Palm Sunday
 
When Pilate was set down upon the judgment-seat, his wife sent
Unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man:
For I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of
Him.
(St. Matthew 27. 19)
 
Holy Week has been set aside from the time of the early Church to ponder our Lord’s suffering. Holy Week takes us to the one moment in history that judges all others. Holy Week takes us to the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Following Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, he said: All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. (St. Matthew 26.31) Jesus prophesies His silent and lonely death on the Cross. His own Jewish people will demand His death on the Cross. The Romans will facilitate it for the sake of Roman Peace, the Pax Romana. His Apostles, playing the cowards, will abandon Him. Peter will deny Him and repent. Judas Iscariot will betray Him and hang himself.

Today, we remember that Jesus Christ predicted what the Jews, the Romans, and even His friends would do to Him. Today, we remember that Jesus Christ was willing to suffer and die because this alone could save us. Jewish malice and envy, Roman compromise and cowardice would not stop Him. The fear, cowardice, and fickle love of His Apostles will not shake Him. Rather, He will submit to the energy, wisdom, and will of God the Father to effect our salvation. The supreme significance of His suffering, sacrifice, and death will be worth the torturous labor.

Leading up to the Cross and its death, we find the Master’s remarkable silence. Pilate marveled greatly. (St. Matthew xxvii. 14) The Roman Governor’s wife pleads with her husband to have nothing do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.(ibid, 19) Pilate knows that Roman Law finds no just cause for Jesus’ death. Why, what evil hath he done? (Ibid, 23) Pilate’s wife senses that her husband is playing with a strangely divine kind of fire. The Jews, possessed with irrational spite and resentment, have not time for reason or justice. Let Him be crucified. Pilate, who was want to release a prisoner unto the people at the feast, acquiesced. He will wash his hands saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see you to it. (Ibid, 24) The Jews foolishly assume responsibility. His blood be on us, and on our children. (Ibid, 25)

Jesus Christ accepts man’s judgment of Him. He is rejected by virtuous pagans, righteous Jews, and His own Disciples. Jesus Christ will surrender to the unjust, unearned, and undeserved verdict of fallen man. Let them do their worst. Jesus Christ is not only Master of Himself, He is also their Master as well. (The Christian Year in the Times) The Divine Providence will be fulfilled in Jesus Christ, God’s own Word made flesh. Christ has a work to do, despite the obstacles. By the Divine Permission, He will overcome them and throw them back in our laps for consideration. His love for our salvation and hope for our acceptance of it will persist. With courage and humility, Christ will suffer and die. His painful sacrifice and suffering will be judged good and useful tools to conquer sin, death, and Satan.
This morning, with St. Paul, we remember that

though Christ was in the form of God, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Phil. 2. 6-8)
 
Today, Christ sets aside His Divinity in order to take on the predicament of our fallen conditon. As Man, he allows fallen human nature to judge and execute Him. Rather than grasping onto or clutching His Divine Power to rescue Him in the hour of His calamity, He chooses to cleave to it inwardly and spiritually. Christ will be the servant of God until the end, showing us how even in suffering and death He will cleave to God. He will continue to be the servant of God’s will and Word, which alone suffice to save us from the effects of sin. Sin tortures and kills Christ, but Christ still loves us and longs for our turning.

This week, I pray that each of us shall discover that the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus Christ alone can give us new life. In Jesus Christ, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously (1 Peter 2. 22, 23), let us begin to see the Word of God’s Wisdom and Love in the power of His suffering and sacrifice. Christ is a servant of God alone. But as God’s servant, still even the sin that kills Him, the sin that rejects Him, can be met with the forgiveness of sins that Christ offers to all who will repent and believe.

We approach Christ and His Cross. He dies for us on a Friday that is forever called Good. On Good Friday, what threatens to be judged by Fallen Man as tragic, is made Good by the only one for whom it threatens to be otherwise. And while we can never say that He did not suffer pain and utter humiliation as man at the hands of sinful men, we must also say that He obeyed the Father until the end and never surrendered His goodness to evil. His obedience enabled Him to reveal the truth and righteousness even in suffering and death.

