Lent II

 
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