. Maybe she had sought the help of a physician, such as the Greek doctor Luke, who became a companion of St Paul, and wrote the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. Maybe she tried all these things, and then turned to Jesus for help.

How many of us find ourselves in the same situation? I certainly do – and to my shame, too often my prayers are prayers of desperation offered when all else has failed. And what is Jesus’ response? ‘[He] did not answer a word.’ (Matt. 15:23) How devastating, how discouraging. We turn to God in prayer, in the midst of our desperation, and he does not answer a word.

Many of us would give up, and seek out help elsewhere. But not this Canaanite woman. Maybe she has heard stories of Jesus healing others, or maybe she has heard some of his teaching, maybe it is simply the Spirit of God revealing to her just who Jesus is, the ‘Son of David’, chosen by God and full of God’s power. Whichever it is, she continues to call out after Jesus. And what do the disciples do? What do we, the church, so often do with those who are noisily interrupting our work and worship? We ask Jesus to send them away. (Matt 15:23)

When I lived in Paddington, I knew a man and a woman who lived in the same neighbourhood, and who occasionally would turn up at the steps of the church. The man was the most arrogant man I’ve ever known, who had been caught up in a form of eastern mysticism, and now thought he had special revelation of God, and he was willing to share this with anyone who’d listen! He was also an alcoholic – and could become quite aggressive and agitated if he wasn’t getting his own way. The woman suffered mental illness, alcoholism, and was caught up in drugs, prostitution and crime. On more than one occasion I witnessed her half-naked and peeing in the street, completely off her face. Both came to church reasonably often – on Sundays and also during the week to the church office. And I used to beg Jesus to send them away!

In their own way, they were desperate for healing from Jesus, and yet it never seemed to come, and their desperate and angry cries simply interrupted me from my work and worship. ‘Lord, send them away’! Yet I am so thankful, that 17 years ago, when I came to Jesus, desperate for his comfort, healing and love, he did not turn me away – whatever some of the youth workers or other members of the church youth group might have wished!

The Canaanite woman persisted, and came and knelt before Jesus, saying ‘Lord, help me!’ She came with humility – kneeling before Jesus. She does not command his help, as one who knows best – if only Jesus would realise what he should do. Rather, she pleads for his help as one who knows her own powerlessness and weakness – as one who knows she can do nothing to help her daughter on her own – but simply trusts that Jesus can help.

Too often, my prayer life takes the form of a managerial supervision meeting – where I sit and tell Jesus what he should be doing in my life. I half-listen to what he is doing, but as I impatiently listen, I’m already thinking of what I’m about to say to him next. I issue my guidance on what he should do to meet my needs, and the needs of my organisation, the church. (And so often I do treat it like my organisation not his!) And then I dismiss him, so I can get on with other things – I’ll check on his progress next week.

And finally Jesus replies to the Canaanite woman. And it is not the reply that she, or we, expected. It is the shocking reply we thought about earlier – that reminds us that Jesus’ priorities are not always our priorities. Or as Isaiah puts it:
‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ (Isaiah 55:9)

But the Canaanite woman is bold and quick-thinking. Maybe she is a God-fearing Gentile, and knows of the promise for Israel to be a blessing to all nations. Maybe she is like the woman who had suffered hemorrhages for 12 years and trusted that just a touch of the hem of Jesus’ cloak would be sufficient for her healing. Maybe the Canaanite woman thought that she could persuade Jesus with clever reasoning. Maybe she simply longs for something, a scrap of hope.

Conclusion
Did Jesus change his mind? Was he persuaded by her clever argument? Or did he simply resist her request initially to test her persistence? I’m not sure we could ever reach a final conclusion on these questions.

But this passage does challenge me to think about my prayer life, and the way I bring my requests to Jesus. Am I bold? Am I persistent? Am I easily discouraged when my prayers are met with silence? Do I pray humbly, or as one who issues commands?

So many questions. So many ‘maybes’. And yet that is at the heart of our prayer life – the great ‘maybe’ at the heart of every prayer we offer. That what we ask may be. ‘Lord, may it be.’

The gospels are littered with examples of Jesus withdrawing from the crowd, and leaving people unhealed. And yet there are just as many examples of Jesus encouraging persistence and perseverance in prayer. It seems that this process is essential for helping us to become followers of the living God – for we may only truly follow when Jesus walks a little way ahead of us on a path we’ve not walked before.

I’ve just finished reading a book addressing the problem of unanswered prayer entitled ‘God on Mute’. In the book, Pete Greig writes this:
‘Sometimes God removes the stabilizers from our bicycle and his hands from our frightened lives. As we grow towards spiritual maturity, every believer is granted seasons of unanswered prayer when god is silent and may even appear absent from the world. At such times, we may be sure that God is weaning us off ‘adult supervision’ but that He has not abandoned us altogether.’
He continues…
‘Growing into maturity – whether it’s in a romantic relationship, a child-parent relationship or in a relationship with God – always involves a steady process of recentring from our own priorities and preferences to those of the other… We begin to pray that God would change our hearts and rewire our motivation. We long to become more like Jesus. We ask God to help us become more humble, more loving and more faithful. It is in answer to these very prayers that God may decide to deny our requests and even withdraw a little from our lives… [Only then can we] truly mature from an us-centred relationship with god to a truly Christ-centred one.’ (Pete Greig, God On Mute, p245-7)

Although Jesus seemed to withdraw and deny himself to the Canaanite woman, her faith was declared to be ‘great’. (Matt. 15:28) Her boldness, her persistence, yet also her desperation and humility were the characteristics of this ‘great’ faith. And indeed, her request was answered – her daughter was healed that very hour.

What did the disciples learn? And what do we learn from this passage? Well, as we’ve just said, something more about the characteristics of faith, something more about persistence in prayer, something more about why Jesus might apparently withdraw himself from us, and finally, that in Jesus Christ every boundary is broken down. That all the division we erect between people – class, culture, wealth, sophistication, righteousness, race, sex and sexuality – that every division is obliterated in Jesus so that God’s blessing may finally reach out to every nation and every individual person on God’s earth.

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Lord Jesus Christ,

Thank you that you have destroyed the boundaries we construct between one another, and the boundary of sin that separates us from God our Father.

By your Holy Spirit, would you make us grow in faithfulness. With every step you withdraw from us, with every unanswered prayer, would you give us the boldness, the persistence and the humility to come chasing after you.

Make us, your church, to live as people of the new covenant, that through us you might bless all nations.

In your mighty name we pray,
Amen.