On this Palm Sunday, we sing Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. We sing, Hosanna to the One who comes in the name of the Lord to suffer and die for us. Sin cannot stop Him. Death will not keep Him down. Satan is powerless over His mercy and love. God’s goodness will prevail as the mode and instrument of salvation. But to receive this goodness, we must hasten to His Cross, to discover the love that is its source.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
That by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, 
both in body and soul…
(Collect, Passion Sunday)
 
        
The readings for the Sunday next before Holy Week invite us to study the doctrine of Christ’s sacrifice and priesthood. (Melville Scott, Harmony of Collects, Epistles, and Gospels) Today is called Passion Sunday, or the Sunday of the Atonement. Today we shall learn about the doctrine of the Cross. The death of Jesus Christ requires our attention as we learn the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice for us. Christ’s death must command such respect of intellect that sound doctrine will move our wills to submit to the great mystery of godliness. (1 Tim iii. 16)
        
Atonement Sunday calls us to remember the practice of atonement for sins in Jewish history and how Christ’s atonement perfects them all. In the Old Testament, the Jewish high priest would enter into the tabernacle at Jerusalem to make atonement for the people’s sins on the eve of Passover. He would have sacrificed a one-year-old male lamb, without spot or blemish. He then would have painted the doorposts leading into the inner sanctum of the temple, the holiest of holies, the presence chamber of God, with the blood of a sacrificed lamb. Next, he would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, the place signifying God’s encounter with man. Then, he would dredge the altar of incense, a symbol of prayer, with the blood. Finally, the priest would have undergone ritual washing for impurity and irregularity contracted by the bloody sacrifice. Thus, the Jewish high priest entered into the holiest of holies, the inner sanctum, only once a year, and every year, to make sacrifice for his sins and the sins of the people. For the Jews, sinful man came closest to God by the external and visible sacrifices of the high priest. The sacrifices could make neither the priest nor the people perfect, as pertaining to the conscience; which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation. (Hebrews ix, 9,10) The Jewish priests would cleanse the external and visible world but could never make the conscience clean. Jeremiah had asked rhetorically; Shall the holy flesh take away from your crimes?’ (Jer. 11:15) A clean body never means a pure soul.
        
Canon Scott reminds us that Jewish promises are Christian realities, their hopes our certainties, their future our present. (idem) The Jews made atonement for sin with hope for what the Messiah would do in the future. The author of the Epistle continues.

But when Christ became an high priest of good things yet to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.
 
When Christ became our High Priest, in and through His death, through the tabernacle of His body, His external and visible nature, He promised to take us beyond the veil of His flesh (idem) back to God. When He finished His earthly mission to us, He ascended to enter into the holy place of Heaven to plead our cause through His eternal redemption for us. Through His Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, Christ was opening the door of the Kingdom of Heaven to us, having torn down the wall of separation between the external world and the internal and invisible world of the conscience, man’s spirit. Christ’s atonement for our sins was made in time and space but was eternally effective. His redemption of our sinful human nature was made once for all, for the sins of the whole world, needing no repetition.
        
The Jewish high priest offered his sacrifice to atone for sins in the tabernacle made with hands. Christ offered his sacrifice in the tabernacle of His own body, not made with hands. The Jewish high priest offered the sacrifice through the blood of goats and calves, from lifeless and inferior creatures. Christ shed His own blood and offered Himself. The Jewish high priest entered the temple of Jerusalem, a model of heaven. Christ entered heaven itself. The Jewish high priest offered the death of a brute beast. Christ became His own brute beast and made His own death the test of His own obedience to the Father. Death would be no final punishment but now a way of entering into full and perfect life.

For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews, ix, 13,14)

Christ offers His body to cleanse our consciences from dead works through the eternal Spirit. The Jews cleansed their bodies, but not their souls. Christ sacrifices His body because His soul is one with the Father. He does what we could never do. He dies purely and perfectly to the world, the flesh, and the devil so that He might unite us with God. St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that the blood of Christ cleanses the conscience inwardly, which is accomplished by faith: ‘Purifying their hearts by faith’. (Heb.C9.L3, 446) Those who embrace Christ will be cleansed by His blood once shed, as His Spirit applies is power and washes us inwardly and spiritually. 

Christ makes death the seedbed for new life with God the Father. Death is necessary for us to inherit the eternal promises. From Christ’s death to sin and Satan, our faith and hope can find freedom in His Resurrection and Ascension, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter i. 4,5) We are baptized into His death (Romans, vi. 4). His Atonement is the payment made to God for all human sin. His Atonement has power for those who believe.
         
