Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost                                            August 17, 2008

Genesis 45:1-15   Romans 11:13-32    Matthew 15:21-28

 

In our Gospel reading, we hear of the only occasion in which Jesus fails to respond to someone who calls to him for help. He simply remains silent when a foreign woman appeals to him to heal her sick daughter. The story contains further disagreeable surprises. Firstly, the woman is called a "Canaanite": a calculated insult on the part of Matthew the Gospel writer. He does this to recall the stories of the Canaanites of the Old Testament, who were frequently charged by the prophets and history writers with idol worship and the sacrifice of their children. Her public cries to Jesus for help are a source of embarrassment to the disciples, who ask Jesus to send her away. Jesus adds his own insult to the disagreeable scene. The woman falls on her knees before Jesus in an attitude of profound humility to plead with him anew. While she is in this position, Jesus calls the Canaanite woman `a dog'. The woman accepts Jesus' insult, and, still on her knees, pleads for any crumbs which she, an unworthy dog, could eat as they fall from the masters' table. Only then does Jesus respond to her with a compliment: "O woman, great is your faith!" Jesus finishes by granting her request, and her daughter is healed.

 

It would be a mistake to interpret this story as a typical example of an exclusionist Jewish rabbi rejecting an impure foreign woman. One can say this in favor of the inclusion of such a strange story in the Bible: this realistic incident brings us face to face with the misunderstandings, the rejection and the violence that exists in all the world's religions. During the past week, I have been reading a book entitled: At the entrance to the Garden of Eden by Yossi Klein Halevi. It is the story of the Jewish author's attempt to establish a climate of hope between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land. The subject is a terribly sensitive one. Perhaps nowhere on earth are tensions between the world's three monotheisms as extreme as in modern day Israel and Palestine. The author speaks frankly about the Jew's fear of Christians and Muslims.  He talks about his fear of the Christian cross.  He recounts conversations in which Christians show their hatred of Islam. He speaks of his personal involvement in a violent episode in the Gaza strip that revealed to him the depth of hatred that Muslim Arabs feel towards the Jews. He is painfully frank about the role that Religion has played in the past and continues to play in the present in fostering violence and perpetuating ignorance and fear.

 

But it is also clear that he loves those who, like himself, find in religion a potential source of real peace and security. He tells the story of a French woman called Gabrielle, born to a Protestant family in Northern France, who becomes a nun and now lives with the community of the Beatitudes; a monastic community which is struggling to foster peace between Christianity and Judaism. Halevi doesn't offer a recipe for peace between religions, but makes the point that true peace begins where argument ceases, and we join each other in worship - especially the worship of the mystics of the three traditions.

 

He believes that the slow increment of prayers for peace and small acts to further understanding, (perhaps over centuries), will eventually lead to reconciliation. Just as centuries of Jewish prayers to return to the Holy Land were only answered late in the twentieth century after the Holocaust.

 

This is the story in miniature of today's Gospel. Jesus seems to have a change of heart when the woman's persistence finally brings her to the edge of desperation. It is very appropriate that the miracle that Jesus performs is one of healing; and healing from the ill effects of an evil spirit. No where is that sort of healing more necessary than between the communities of the world divided by religion, race or culture. St. Esprit is the world in miniature. We attempt to live in a community which is capable of showing others what Jesus' love can do to our broken world. There is much that we do not say to each other; many histories that we do not share. Perhaps we are afraid of being misunderstood. Perhaps we are afraid of provoking a terrible argument. If this is the case, today's reading should give us hope. Jesus is capable of resolving those tensions, because he resolved them in himself. He is always at hand, ready to heal those places in our lives where prejudice and fear have kept us from recognizing his face in the faces of those amongst whom we live.  

 

The Revd. Nigel Massey.