A Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Johanna S. Morrigan
Isaiah 56: 1-7
Romans 11: 13-15,29-32
Matthew 15: 21-28
Psalm 67
What wonderful lessons we have this morning! They are so rich with the great love and compassion and mercy of the living God that I found myself pulled in several different directions as I was trying to write this sermon.
I heard in them the great inclusivity of God - that all of God's children are adored by God. Isaiah tells us that God will gather all of God's children to God's house of prayer - even the eunuchs who were at that time excluded from all worship, and the foreigners, who, of course were also excluded. In Romans we read, "God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that God may be merciful to all!" In our Psalm this morning we hear that God's saving power is to be known among all the nations. And finally, in Matthew, Jesus blesses and grants the petition of a woman - a woman who is a Canaanite. The Canaanites were the ancestral enemies of the Jews - loathed and despised by God's chosen people.
As I reviewed all of these passages, it was to the persistent Canaanite woman that I found myself consistently drawn. For it seemed to me that this woman - who represented the powerless and despised of her day: powerless because she was a woman in a world where women were accorded no status; and despised because she was a Canaanite - this woman seemed to me to have a great deal to teach us about the incredible power of prayer.
Now I have to confess that I find myself a bit uncomfortable with that phrase - "the power of prayer." It sounds a little too much like something I might hear at a revival tent meeting, mingled with hellfire and brimstone sermons. And being a good Episcopalian, I expect things to be rather more sedate - and above all, reasonable. I prefer phrases like, "He came to take away your sin, not your mind."
But despite all of that, I plunged on, feeling pulled by the obstinate persistence of this Canaanite woman who had captured my imagination. After all, she didn't seem to mind that she must have looked foolish, and was obviously annoying Jesus' disciples a great deal.
And I don't know about each of you, but I certainly struggle with my prayer life, often wondering if it makes any difference anyway - recalling the hundreds of times in my life when I've heard the phrase. "It's God's will" - and thinking, then what is the point of praying? If God has already decided what is going to happen, then what on earth or in heaven does God want us to pray for? Yet, clearly if the Canaanite woman had surrendered to such fatalistic beliefs, I seriously doubt that her daughter would have been healed.
And did this heathen woman even really know how to pray when she first approached Jesus? In the story, when she first appealed to him, she called Jesus Son of David. Now this is a political title. It recognized Jesus as a great and powerful wonder worker - but still saw him only in terms of earthly power. She approached him as only a man - rather like a celebrated magician.
And Jesus ignored her. The disciples, disgusted with her shouting, pleaded with Jesus to please just send her away. And Jesus did acknowledge that she was not part of the lost sheep of Israel for whom he had been sent. It looked pretty hopeless at this point. It would have been a reasonable time to latch onto that phrase - alas, it is God's will - what a shame!
But the Canaanite woman did no such thing. She didn't slink away in grief and despair trying to somehow find comfort in the tragic affliction of her daughter by deciding it was God's will. Instead she planted herself on her knees right in Jesus' way. She was not going to be ignored. And this time, she did not call him Son of David - she called him Lord - and by so doing she began to deepen the possibility of faith and understanding beyond just earthly power and reason.. And this time Jesus responded to her - although he still seemed unlikely to grant her request.
After all, his remark, "It is not right to take the children's bread, and throw it to the dogs" - seemed pretty insulting on the face of it. In that day, Jews commonly insulted Gentiles by calling them dogs, comparing them to the half-wild, often savage dogs that roamed the streets and fought over the garbage of the cities and villages. One might have expected the woman to have surely given up at this point. But she didn't.........she didn't even budge. She didn't skip a beat - perhaps because she had listened, she had listened very carefully to Jesus' reply. And in so doing, she had no doubt recognized that Jesus had used the diminutive word for dogs - kuneria (koo-ner`-ee-a). This word in the Greek refers not to the miserable strays of the streets, but to little household pet dogs which were pampered and loved. She recognized his love expressed in that word, kuneria, and responded to its touch - for this time she addressed Jesus not just as Lord, but as True Lord. She had come to her knees, her request had become a prayer, and she reminded the one True Lord that even the lowly have the right to expect to be nourished from God's table. And Jesus was delighted and overjoyed. A heathen woman had been willing to embrace the Good News of Jesus, the Christ. And in so doing, had obtained the full restoration of her daughter to her.