Today, Christ calls us to believe in what He did because of who He was. He alone can work out our salvation. We must begin to hear God’s words because we come from God. (St. John viii. 47) We need to learn again that Christ is the God-Man, who seeks not [His] own glory, but the glory of the Father for all men. (ibid, 50) 

Christ continues. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad. (ibid, 56) Inwardly and spiritually, with faith and hope, every day, with Abraham we must rejoice and be glad in Christ’s coming. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. (ibid, 58) Christ shares His eternal life with the Father, and has now come down from Heaven to share it with us. He will work out our salvation in His own suffering and sacrifice. Christ the eternal, I Am, I Am the Son of God, comes to return us to our Heavenly Father.
        
The history of God’s great I Am must find relevance for us today. Christ is the Second Adam, who will show us once again what it means and what it looks and sounds like to be the Son of God. We too can become the sons of God by imitating Him. From the first Adam, we have inherited sin and death. From the Second Adam, we can receive righteousness, spiritual death, and new life.  No man cometh unto to the Father, but by me. (St. John xiv. 6) Nothing now stands to separate us from God except for our own unbelief and the refusal to repent, die to sin, and come alive to righteousness. Christ’s death is the model for our own spiritual death. His death can become something good with power to save us. Pleading the power of His death helps us to resist temptations and die to sin. His death now, rather than being a tragic end, can become our inspiration for a new life, each and every day, as we follow Him home to Heaven.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
                                      (Gal. iv. 26)

At the beginning of Lent, Jesus said to his disciples, Behold we go up to Jerusalem. (St. Luke xviii. 31) Going up to Jerusalem is what our lives are all about. We go up with Jesus to see how He conquers the temptations of Satan and triumphs over sin for us. We go up with Jesus to discover that, like the woman of Canaan, we are more like dogs than men, aliens, and exiles to God’s promises, and yet still wholly craving the crumbs that fall from His table. So, we learn to long humbly for that mercy that persists in obtaining Jesus' mercy and healing. As dogs, we learn also that we are, often, dumb and mute, incapable of hearing God’s Word and expressing His will until His inward Grace opens our spiritual senses to His desire.
         
Our Lenten pilgrimage, our going up with Jesus to Jerusalem (St. Matthew xx. 18) will not be easy. If we fast, and if we pray, we might become distracted and even lose our way. The pull and tug of certain temptations may well have been overcome, but seven other demons worse than ourselves (St. Matthew xii. 45) overwhelm us. Satan realizes that he is losing our spirits, and so he attacks our bodies with renewed vigor through the elements of this world. (Galatians iv. 3) We have the best of intentions and yet feel ourselves the children of the proverbial Hagar, the bondwoman – enslaved to this world. We do want to become free men, children of promise, and followers of Jesus, who go up to Jerusalem which is above… and is free. (Galatians iv. 26) Yet the more we try, the further back we fall.
         
Today, Jesus Christ and His Bride, Mother Church, provide us with what we need. Today is Dominica Refectionis –Refreshment Sunday or Mothering Sunday–the day on which Mother Church feeds us with love and hope. Today, we are asked to stop for a while to contemplate God’s merciful care. Today, rather than feeling pulled down, we go up. Jesus went up into a mountain, and there He sat with His disciples. (St. John vi. 3) We go up to the mountain with Jesus so that He might remind us of our heavenly destiny. He knows that we are in danger of spiritual languor and sloth. He intends to provide us with that spiritual food that will give us dogged and dauntless determination to press on.…Jesus said, Make the men sit down…So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. (St. John vi. 10) St. John Chrysostom tells us:

That Jesus calls us up to rest at intervals from the tumults and confusion of common life. For solitude is good for the study of wisdom. (St. J.C.: Sermon…) 

Quiet contemplation and study, going up into the presence of God are necessary for spiritual sanity and restoration. And yet in Lent, the earth constantly drags us down. Whence shall we buy bread that [we all] may eat? (St. John vi. 5). Jesus asks this question of Philip. He intends to enlarge and deepen Philip's faith so that he might find hope in heavenly and not earthly nourishment. Philip has seen the finger of God at work in the miracles that Jesus has performed. Will he believe that Jesus can provide food that no man can afford and that can satisfy far more than the physical hunger of a paltry five thousand? What measure of faith does Philip have? Is he a child of Hagar born after the flesh or a child of promise? (Gal. iv. 23) Philip answers as one in bondage to the elements of this world. (Gal. iv. 3) He responds that even two-hundred penny worth is not enough for this crowd. (St. John vi. 7) Philip is thinking in earthly terms of an earthly solution. Too many people, too little money, he conjectures. Thus, Jesus intends to reveal the smallness and poverty of Philip’s faith. His faith should be in Christ’s power to fulfill all his needs. His faith should have seen, too, that if Christ has asked whence shall we buy bread, He intended to remind Philip that God alone provides our every need and want.

