Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent
Have mercy on me, O Lord
Lent is one long Kyrie eleison, we might say, one long “Lord, have mercy upon us”. It reminds us that seeking mercy is an essential aspect of prayer, an essential feature of the Christian faith itself, a confessional mode that belongs to something profoundly positive. Nowhere is that more powerfully seen than in this Gospel story about our need for mercy.
A woman from outside of Israel – Matthew says “a Canaanite woman,” Mark, “a Greek, Syro-Phoenician by birth,” in either case the point is clear, she is from outside of Israel – comes to Jesus seeking a healing mercy for her daughter, “grievously vexed with a devil,” disturbed in her mind in some sense, we would say. It is her quest for mercy that undergirds the whole scene, at once troubling and wonderful.
The point is very simple, yet I am quite aware of how disturbing this story is for people. What is all about? It is about an essential aspect of prayer, namely, the drawing out of us what in fact God seeks for us. There is no story more disturbing and yet more wonderful than this story. This woman from outside of Israel is put to the test about what it truly means to be an Israelite and she shows us exactly that. Jacob striving or wrestling with God becomes Israel, one who strives with God. This Canaanite woman is the embodiment of what it means to strive with God.
She hangs in there in the face of silence, rebuke, and insult. Why? Because she has a hold of the very principle upon which the desire for mercy completely depends. She senses in Christ the only answer to her dilemma about her daughter. What she grasps intuitively, or better intellectually, is the wonder of the story because like the blind man on the roadside begging, she is insistent. She won’t let go of what she has a hold of.
This troubles us because we would like to domesticate divinity, making God subject to human goals and purposes. Just give us what we want, what we may even think we are owed, even entitled. As if God owes us. She comes to Jesus, to be sure, with a very specific request but her insight into the truth of God in Jesus is far greater. Because of her insight, she holds on in the face of the torrent of testing. “Truth Lord,” she says, finally and with great prophetic insight, “yet even the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ tables.”
Her opening plea for mercy and her closing statement are intimately connected. You can’t have one without the other. That she hangs in and perseveres and does so with directness and courage is the great wonder of the Gospel. It teaches us something about the nature of the Christian Faith. It is about our working with the grace of God. It is something active and alive. Christ is alive in her, we might say, strange as that may seem.
