Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

admin | 25 February 2024

“O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.”

What do we want? Do we really know? This Gospel story speaks directly to those realities and concerns. The Prayer of Humble Access in our liturgy captures the essence of this Gospel story in its application to our lives in our wilderness pilgrimage to God.

We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord; Trusting in our own righteousness, But in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy So much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, Whose property is always to have mercy…

We pray this as a necessary part of our preparation and approach to the Sacrament. The prayer echoes explicitly the story of the Canaanite woman who approaches Jesus so resolutely and yet so humbly. But not simply for herself. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.” The troubles of the daughter are also the worries of the mother. They always are.

Two words stand here in a complementary relation. They are the words “humble” and “access”. Humility is the condition of our access to God. What the prayer expresses is a fundamental attitude of Faith. It is not our presumption – our trusting in our own righteousness, our feelings and self-certainties – but our humility; our trusting in the manifold and great mercies of God. Against all that is thrown at her, she has a hold of this one thing: the mercies of God in Jesus Christ. To have a hold of that is humility – she presumes upon nothing else. It is this that gains her access to the heart of Christ.

Humility is not the same thing as low self-esteem. It is not the whinge of ‘I can’t do that’ which really means ‘I won’t even try’. It is not the whine of the ‘poor-me’s’ which is really our grovelling for attention. Humility is not grovelling self-pity. For such things are really our presumption and pride. We demand all the attention as if we were the centre of everything. We aren’t. Humility is the recognition that Jesus is the centre and that we have access to him.

“Then came she and knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me.” There is an encounter and an engagement with Jesus. The dialogue is quite intense – even frighteningly so. But her kneeling down before him is not manipulation. It is not grovelling self-abasement. It is instead the attitude and posture of Faith. It says, in effect, that God is God and we are not. Such is humility. It is the condition of our access to God. The woman does not presume to be the centre of attention. For all her persistence, what is constant is her focus on Jesus. He has her undivided attention. She sees in him the mercies of God which she seeks. “Lord, help me.”

It is not a plaintive cry. It is the prayer of Faith. The strong sense of the mercy of God is the counter to our self-presumption and self-preoccupation. This reminds me of the humble wisdom of Armand Gamache in Louise Penny’s novels such as in “The Madness of Crowds” (2021): “‘I’m sorry’. ‘I was wrong.’ ‘I don’t know.’” and ‘I need help’.” Four sentences of which the last especially relates to the Gospel insight of this non-Israelite woman who perceives in Jesus the truth and mercy of God and will not be brushed off or dissuaded. She perseveres.

She knows that the help she needs is beyond human power but to know that is to know something more beyond the limits of our finite condition. It means an insight, a kind of humble wisdom that is open to the infinite mercies of God. But it has to be sought and her faith has to be made explicit and drawn out of her not just for what she wants but for what Jesus wants for us and for the disciples to know. That infinite mercy and grace cannot be the preserve of a few, simply “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” as it were. It must be for all, even the whole of creation; as she understands even “the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Her words are the breakthrough moment of what Christ seeks from us; our faith in his absolute goodness and mercy. Yet it is not a matter of entitlement, something which we presume is owed to us. “We are not worthy So much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table.”

She seeks a healing mercy from Jesus not for herself but for her daughter. A mother’s love is a strong and compelling motive. The sickness of a child or some other crisis in our lives will often bring us to our knees. We are rendered helpless. “We have no power of ourselves to help ourselves,” as the Collect reminds us. It would be foolish to deny this. Rather it is the wisdom of humility to know this. It is the counter to our technocratic hubris by which we think we can solve all the problems of the world, utterly blind to how such thinking is the problem.

The point of this Gospel is not that we should wait for some emergency, some crisis, whether personal or global, to bring us to our knees before God. The point of the Gospel is seen in its application for us in our lives as expressed in the Prayer of Humble Access. “Lord, help me” is a constant prayer, a daily prayer. It belongs to the constantly recurring theme of our liturgy: “Lord, have mercy upon us.” Lent especially is really one long Kyrie Eleison. The acknowledgement of our finite and limited understanding is what makes it possible to look for the all-embracing love of God’s infinite mercy.

Humility ever looks to Christ. It is our openness to him as the centre of our lives. It is the condition of our access to him. When we are presumptuous, we are full of ourselves. There is no room for God. We presume to be the centre which we are not. Humility opens us out to the mercies of God in Jesus Christ. “O Saviour of the world, who by thy Cross and precious Blood hast redeemed us; Save us, and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.”

The humility of Christ is the hope of our exaltation. He lifts us up. Humility is the condition of our access to God; thus it is also our exaltation. For in our humility our wills are one with God’s will. We are open to what he wants for us in and through the struggle by which God draws out of us what is truly to be sought by us. Only then may we hear the words which Christ says to this outstanding and strong woman of faith.