Philip’s faith is small and weak because of what he does not have. Andrew’s faith is small and weak because of what they do have. There is a young lad who hath five barley loaves and two fishes, but what are they among so many? (St. John vi. 9) To offer so little to so many makes a mockery of hunger. Andrew says there’s not enough. Andrew’s faith is as small and weak as Philip’s.
         
True faith and spiritual contemplation are always tempted to distraction over earthly things. We postmoderns spend far too little time in prayer, Bible reading, or contemplation. Jesus tells us to sit down, listen, and think. He asks us to remember that we are going up to Jerusalem, that we are dogs eating from the crumbs that fall from His table. (St. Matt. xv. 27) Crumbs will be more than enough. We only need a little food to strengthen us on our spiritual journey. We must not only hear the Word of God but keep it. (St. Luke xi. 28) Jesus says sit down. (St. John vi. 10) With the disciples, we must obey the Master.

And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. (Ibid, 11) 
 
Thanks for what seems to be so little is essential. What Christ gives to us will be more than sufficient to satisfy our hunger.  Andrew’s poverty will become Philip’s plenty. If we have faith, something small will be more than enough to keep us journeying to the Kingdom. 

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field. Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. (St. Matthew xiii. 31,32) 
 
If our faith is like a small mustard seed, and if we plant it in our hearts, it will greatly support us through the whole of life. Jesus says, gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost. (St. John vi. 12) Mustard seed faith feeds us and provides leftovers. The children of Hagar, living in bondage to the elements of this world (Gal. iv. 3) perceive only the smallness of mustard seeds, loaves, and fishes. They are like Christians whose faith is feeble, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, who mind earthly things. (Phil. iii. 19) and will not trust Christ to provide all that is needed for salvation.

Faith’s nourishment is food for men wayfaring. As St. Hilary suggests, the substance [of the five barley loaves and two fishes] progressively increases. (The Passing of the Law: St. Hilary of Poitiers) Faith’s food is God’s love in Jesus Christ, which is never exhausted but continues to multiply itself in the hearts of those who believe. If we allow it, Christ’s love will feed our souls. He will feed our faith and cause it to grow. The seed of faith will embrace Christ’s all-powerful spiritual love. His love intends always to fortify and strengthen that faith that must follow Him up to Jerusalem, which is above, and is free. (Gal. iv. 26)
         
Faith feeds on and trusts in Christ’s continuous provision. Faith begins to acquire a taste for God’s love. In the fragments that remain are hidden gifts of mystic meaning. But, of course, if we persist in our addiction to material things, the earthly food and drink, clothing, riches, and treasures that perish, we are in real trouble. Not only will we, the proverbial children of Hagar, fail in spiritual things, but we will also be damned for want of greater faith in a higher love. Jerusalem, which is above, is free and the mother of us all. The hard question we must ask ourselves today is this: Are we intent upon reaching God’s Kingdom, and will we do what we must to get there? To get there, we must have faith in Jesus. To get there, we must grow this faith. To get there, we must be fed chiefly from Jesus’ hand, with spiritual food. To get there, we must begin to see that the fragments and crumbs of earthly food are enough. What we want is an increase of spiritual nourishment that strengthens our souls for digesting what comes next in our Lenten journey.
Amen. 
©wjsmartin
 
 
 
 

 
Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the Word of God, and keep it.
St. Luke xi.
 
In last Sunday’s Gospel, we read about the kind of humility and faith that find freedom from the Devil. A Syrophoenician woman besought the Lord for the healing of her daughter, who was grievously vexed with a devil. (St. Matthew xv. 22) In confessing who and what she was, the good lady expressed that faith that secures the redemptive power in Jesus Christ. She confessed herself to be a dog in relation to God’s people. Her humility and faith revealed her need for God’s Grace. Today, our faith becomes situated more soundly in God’s Grace as we begin to understand the true nature of our demons.

