TWENTIETH SUNDAY OF YEAR "A"

TWENTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR 1

Cycle “A”: Mt 15, 21 – 28: Syro-Phoenician woman

Jesus had passed the frontier to the north-west towards the district of Tyre and Sidon – the Lebanon of today. He had needed to get away because he had publicly insulted the scribes and Pharisees, the authorities of the time. The Gospel describes the episode: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” “Hypocrites,” Jesus hurled at them. And turning towards the people he cried, “Let them alone; they are blind guides, and if a blind man leads a blind man both of them will fall into the pit.” It was a total upheaval for the minds of that time. We sense it strongly when Peter himself asked Jesus what he said, and Jesus replied, “What defiles a man comes from within, out of the heart of man.”

A whole social fabric, a whole social system rocked under the impact of those words. Such subversion was intolerable, and Jesus had already signed his death warrant. But that was not the time or the place. As Mathew tells us at the end of the skirmish: “Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.” There, paradoxically, he met with the same question, but presented more radically. It was no longer a matter of whether or not people washed their hands, or distinguished between defiled or undefiled on the basis of actions, food, and situations.  Now it was a question of deciding whether human beings should be put into different compartments, whether the categories of religious or pagan really constituted frontiers within mankind.

And here, strangely enough, another frontier, another barrier, unexpectedly presented itself: a pagan woman asked him to perform a cure. Would he cross this man-made frontier, jealously guarded by people who despised others whom they called “pagan dogs”? The foreign woman’s entreaty was on behalf of her daughter. Jesus said nothing. What was going on in his mind? The disciples couldn’t stand it any longer. The scene was developing into one of great pathos. The woman prostrated herself: “Help me, sir.” At last he opened his lips: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” The “children” were the sons of Israel; the “dogs” were the foreigners, the pagans.

Would Jesus really decide to enclose himself within Jewish particularism? The woman was aware of the fact that the bread has first been placed on the table of Israel, but she intended to prolong the imagery so as to provoke Jesus to go further. “True, sir, and yet the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Woman’s intuition? In her heart she sensed that Jesus had a caring heart; that he cared for her sick child. Jesus marvelled: “Woman, what faith you have! Be it as you wish.” And her daughter was cured. Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, commented, “In the solemn interchange between Jesus and the Canaanite woman, we admire the woman’s perception and mad self-confidence.” This gives us an idea of faith. Before being a body of beliefs, faith is impulse towards Jesus.

But let us look at Jesus at this crossroads. What he first said to the Syro-Phoenician woman seems harsh and narrow. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” And then he made one of those utterances that astounded his listeners.
Woman, how great is your faith. Be it as you wish.” (Only Jews were supposed to have faith). Jesus was never bound by “a priori” judgements. He watched, he listened. This woman’s attitude, her answers, her protests, her expectations – her faith – showed him that she too was ready for the Kingdom of God. Whatever the categories inherited from the past, this woman was there: poor, passionately confident, stronger than her daughter’s illness and man-made traditions. And Jesus welcomed her to the endless table where the smallest crumb of God’s bread was man’s most nourishing food.

So Jesus had crossed another frontier. Henceforth, as Paul would say, there would be no more Jew or gentile. Jesus was not working to a theory: it was a woman’s motherly love that caused him to cross a thousand year old barrier -  if not without some hesitation. No sooner had he crossed this frontier than he crossed yet another. Jesus crossed the frontier into the future, and within a society intent on looking back at its past, and a religion ossified by its traditions.  Jesus fulfilled all that was best in the past and looked to the future. His new road would lead to death and resurrection, for himself and the new Israel.

Today there are still countless rigid frontiers cutting across mankind: castes and outcasts, rich and poor, the whole spectrum of political opinion, the handicapped and the aged. In the patchwork of economic, social, political and religious life we could point to plenty of other barriers that cut off people from each other.

God is not a fixed point; his work is not dreary repetition. But the living God awakens ever new and often surprising life. And to keep pace with him we need to change our hearts. 

PRAYER for the troubled in heart and mentally ill (Timothy Dudley-Smith):

Father, we pray for the mentally ill, for all who are of disturbed and troubled mind. Be to them light in their darkness, their refuge and strength in time of fear. Give special skills and tender hearts to all who care for them, and show them how best to assist in your work of healing, through Jesus Christ our Lord.