Great is Your Faith

It hasn’t been a good summer. Personally, of course, I broke my arm and had to postpone the trip to Ireland that I’d been looking forward to for so long. While I was catching up on my reading at home, I could contemplate with even greater dismay Congress’s irresponsibly descending into virtual gridlock over the debt ceiling only to finally act with hours to spare. Unfortunately, the last minute agreement didn’t stop our national bond rating from being downgraded and the stock market from going into a tailspin. On the other side of the pond, the Euro zone is falling apart, as the economies of Greece, Italy, and Portugal weaken to the point of their possibly withdrawing from the European Economic Community. In Norway Anders Bering Breivik went on a shooting rampage, killing seventy-seven people in the name of ethnic purity. Meanwhile, in the last three months 30,000 children have died of starvation in the horn of Africa, as that region suffers its worst drought in sixty years. And in the past two weeks, we’ve watched with horror as thugs and out-of-control youth trashed working class neighborhoods in London and other UK cities. It hasn’t been a good summer.

Ironically, or perhaps providentially, it’s been a wonderful summer in Scripture, and an especially rich summer in our Gospel readings. In these days of personal setbacks and troubling national and international news, we’ve had the chance to see again Matthew’s vision of Jesus as the bearer of Israel’s prophetic promises, and we’ve been able to ponder our own responses to what we’ve seen. Before I left, we looked at the role of prophets generally and our reactions to those who speak prophetic words to us. We pondered what kind of a guide Jesus is, and what kind of a yoke he lays on us. We also discovered that we can follow Jesus in continuing to fling out God’s word without concern about where the seed of the word is landing. As Jesus continued to demonstrate his prophetic powers, we pondered the wheat and weeds, and we heard him compare the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed, a pearl of great price, and a net full of fish. As Jesus bid Peter walk on the water, we perhaps sympathized with his faltering faith. Perhaps we watched with awe as Jesus concretely demonstrated God’s abundant love for us in the feeding of a great crowd.

Now Matthew gives us one more miracle to contemplate, one more chance to consider our own responses to Jesus’ prophetic role. In a way this is a strange story. Following a contentious dispute with the religious leaders, Jesus reminded his disciples that living a just and honest life is more important than following the punctilious details of the Pharisees’ religious observances. After delivering that lesson, he deliberately headed northwest into Gentile territory. One wonders: had he gotten tired of duking it out verbally with the religious leaders, or did he already have a larger purpose in mind? He was approached by a Canaanite woman. Wrong, wrong, wrong on several counts. Women did not approach men in public. They didn’t shout at them -- ever. Jews and Gentiles interacted with each other as little as possible. Worst of all, Jews and Canaanites had been enemies for centuries. No wonder the disciples urged Jesus to get rid of the Canaanite woman. Perhaps too they inwardly agreed with Jesus when he first tried to ignore her and then insulted her by disdainfully claiming to be concerned about the health of only his own ethnic community.

But the woman didn’t give a fig for these social niceties. She would not be put off. She was desperate to save her daughter, and, unlike most of the people around Jesus she was sure that Jesus had the power to relieve her daughter’s torment. So, Gentile though she was, unworthy as she may have felt herself, unwanted as she was, enemy that she was, she recognized Jesus’ messianic identity, and she called out to him loudly. She then swallowed her pride and knelt before him. She deftly replied to his insulting claim by assuring him that whatever shreds or crumbs of his power he gave her would be enough for her. She asked for what she needed, and she persisted until she received it. The Gospel writer doesn’t tell us whether Jesus had a new understanding of his mission in his encounter with this woman, or whether he’d planned all along to demonstrate the breadth of God’s saving love by healing another Gentile – in Gentile territory. But we do know that Jesus granted the Canaanite woman’s request and publicly blessed her: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

“Great is your faith!” “Great is your faith!” Is my faith great? Is yours? Is my faith passionate? Is yours? Or is our faith tepid, conventional, shallow, or even timid? Perhaps we feel unworthy even to approach Jesus, because of who we’ve been, or what we’ve done, or where we’ve been. Or perhaps we think we have no need for Jesus’ help, that our lives are going swimmingly, and we’re fine on our own. Do we care so little about the world around us that we have nothing for which we need to seek Jesus’ healing power? Or perhaps we feel that Jesus couldn’t care less about us. Do we feel silly putting our needs in front of Jesus? Do we think that modern people don’t do that anymore? We may all of us experience all these feelings and more. But, my friends, the good news is that Jesus is there for us, whoever, whatever, and wherever we are. If Matthew’s story demonstrates nothing else to us it is that there is no one who is beyond the reach of Jesus’ healing touch, no one whom Jesus can’t or won’t heal. If, like the Canaanite woman we ask, and persist in asking, God will respond. We can, as one writer has suggested, audaciously claim God’s promises.

Let me give you a more contemporary example to help you hear the good news of God’s willingness to hear us. On August 4th the Roman Catholic calendar remembered John Vianney, a parish priest known as the Curé d’Ars.1 Born in 1786 into a peasant family living near Lyons, John Vianney was the most unlikely candidate for the priesthood. Yet from a very early age, he knew the priesthood to be his vocation. By God’s grace he found a tutor who gave him the education he needed to win a place in seminary. Pulled out of seminary to serve in the army, he went into hiding. When a general amnesty was proclaimed in 1810, he resumed his seminary studies. In all honesty, he was such a weak student that his superiors hesitated to recommend him for ordination. Yet his piety and goodness, his holiness of life, and his persistence in prayer were so great that at last he was ordained at the age of twenty-nine. He became the priest he knew God had called to be. Even so, he was sent as curate to the small, supposedly insignificant village of Ars. There his life as a priest blossomed. As his deep love for his people became known, his fame as a caring confessor and spiritual counselor began to spread. Toward the end of his life, special trains were even sent to Ars to accommodate all those who sought him out. When he died in 1859, he was one of the most beloved figures in France. Yet despite his fame, he remained focused on drawing those who came to him into a deeper relationship with Jesus, into a deeper realization of Jesus’ willingness to hear us when we persistently ask for his help.

So what is it you are passionate about? Which of God’s promises are you asking God to fulfill? For what do you persist in beseeching God? Take some time to reflect on this question. Do you need physical healing? Is there something in your personal life that needs healing? Do you have an unfulfilled vocation? Do you long for authentic community? Is there something in our social or political life that deeply stirs you? Do you long for peace? Would you bring all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow if you could? Would you like to see all people have access to adequate healthcare? Would you like to see us make a real dent in poverty, both in this region and abroad? What is it that so deeply stirs you that you persistently ask God for it? I challenge you to reflect on how you might follow the lead of the Canaanite woman and persistently knock on God’s door.

We wait in weariness, in loneliness.
And we pray: say the word and we will be healed.
say the word and our bodies will move with joy;
say the word and our body politic will function again;
say the word that you fleshed in Jesus;
say the word … we will wait for your healing “yes.”
And while we wait, we will “yes” you with our trusting obedience.
Amen.2

1. Taken from Robert Ellsberg, All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 334-5.

2. Walter Brueggemann, “Is there a balm … in Gilead anywhere?”, in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Edwin Searcy, ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 127-8.