Wow! What a story!
This is one very gutsy and stubborn lady. If she didn't get what she needed the first time, or the second time - she didn't give up. She chose to persist. It didn't matter if it took longer, or if she had been annoying his disciples, or if she might have been creating a scene or looking foolish - she just kept at it. And in doing that she gave Jesus the time he needed to waken within her the spark of the divine which God planted within all of God's children - the spark that enabled her to realize that her request of a great man must be turned into a passionate prayer to the living God. She began by following after a man with a request, and ended up on her knees in prayer and worship of the one True God.
She had a choice. She could have turned away, failing to recognize her Lord - failing to follow him - failing to discover the Good News. But she didn't. She chose to persist, even when the circumstances strongly suggested that it was not only unreasonable and foolish, but perhaps even dangerous - After all this one heathen woman was calling out to a Jewish man surrounded by 12 other Jewish men.
Just like this Canaanite woman, we here at Our Saviour's have a choice. We are facing the unknown as we are working to develop a whole new way of ministering to God's people. The old ways are far more comfortable - but they don't seem to be working anymore. We are uncertain; we will probably look foolish to our neighbors - after all walking around the church yard with willow sticks and beating on the ground must have looked pretty peculiar. We have a choice. We can persist in our foolishness. We can approach God day after day, Sunday after Sunday with our stubborn petitions and passionate prayers for the restoration of health, life, and growth to this wonderful old church. We can listen carefully to God's word - and we can worship God with the passion of the Canaanite woman who would not be deterred until God saw her, listened, and blessed her faith.
Or we can become discouraged and dissuaded by the very real distraction of our situation - dwindling finances, water damage in the basement, small numbers, and burned-out leaders - and we can drift away, shaking our heads and murmuring, "It's God's will. What a shame."
Max Lucado beautifully captures the divine in the meaning of choice. Let me share it with you........
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The Creator placed one scoop of clay upon another until a form lay lifeless on the ground.... All were silent as the Creator reached in the Creator's self and removed something yet unseen. "It's called ‘choice.' The seed of choice." Creation stood in silence and gazed upon the lifeless form. An angel spoke, "But what if this new creation......" "What if this new creation chooses not to love?" the Creator finished. "Come, I will show you." Unbound by today, God and the angel walked into the realm of tomorrow.... The angel gasped at what she saw. Spontaneous love. Voluntary devotion. Never had the angel seen anything like these....The angel stood speechless as they as they passed through centuries of repugnance. Never had she seen such filth. Rotten hearts. Ruptured promises. Forgotten loyalties... The Creator walked on in time, further and further into the future, until God stood by a tree. A tree that would be fashioned into a cradle. Even then God could smell the hay that would surround God's self. "Wouldn't it be easier not to plant the seed? Wouldn't it be easier to not give the choice?" "It would," the Creator spoke slowly. "But to remove the choice is to remove the love." ...They stepped into the Garden again. The Maker looked earnestly at the clay creation. A monsoon of love swelled up within God. God had died for this creation before God had made it. God's form bent over the sculptured face and breathed. Dust stirred on the lips of the new one. The chest rose, cracking the red mud. The cheeks fleshened. A finger moved. And an eye opened. But more incredible than the moving of the flesh was the stirring of the spirit. Those who could see the unseen gasped. Perhaps it was the wind who said it first. Perhaps what the star saw that moment is what has made it blink ever since. Maybe it was left to an angel to whisper it: "It looks like...it appears much like...it is the creator!" The angel wasn't speaking of the face, the features, or the body. The angel was looking inside - at the soul. "It's eternal!" gasped another. Within the human, God had placed a divine seed. A seed of God's self. The God of might had created earth's mightiest. The creator had created, not a creature, but another creator. And the One who had chosen to love had created one who could love in return. Now it's our choice.
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This story is an excerpt from Max Lucado's "In the Eye of the Storm"