Be it done for you as you desire

1 Thessalonians 4:1-8       St Matthew 15:21-28

 

O woman, great is your faith:
be it done for you as you desire!

We are now into our second week of Lent, into a kind of wilderness if we are practicing some kind of spiritual discipline.  The fast can make us a little more agitated, and yet if we are motivated by love, by drawing closer to God and to our neighbour in our agitation, we should also be seeing some new life, a certain lightness, signs of awakening to the nearness of God, to our dependence upon God, and of the relief God brings.

The first three Sundays in Lent have references to the battles with Satan and with the demonic.  It is not surprising.  The reality of that web of deceit that the devil spins in our minds becomes more apparent in a less distracted environment.  The devil binds us through lies, subtle twistings of the truth.  What are the deceits that we may be caught up in?  I think there are at least three spoken about in our readings today.

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In the Gospel this morning [St Matthew 15:21-28], we have an encounter between Jesus and a Canaanite woman.  She comes to Jesus not out of concern for herself, but out of concern for her beloved daughter.

The woman’s daughter is “severely oppressed with a demon”.  This is not about possession, something very rare today, but oppression, something not rare at all.  We are oppressed whenever we believe a lie about how it is we will find true life.  We don’t know, in this situation what that oppression was for the daughter.  Oppression, whatever its source, begins with a wrong idea, and it becomes hard to see that the idea is wrong.  When it involves the passions of our appetites – greed, gluttony, lust, we can soon get out of control, and it can be seen more clearly in our lives than when it involves passions such as pride, envy, or suppressed anger or sloth – those things are harder for us to see in ourselves.  But whatever the lie we hold to, it will always manifest itself outwardly in the end if we don’t reject it.

Jesus responds to the Canaanite woman’s cry of faith by freeing her oppressed daughter.  Somehow Jesus sent to the daughter light to reveal the lie she was bound by and strengthening for her daughter’s will to be free of that oppression.

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Second, there is a lie that is binding and oppressing the apostles themselves who are traveling with Jesus and it is one that this woman reveals through the encounter.

In this morning’s Gospel, when the woman from Canaan comes to Jesus pleading for mercy for her daughter, Jesus is not disinterested in her because she is a Gentile.

So why does Jesus seem to respond to her so roughly?  When we hear the words, we are shocked, but that is because we are not oppressed by this demon of exclusiveness, we are Christians.  The disciples, on the other hand, probably agree with every response of Jesus.  His disciples came and begged Jesus to send her away!  First Jesus is silence to her cries.  Then he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”.  Then, even more offensively, he says, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

Dogs were seen in the Old Testament as unclean because they often lived on the margins of communities and were scavengers, they ate garbage, rotting flesh, even human remains after battles – all of this made them ritually “unclean”.  And so dog was used as a term of insult.  In Deuteronomy 23:18 “dog” is used as a term for male cult prostitutes, linking the term with sexual immorality and religious corruption.  “Dog” was used as a term to describe Gentiles who were considered, by their lifestyle, unclean.

This is from George MacDonald’s commentary on this miracle, which I put in the meditation in the Newsletter last week.  He says, “Jesus would arouse in them [the disciples] the disapproval of their own exclusiveness, by putting it on for a moment that they might see it apart from themselves” and “their hearts were moved for the woman” as our hearts are.  By speaking out loud what the disciples were thinking inwardly, those inner thoughts come out in the open, and the lie can be revealed and broken.

Some, in the time of Jesus, also had dogs as pets, and so it has been suggested that when the Canaanite woman responds, with a word in Greek that implies “little dogs” – that is, small lap dogs or house pet – even the little dogs eat the crumbs, she is softening the metaphor.  Her love for her daughter and faith in Jesus pursues Him despite the apparent insult.

Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

By commending her great faith and responding to her request, Jesus shows the disciples clearly that his ministry is universal.  Any ideas we hold of the exclusiveness of the Gospel message must be shattered.  The Church is catholic – open for all people, for all times.  To think otherwise is to be bound by a lie the devil has spun.  Everyone is made by God and in the image and likeness of God – so how could we think them unimportant to God?  Everyone we meet is to be treated with dignity and love.  Anyone who strives with God – as this woman did, is a part of the lost sheep of the house of Israel – “one who wrestles or struggles with God” is the very meaning of the word “Israel”.  Like Jacob, who strove with the angel and would not let him go until he received a blessing, so did this woman of Canaan strive with Jesus until she received His grace.

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So what is the third idea that can bind us in our readings today?

In our Epistle reading, St Paul warns us about “porneia”, translated as “fornication” or in the ESV as “sexual immorality.”  The passage is here, because in Lent we’re to do a kind of check up on how things are going in our soul, and given the importance of this matter for human flourishing, we need to reflect on it.

One of the three reasons given for Marriage itself has been that it is for the hallowing of the union between a man and a woman, or in the older language, for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.  We know that in the Anglican world (and beyond) there is much discussion about who can marry and about sexual relations outside of marriage.  I personally have not been convinced by modern arguments for changes, and I’ve read many of them, but I am open to listening and if you want to speak to me personally about this I am willing.

I think we can all agree that dwelling on lustful thoughts in our minds is breaking the 6th commandment, you shall not commit adultery.  Jesus spoke about this clearly in the Sermon on the Mount (St Matthew 5:27-30).  So the dwelling on heterosexual or homosexual or any other kind of sexual thoughts is an oppression that is destructive to our souls and leads to an objectification of others – it undermines true love.  The growth of internet porn, the horrors of hidden sexual slavery, the sexual abuse of children, these are grievous manifestations of the danger of unchecked lustful thoughts.  It all begins with the lie that we can pursue these thoughts in our minds without hurting others and that it will somehow help us, that it is what we really need.  And yet it blinds us from the goodness in others, leads to exploitation, and it blinds us from seeing the goodness of God and His purposes in Creation.  So long as we’re dwelling on lustful thoughts, our minds are not thinking upon God nor truly loving our neighbour.

The breaking through this oppression, if we’re suffering lustful thoughts and actions, begins with confessing them, acknowledging the truth that we are oppressed.  It may need to involve being accountable to someone else – a friend or a priest, taking practical steps to avoid situations of temptation, and most importantly, choosing to fill one’s mind with the true direction of our hearts desire – the love of God and neighbour.  It will require using all the means and spiritual disciplines we are given by God to stay close to Him.

God says through Jeremiah – the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick, who can understand it? [17:9]  And in the passage just before today’s Gospel reading from St Luke, Jesus says, Out of the heart of man come all sorts of evil thoughts, and one of the evils thoughts he then mentions is fornication.  God reminds us in Jeremiah and Jesus reminds us in his teaching to look at our thoughts, and encourages us to cleanse the thoughts of our hearts that we might bear good fruit.

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Our readings today speak about a concern we might have about another person who is oppressed in some way by a lie and also the readings warn us if we ourselves are being oppressed.  The readings speak about lies: false ideas of racial or national or tribal superiority or of the limits of God’s love; or ideas of lust or whatever other passion may be binding us.  God is opposed to anything that is not authentic love, to any desire that enslaves and hurts.  And he has come in the flesh, in Jesus Christ, to set us free, to break every oppression both through speaking the truth, bringing light into darkness, and to strengthen our wills to overcome temptation.  Most importantly Jesus has come to show us what perfect love looks like in the flesh.

If we know of a loved one who is oppressed, let us bring that person before our minds to Jesus this morning.  If we see some oppression in our own thoughts today, or in our actions, then let us freely confess it, and with faith in the Cross of Christ be assured of God’s perfect forgiveness. And He will strengthen our wills as we receive His Body and Blood given for us.

“Be it done for you as you as you [rightly] desire.”

Amen +