KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 1 March
O woman, great is your faith
The encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman is at once powerful and instructive. It belongs to the spiritual pilgrimage of Lent and to the journey of education. Three words illuminate its power and meaning: faith, humility, and perseverance. At first glance it is a disturbing story but one which ultimately turns on the idea of self-criticism; a criticism of the assumption that we can constrain or limit God to our little groups and identities. Self-criticism is a feature of the religions and philosophies of the world.
This is highlighted here by the setting. Jesus departs “into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon” even as she comes out of that land of the Gentiles. She is a Canaanite, meaning that she is a non-Israelite. She sees something universal in Jesus that transcends the limitations of any one culture. It is an insight into the infinite mercies of God that arises out of the context of her finite situation and concerns. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David,” she says. But her concern is not simply for herself. “My daughter is grievously vexed with a devil,” deeply troubled in mind and soul. The troubles of the daughter are the worries of the mother; they always are.
I cannot think of this story without being reminded of “the Sorrow Songs” in W.E.B. Dubois’ great classic, “The Souls of Black Folks,”written in 1903. Dubois was a seminal figure in the Afro-American world and notes that these folk songs are “the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas” … “the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro spirit.” The Sorrow Songs are an important feature of his work for they give expression to the experiences of the Afro-Americans under slavery and yet reveals that “through the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes hope – a faith in the ultimate justice of things.” This is exactly what we see in this remarkable woman. She has faith in what she sees in Christ that enables her to face all that is thrown at her: silence, rebuke, and rejection. She has a faith in the ultimate justice of Jesus which is the infinite mercy of God.
Like the Sorrow Songs, we see in her a kind of “soul-hunger,” “an infinite longing for peace,” a yearning for “some unseen power and sign for rest in the End.”