In this morning’s Gospel, we read that Jesus had cast a demon out of a dumb (or mute) man, and the dumb spake. (St. Luke xi. 14) The Devil controls those who are deaf and mute. Yet no sooner had Jesus healed the dumb-mute man, than a crowd of bystanders exclaimed that Jesus had cast out the demon through Beelzebub the chief of the devils. (Idem, 16) The Ancients believed that physical handicaps were divine punishment for demonic possession. That some who witnessed the miracle judged that Jesus was in league with the Devil should not surprise us. If healing could not be proved to come from God alone, Ancient Man concluded superstitiously that the Devil was up to his old tricks. Men who disbelieve and do not understand God’s power tend to blame everything on Satan.
        
The problem is that most men do not understand the nature of prayer. Most men live on the outside of themselves and thus judge a world around them without giving much thought to the spiritual world in relation to their souls. Unlike last week’s Syrophoenician woman, they never come round to seeing themselves as strangers to God’s Promises and unworthy of His Grace because of their sin. Unlike today’s deaf-mute man, they do not so much as pray to God in secret that the God who seeth in secret shall reward them openly. (St. Matthew vi. 4) Most men never ask that they might receive, seek that they might find, or knock that it might be opened to them. (St. Luke xi. 9) As a result, they are unaccustomed to God’s Grace. So, in today’s Gospel, as absurd as it might seem, they demand a sign from heaven, or another miracle, to prove that God alone is in Jesus casting out our demons.
        
The Syrophoenician Woman of last week’s Gospel becomes today’s deaf-mute man. Because the deaf man cannot hear, he cannot speak. His impediment separates him from the world of words. Unlike last week’s Syrophoenician Woman, he can neither confess that he is a dog nor reveal his need. His suffering and prayer are incommunicable to all other men. His fellow Jews judge him to be suffering because of his sins. Only when Jesus comes upon him to answer his prayer does the dumb speak, no doubt behaving like an infant child who rejoices when he is at last able to connect with the created order through newfound words.

The deaf-mute man’s prayer is heard by God. God responds to him in Jesus Christ. He is no sooner healed by Jesus than he senses some real opposition to the miracle, when the crowd says that Jesus must have been in league with Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. (idem) Next, he hears Jesus’ response.

Every kingdom divided against itself, he says, is brought to desolation. And a house divided against a house falleth. If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? (St. Luke xi. 17, 18)
 
No doubt, our liberated man understood nothing of what he heard. Jesus implies that the deaf man had been divided from God’s kingdom and lived in desolation. Because Satan was not divided against himself, with the help of his fellow demons, he ensured that this deaf man was separated from the civilized world. This man knew of his division from the world and spiritual desolation. That he had miraculously been carried into a world of potential goodness was no doubt the clearest truth presented to his newly liberated senses. Satan’s singular intention was to keep him deaf and mute. Jesus of Nazareth intends to free him. But though the healed man does not yet understand, he now hears and can begin to try to comprehend Jesus’ words.

With the miracle, our sufferer might have wondered why the bystanders were creating such chaotic and irrational confusion. We read that Jesus knew their thoughts. (ibid, xi. 17) Jesus confronted the irrational malice and envy of the crowd, who seemed bent on remaining deaf to Jesus’ part in the miracle.  If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges. (ibid, 19) If Beelzebub had cast out the demonic spirit, such goodness must have come from Satan. But why would Satan want to heal anyone and bring goodness to life? No, Satan is not pleased with the deaf man’s healing. So Satan, rather, finds new friends in the malicious and skeptical crowd.

But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. (ibid, 20) Christ insists that the finger of God alone enables a man to hear and then to learn language that will lead to understanding. So, the demons, united with Satan, would try to undermine the deaf man’s healing with confusion and division. If Satan couldn’t prevent the healing, he would fill the crowd with malice and ill will intent upon turning the deaf man against Jesus. The Jews who were deaf to Jesus and listening to the Devil were claiming that Jesus’ Spirit was destroying the deaf man’s soul.
But Jesus will show us that the deaf man, who was originally secure in Satan’s grip, was now being released from it.

When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace: But when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils. (St. Luke xi. 21, 22)
 
The Devil and his friends have desired that all fallen men should be deaf to God’s Word. Some will be literally deaf, like today’s deaf man, and others will be spiritually deaf, like the hard-hearted crowd. The Devil tries to convince all men that there is no freedom from his power. But Jesus here implies that a stronger than he has come down from Heaven and upon him. Satan is like a strong man who keeps his palace in peace, undisturbed and unchallenged. Think of how sin so often seems to have us in the Devil’s grip so that we don’t think that there is any way to be freed from it. But what if a stronger than he, Jesus Christ, has conquered him, taken away his armour, and divided his spoils? What if Christ has come into the world to free us from Satan the strong man where the Devil’s victory becomes his defeat?

