2 Corinthians 6:16-7:1; Matthew
15:21-28
Unless we are very careful, it is easy to fall prey to the temptation of
defining holiness in ways that serve our preconceived notions, which may have
very little to do with finding the healing of our souls by sharing more fully in
the life of the Savior by grace. We
often see righteousness through the lens of our own sensibilities about worldly
divisions and disputes in ways that have more to do with serving our own
passions than with serving the Lord. Today’s
Scripture readings challenge us to wake up from such delusions and to see
ourselves clearly before His infinite holiness.
In
order to understanding these readings, we must remember that as Gentiles we would
be complete strangers to the promises to Abraham apart from the coming of Christ. It is only by faith in Him, as the One Who
fulfills those promises, that we are now heirs to the great spiritual heritage
of the Hebrews. We read today about
a Gentile woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon who wanted the Lord to cast a
demon out of her daughter. She was
likely of higher social class than were the Jews of the area and there was a
history of severe tension between these groups.
That surely colored the scene
when this Canaanite woman called on the Jewish Messiah as “Son of David” to
deliver her daughter. At first, He did
not answer her at all. Then the
disciples made the situation even more tense by begging Him to send her away. That is when the Savior said, “I was sent
only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Then she knelt before Him and simply said, “Lord, help me.” Christ then put her to the test by saying,
“It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” As a pagan, she and her people were thought
by the Jews to be as unclean as dogs and spiritually inferior. The Lord spoke to her in terms that pressed
the point of her presumed vast distance from the God of Israel as a Gentile. The same thing, of course, would have been
presumed about us and our ancestors.
With those stinging
words, He challenged her to state a revolutionary theological truth that hardly
anyone else at the time understood. She responded with these words: “Yes, Lord,
yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” With that statement, she acknowledged that,
if God’s blessings applied only to those of Hebrew heritage, she had no more
claim on them than dogs had to the food of their owner. Nonetheless, even they could
lick up the crumbs that fell from the table.
This Gentile woman knew better than our Lord’s disciples that the ancient
promises to Abraham were ultimately for the salvation of all. The Lord then praised her great faith and
healed her daughter. He had spoken harshly
to her in order to challenge her to see and articulate the shocking truth that His
salvation extended even to Gentiles with humble faith in Him. That was not only for her benefit, but also
for His disciples, who needed to see that His salvation extended even to a
hated foreigner and includes people like you and me.
The church in Corinth
was composed primarily of Gentiles like this woman. St. Paul’s correspondence with them is filled
with admonitions to stop living like pagans and embrace their identity as God’s
temple, the Body of Christ. He had to
address matters including: political divisions within the church; members suing
one another; tolerance of incest; men having relations with prostitutes in pagan
temples; abuses in the celebration of Communion; arguments over which spiritual
gifts were most important; and denial of our hope for bodily resurrection. The Corinthians were in a complete mess, hardly
being a shining example of holiness. If
you ever wondered why there were spirited debates about what to require of Gentiles
who became Christians in the first century, the problems in Corinth are your
answer. Even when the apostles decided
not to require circumcision and obedience to dietary and other Old Testament
laws, they did insist that Gentile converts abandon sexual immorality and any
involvement with the worship of idols.
It is in this
very broken context of a compromised Gentile Christian community that St. Paul reminds
his readers that they “are the temple of the living God.” Despite their many failings, he calls them to
embrace their identity in fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy: “[A]s God said, ‘I
will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall
be My people. Therefore, come out from them, and be separate from them…and
touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you,
and you shall be My sons and daughters…’” Pointing to this foundational point
of their identity, St. Paul declares that “Since we have these promises,
beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and
make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”
Christ did not require
the Canaanite woman to convert to Judaism as a condition for delivering her
daughter. We know nothing about this woman’s
life, but as a Gentile she may well have participated in rituals and behaviors
of the sort that corrupted the Corinthians.
The Lord’s mercy to her was not something that she had earned by
following religious laws. She was able
to receive His mercy because of her humility, which enabled her to confess the
truth about where she stood before the Lord.
She offered herself fully and without excuse, kneeling in humility
before a Jew and pleading for the blessings of the one true God, which was a
completely absurd thing to do according to all the common assumptions of that
time and place. That is how her
spiritual vision was clarified to the point that she knew the truth about how
our Lord’s mercy extends to all with faith in Him, even the despised Gentiles. She is a very different character from St.
Symeon, but like him she recognized that Christ is the salvation “of all peoples, a
light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.”
Likewise,
the mercy of the Lord is so great that He enabled even the notoriously confused
Gentile Christians of Corinth to become “the temple of the living God.” Their ancestry and imperfection were not the
point; what was important is that they had received Christ in faith, putting Him
on like a garment in baptism. Likewise, whatever
heritage or culture we claim, whatever struggles and failures we have had,
whatever wounds we bear, however our hearts are broken for those we have
wronged or for the suffering of our loved ones, we must remember our true
identity in Christ and “cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and
spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.” Forgetting the past, we must focus on doing
what we can today to live as God’s holy temple as we offer ourselves,
especially the weak and distorted dimensions of our lives, in humility for
Christ’s healing.
To do so does
not mean feeling sorry for ourselves or becoming paralyzed by hurt pride when
we confront how we have fallen short, whether in the past or today. It does not mean despairing of healing in the
future. It does not mean giving up when
we fail to resist any temptation or when we do not seem to be progressing on a
schedule that we have set. It means
instead that, as we come to see with a measure of clarity where we stand before
the Lord, we refuse to stop calling for His mercy from the depths of our hearts
as we undertake the daily struggle to turn away from sin and share more fully
in His salvation. It means that we let
nothing keep us from embracing our true identity as God’s temple, as members of
Christ’s Body. In Him, we are no longer
strangers and foreigners but beloved sons and daughters of God called to “make
holiness perfect in the fear of God.” Let
us live accordingly.
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