Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

admin | 16 March 2025

“O woman, great is thy faith”

The encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman is an arresting and compelling scene and yet, equally, a most disquieting and disturbing one. She “asks, knocks, and seeks,” we might say, but what does it take to receive? It means, it seems, at the very least, a remarkable kind of perseverance and depth of soul. It reveals nothing less than the power and the truth of faith.

The woman comes to Jesus with a request for the healing of her daughter “grievously vexed with a devil.” There are a number of healing stories in the Gospels but rather few about the healing of the mind or the soul. Like this story, they are about demonic influence and possession. This is not to be mocked or derided but appreciated in its power and truth. And what is that power and truth? The power and truth of what opposes the power and truth of God and the image of that power and truth in us. The point is that we can be overtaken in our very selves in various ways. This story touches upon ancient wisdom and human psychology.

What is equally remarkable is that she is a Canaanite woman, meaning one who is outside the households and tribes of Israel. The marvel of the story is that she who is from outside of Israel is in truth “an Israelite indeed,” meaning one who truly strives with God, emphasis on the word ‘with’, not ‘against’. Her question to Jesus is not for herself but for her daughter. She is, and this is key to the story, quite determined in her quest. She has a hold of a truth in Jesus which she will not relinquish. At least on one level this is a story about perseverance, about holding on in the face of adversity, about trust and faith.

What is so disturbing, and yet so profound is how she is answered in her request. First, there is no response – “he answered her not a word”- there is only silence. Secondly, there is rejection – “send her away, for she crieth after us”, say the disciples. Thirdly, there is refusal – “I am not sent”, says Jesus, “but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And fourthly, there is repudiation – “It is not right to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.” What could be more devastating, more disparaging, more discouraging than that?

Only at this point of utter humiliation as it must seem, when we are speechless with shock at the harshness of it all, is there the beginnings of the complete turn-around of grace that leads to the ultimate exaltation – “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” It is not simply about a kind of stubborn willfulness on her part. She gets what she seeks only because of her insight into the truth of Christ. How do we know that? Only through the struggle. That is perhaps the real lesson for us. The struggle matters. The struggle is nothing less than the struggle of faith. She who is from outside of Israel symbolizes the very truth and meaning of Israel. It means striving with God.

Jacob wrestling with God becomes Israel, one who strives with God. Such is the meaning and the vocation of Israel, but it is meant for us all. This woman breaks into the household of Israel, we may say, if only like the little dogs “to eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.” Jesus had even referred to her as a dog – “it is not right to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.” How harsh it seems! Yet she goes one step further; not just dogs, but “little dogs”, she says. She breaks into the household of Israel to claim her place at the table, or at least under and around the table, just like “the little dogs who eat the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.” It is a remarkable image of humility. But in saying this she breaks through into something more than the household of Israel. She breaks through into the heart of Jesus. Her will is at one with his but only through the struggle.

The struggle is hard but necessary, necessary for faith, necessary for a true understanding of God and ourselves. What operates here is not just an insistence upon what we want, as if our desires were justified simply by virtue of the strength of our desiring, trusting in the rightness of what we think we want or think we are owed, as it were. The lesson here is not that the more you scream the more likely you’ll get what you want. Nor is it the lie, so often told, that if you want something strong enough you’ll get it. No. What is present here is a perception of the truth, the truth that what we want and all that is ever to be wanted is to be found in Jesus Christ. What primarily operates here is her faith in Jesus.

She didn’t come waving the Charter of Rights in Jesus’ face with a rabble of lawyers seeking to indict God for injustices to humanity. She didn’t come wringing her hands, singing the poor-me’s and whining that life’s not fair as if competing in the victim sweepstakes. She came seeking mercy, to be sure, but she came strongly, not pitifully. “Lord, help me,” she says while kneeling before Jesus. But it is on her knees that she responds to his final word of repudiation with her great words of faith. Her humility results in her exaltation. Such is faith. God “giveth grace unto the humble,” even abundant grace.

The kingdom of heaven is taken by storm by us, yes, but only because God wills it. This woman breaks into the heart of Jesus because he wills that it should be so. She breaks in because she has been drawn out. Her faith has been brought out into the open and “great is [her] faith.” That is the lesson; that is the point. She gets Jesus’ attention because he has her attention, her complete and undivided attention. She attends to his every word. The struggle is in the dialogue. “Truth, Lord; yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs,” she says, while on her knees, to which Jesus says, “O woman, great is thy faith.”

It might seem harsh and mean-spirited, a hard lesson, at the very least. God might seem to be some sort of mean tyrant before whom we must grovel on our knees, if not on our faces. Such a God is not a God worth believing in. To get the full force of this story we need to realize that there is another side which is at work here. The perseverance in faith of this remarkable woman is matched by the divine will for our salvation. Her humiliation is matched by his humiliation.

We see this at the cross through the eyes of another Gentile – the centurion. His words, too, are great words of faith. They, too, have to be drawn out of him, but through the breaking open of the heart of Jesus crucified. The Word of God is silenced on the cross. It is our response to his presence with us. It is our rejection of his words to us. It is our refusal of his will for us. It is our repudiation of the truth of God. And yet, at that moment of utter humiliation and shame, before the presence of Christ crucified and hanging dead on the Cross, there arises out of the centurion those quiet but exultant words of faith, that “truly this was the Son of God.”

We are always meant to find ourselves in the Scriptures, learning something about ourselves in the revelation of God to us in his making known of himself. The lessons for us are often varied and in accord with the different aspects of our own personalities, our own strengths and weaknesses. At the very least in this story we are bidden to reflect on the necessity and the significance of persevering in faith and prayer. This is the humility that lifts us up and places us in the suffering and the glory of Christ.

Like this Canaanite woman, we come seeking God’s mercy and grace. It is about our breaking into the heart of Jesus who wills that we should do so both for ourselves and for one another. We come humbly, not arrogantly. We come humbly on our knees, not as grovelling in self-pity and pretense but in the honest humility of our faith, seeking from God what he wills to give us, at once in the sacrament of the body broken and the blood outpoured of his only Son and in the comfort and challenge of his Word.

We come recalling exactly the words of this woman which gives shape to our prayer, the Prayer of Humble Access. For “we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table.” Do we have the humility to see ourselves like the dogs, even the little dogs of God’s creation? To recognize the sheer grace of God and his will for us is the exaltation of humility.

The Prayer of Humble Access articulates in faith the truth which this woman knew in faith, that “thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.” This is the truth which the centurion knew in the presence of the crucified Christ, that “truly this was the Son of God.” We come like them in the struggle of faith, humbly yet exultantly in penitential adoration, “Lord, have mercy upon us.”