The deaf-mute man has been healed by Jesus Christ. But what of the malicious crowd who could not hear Jesus? Jesus says that

when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. (ibid, xi. 24-26)
 
The crowd of Jews thought that they were purified and made clean by the Law that united them to God. For four hundred years their religion had gone unchallenged, and their spiritual house was swept and garnished. They had come to believe that they were more righteous than sinners, like the deaf man. Unlike the deaf man, the Jews didn’t think that they needed God’s strong man. They saw unclean spirits come and go. They walked through dry, empty places, sought rest, and finding none, returned to their own houses. They saw no good in the temptations that come to every earnest believer in the wilderness. So now, they were vulnerable to seven other spirits more wicked than [themselves]. The bystanders’ unclean spirits had merely gone out, preparing to enter yet again. The danger for the crowd (and religious people in all ages) is always much worse since they find no rest on dry and empty days in the wilderness. So, the last state of them will be worse than the first. (idem)

This morning the Word and Son of God made man, Jesus Christ, puts His finger on our problem, and desires to cast out all our demons. The true miracle we must seek today is that, with St. Paul, we realize that we were sometimes darkness, but now…are light in the Lord. (Eph. V. 8) With the deaf-mute man, though we don’t yet understand, we have seen the light. The goodness that Jesus brings to the deaf man should become our goodness, or what we seek out habitually. With the dumb-mute man of today’s Gospel, let us believe that Christ’s light alone can carry us out of darkness. But let us also be vigilant and conscientious about embracing God’s goodness. Whenever Christ delivers us from Satan, he exorcises our souls. Every act of Christ’s healing is a moment that should trigger our gratitude with determination to live and grow in His light and goodness, as we learn to say yes to His powerful redemption.
Amen.
©wjsmartin    

 
Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.
(St. Matthew xv. 27)
        
Last week, we studied Satan’s temptations of Jesus Christ and Christ’s rejection of them. In rejecting the evil and cleaving to the good, Christ revealed to us who He must be in order to redeem and save us. We learned that if Christ was to save us, He must be the Son of God made Man. This, in turn, means that He must embrace our human condition and fight sin as one of us. This week we shall learn of our powerlessness over sin and how we need Christ to conquer it in us. Only the humility of the Son of God made Man can deliver us from the Devil’s hold over us.

This morning, we read in the Gospel that Our Lord Jesus Christ comes to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, (St. Matthew 15. 21) to the borders of the pagan Gentile world. Jesus will approach non-Jewish territory and call sinners out of it. Christ is drawn to the borders of heathen territories. Christ is drawn to the world of the non-elect. Today, He had just preached to His own Jewish people about how sin originates in man’s heart and soul. He said, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. (St. Matthew xv. 8) Jesus’ Jewish brethren maintained the Old Testament Law through meticulous religious observance. Outwardly and visibly, they were pious. But inwardly and spiritually, their hearts were far from Him.         

So, the Spirit leads Jesus away from His own people. A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, among his own kin, and in his own house. (St. Mark vi. 4) A Syrophoenician woman, a Greek inhabitant of Canaan, an alien and foreigner to Israel’s promises, needs Jesus. In a foreign land she had heard word that the Jews had brought those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatics to Jesus for healing. (St. Matthew 4. 24) She had heard that Jesus’ cures were instantaneously efficacious, and she was determined to have them also. But Jesus own people were thankless and ignorant. So Jesus finds relief in a foreigner. She approaches Him. We read that she cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. (St. Matthew 15. 22) She comes from afar not for herself but for her daughter. She bears the burden of her daughter’s misery.

But we read that Jesus answered her not a word. (Ibid, 23) Jesus is silent. St. John Chrysostom writes: The Word has no word; the fountain is sealed; the physician withholds His remedies. (Homily LII: Vol X, NPNF:I) Jesus looks into her heart and would hear more from this amazing woman.
The Apostles clearly cannot see what Jesus is doing. While they have been with Him for some time and have witnessed what He can do, they prefer to hoard Him selfishly, so that seeing, they see, and do not perceive. (St. Mark 4. 12) Like the pious in every age, they are consumed with what Jesus can do for them and not others. So, they exclaimed, Send her away, for she crieth after us. (St. Matthew 15, 23) The woman has interrupted the Apostles’ spiritual experience of Jesus. They see the woman only as a nuisance and pest. They have no compassion or love, and especially for this heathen foreigner. Jesus ignores them. He is fascinated with this Greek woman. Jesus will be swift to hear and slow to speak. (St. James i. 19) Christ must be silent, as we know only too well, so that we might bring our complaints to Him.

