Gospel According to St. Matthew 15: 21-18
We
have all had the experience of being ignored, left out, and made to feel that
we weren’t included or recognized by others.
Whether at school, among friends, at work or wherever, that can be
painful, no matter what our age or life circumstances. No one likes to be rejected or
overlooked. But sometimes, what seems
to be rejection really isn’t; sometimes it is testing and preparation for a
deeper relationship in which we learn more about ourselves, our neighbors, and
God.
Such was our Lord’s conversation
with the Canaanite woman. She is a Gentile with a demon-possessed daughter, and
probably at the end of her rope. So she
calls out to Christ, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David!” But He doesn’t answer her and says to the
disciples that He was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to
the Jews. When the woman persists with
her cries for help, He tells her that it is not good to take the children’s
bread and throw it to the dogs. In other
words, God’s blessings are for the chosen people of the Old Testament, the
Jews, not for the Gentiles. The woman
doesn’t disagree with that answer, but says that “even the dogs eat the crumbs
which fall from their masters’ table.”
Then Christ praises the woman’s faith and her daughter is healed.
We may find it hard to understand
this passage. Why doesn’t the Lord heal
her daughter immediately? Why does He
seem to exclude the Gentiles from His salvation? Why does He call her a dog?
To answer these questions, we have
to remember that the Jews of that time typically believed that their Messiah
was for them only, that God’s blessings were for the Jews to the exclusion of
the rest of the world. This Gentile
woman knows enough about Christ to call Him “Son of David,” a Jewish term for
the Messiah, and that He is a healer.
But when her conversation with the Lord begins, it’s not clear what kind
of faith she has in Him. By the end of
the conversation, however, it’s quite clear that she has a faith in Him that
surpasses that of most of the Jews and of the disciples. For she knows that in Jesus Christ God’s
blessings extend to all people who believe in Him, that through Him the crumbs
of the table of Abraham spill over to feed and bless the whole world.
The Lord’s apparent exclusion of the
Gentiles from His ministry is a teaching tool to help her and the disciples see
the truth about God’s salvation and blessing.
She didn’t deny that, in the story of the Old Testament, the Jews are
the Chosen People, the children of God.
She didn’t balk at being called one of the dogs, one of the unclean
Gentiles; she must have known that that was how the Jews thought of her and her
kind. But she knew the message of the
Scriptures even better than the Jews, for God told Abraham that through him and
his family all the nations of the world would be blessed; and Hebrew prophets
envisioned the day when all the nations would come to the mountain of the
Lord. And now in Jesus Christ, Jew and
Gentile alike become beloved children who share fully in God’s blessings.
Our Savior’s apparent delay in healing
her daughter is also a teaching tool designed to strengthen her faith, to bring
her belief in Him to maturity. We have
probably all learned important lessons through patience, by having to persist
in getting what we want. The same is
true for this woman. Her final insight
in this conversation is like that of St. Simeon when the forty-day old Christ
is presented in the Temple: “Lord, now
lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word. For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which
Thou hast prepared before the face of all people: A light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory
of the Thy people Israel.” Simeon’s life
of patient waiting for the Messiah came to fulfillment when he held the baby
Jesus in his arms in the Jerusalem Temple.
God’s anointed, the Savior, had finally come. And that is good news both for the Jew and
the Gentile, for the whole world. The
patience of the Canaanite woman and of St. Simeon was rewarded, for both
received the Messiah with faith.
Many of us admire teachers, coaches,
parents, or other mentors and instructors who tested us, who did not make it
easy because we grew through their tough guidance and high expectations. We became stronger, more mature, more capable
and confident people by overcoming challenges that at first may have seemed
insurmountable. The same is true of this
woman’s relationship with Jesus Christ.
He challenged her to see clearly where she stood before Him. Had she been full of pride, she would have
walked away. Had she been impatient or
insincere, she would have left. But she
knew that in this man she encountered the salvation of God for her daughter,
and she let nothing deter her. She
refused to be denied.
This Canaanite woman is a tremendous
model for us as Christians, for we so easily give up on the Lord and on
ourselves. We are tempted to think that
we are who we are, that there is no point in trying to change, and that even
God can’t heal and transform us. Now it
certainly would have been less stressful for this Gentile woman to have stayed
home that day and not made a scene about Christ healing her daughter. She could have said “I’m a Gentile and this
Messiah is a Jew. Why should I even ask
Him to help?” But then her life and that of her daughter would have remained
miserable and without the Lord’s blessing.
The same is true of us. We can assume that we are like the Gentiles
of old, cut off from salvation, from God’s blessing and transformation in our
lives because of our failings, our weaknesses, and whatever mistakes we have
made in life. Yes, we have all sinned
against God and neighbor in thought, word, and deed. Yes, we may find it less stressful simply to
give into our habitual sins, our passions that have been with us so long that
they have become second nature. But if
we accept the lie that the new life in Christ isn’t really for us, that we are
defined by our sins, that we’re better off just accepting who we are than
growing into the full stature of Christ, we will end up choosing misery over
joy, death over life, and despair over hope.
This woman learned that she, too, is
called to be a temple of the living God.
God’s promises extended even to her, and the same is true for us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, except for our own refusal to accept His
love, to open our lives to Him as did this woman in humility, faith, and
persistence.
She could have stayed away from the
Lord on the grounds of her identity as a Gentile. That would have been an easy excuse, but she
pressed on nonetheless. She didn’t take
an easy out, but persevered in opening her life to Him beyond what anyone in
that time and place would have expected.
We all need to
follow her example in our own lives.
With patience, humility, and persistence, we must call upon the mercy of
Christ for His healing and transformation.
We must not be paralyzed with guilt or shame, no matter what we have
done at any point in our lives. We must refuse
to be distracted by our fears and reject the temptation to take the easy way
out by making excuses. And then, like
her, we will come to know that God’s salvation really is for us, that there are
no limits to His presence in our lives other than those we set by our own sins
and lack of faith. Like her, let us
refuse to be conquered by fear and instead throw ourselves upon the mercy of
Christ with courage, patience, and perseverance. For this
alone is the path to the Kingdom of God.
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