At first Jesus responds, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. (St. Matthew 15. 24) In St. Mark’s Gospel, He says, Let the children first be filled. (St. Mark 7. 27) In both, He means that He has come down from Heaven first to the Jews, the Children of Promise. But Jesus, the Great Physician, is drawn into the Gentile’s healing also. The children have already been filled to no avail. Jesus moves out to a world beyond Israel. Christ has come to the border of this woman’s nation for a reason. She is honored and blessed. When Christ finds us, we must discern that He comes for a reason and on a mission.

Remember, this woman seeks not bodily healing but the restoration of her daughter’s sick soul. This supplicant is a woman of character. She knows that sin emerges from the heart. She knows that her daughter is in the grips of the Devil. She has no power of herself to help herself. (Collect, Lent II) She does not seek out superficial cures to bodily diseases but would have an exorcism. So, we read, then came she and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, help me. (St. Matthew 15.25) Christ’s silence does not destroy her faith but rather emboldens it with zeal and ardor. Nothing short of the Lord of Life can save her daughter from spiritual death.

Jesus is first silent and then rubs salt into her wound. Jesus says: It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. (St. Matthew 15. 26) He calls her a dog, the ancient Jews’ slander of the Gentiles. Had she been bereft of all faith, Christ wouldn’t have said it. He is determined to elicit her faith from her heart. He is going to show us how we all must become as servile dogs to Him as our master. We must all learn our own low place with meekness and humility. 
         
Jesus calls her a dog, and she responds calmly but firmly. Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. (St. Matthew 15. 27) She is humble and courageous. She will accept Jesus’ severe mercy and hard love. If she cannot be a lost sheep of the House of Israel, she will be a dog. She knows that she is a sick dog who needs the Physician’s medicine. More so, she thinks that she must be a stray dog, who has been found by her true Master. Jesus came to her, for she was not able to come to Him. He found her and not the reverse. She may not be able to eat with the Lord at His table in the Kingdom, but she will sit at His feet as a dog who catches the crumbs. The crumbs will be more than enough to heal her daughter. She has a small petition, drive the demons from my daughter’s soul. She needs only a small blessing. Fragments and crumbs will suffice. 
         
Had the woman been entitlement-minded and arrogant, she would have gone off in a huff. Rather, she storms the Gates of Heaven with humility. Jesus says, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. (St. Matthew 15. 28) In the end, this woman recognizes Jesus as the Son of God. Whatever the Lord says, she will obey. Though His medicine stings and hurts ever so much, she will take it for her own good and that of her daughter. Jesus came to her for a reason, and she will have whatever portion of His Grace she is allotted. In faith, she believed that Jesus need speak the word only and [her daughter] would be healed. (St. Matthew viii. 8) St. Mark writes that when the woman was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed. (St. Mark 7. 30) 
         
St. Augustine reminds us that [Christ] the Good Physician gives pain, it is true, but He only gives pain, that He might bring the patient on to health. If He did not give pain,
He would do no good. (Idem) Jesus reminds us that we are dogs, and our faith must make the best of it. Christ comes down from Heaven to diagnose our condition and provide the cure. He will elicit our confession –Yes, Lord, we are dogs. Matthew Henry warns us that there is nothing got by contradicting any word of Christ, though it bear ever so hard upon us. But this poor woman, since she cannot object against it, resolves to make the best of it. ‘Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs…. (Comm. Matt. xv.) 

With the example of the Syrophoenician’s faith and humility, let us confess that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. (Collect, Lent II) Let us beg deliverance from our demons, or from all evil thoughts that may assault and hurt the soul. (Idem) Let us abandon the lust of concupiscence in the Gentiles who know not God. (1 Thes. i. 3) Jesus longs to find a faith that will secure His mercy, come what may. Let us all admit that we are dogs. He calls us out as dogs because God calls us not to uncleanness, but unto holiness. (Idem) The faithful dog forever needs his master and will serve him for the whole of his life. So, my fellow dogs, let us remember that loyalty to Jesus alone will save us from the Devil.   
Amen.
©wjsmartin