Oftentimes, I am tempted to hide when I feel like I don’t have the resilience or energy to be what others hope I can be – a good husband, a good father, a good pastor, a good friend, a good son and brother. Have you ever been “overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s grief” and needs? Have you ever felt like running from it? Maybe a child once was incessant in his cries for you. Maybe being with a spouse all day is draining. Maybe a coworker at your job or in your place of volunteering left you feeling depleted. Maybe you’ve been tempted to run away from the people who know to come to you for help, for assistance, for complaining, or for healing.
Have you ever felt like hiding from your calling, from your vocation, from your responsibilities? Have you ever felt like you didn’t have it in you – whatever it was that other people needed from you? Have you ever worried that you were inadequate to meet the needs of the world – not the misguided expectations, not the misdirected demands, but the valid and undeniable needs? Have you ever worried that you didn’t have what it took to be who you were created by God to be, to be who you have been called by Christ to be, to be who you have been equipped by the Spirit to be?
The Gospel declares something profound in the words of an unnamed woman. There is nothing special about her as a person, nothing that would identify her out of a crowd. She is not seen for who she is. She is seen only for her defining traits: her gender, race and religion – none of which is the same as those of Jesus. She is in every way an outsider, limited by her own condition and excluded from what privileges others enjoy. And in this meeting with Jesus, it is she who announces good news that we all need to hear.
We’re told this woman is a Gentile, not a believer, not one of the tribes of Israel, not a part of the people of God, not a part of God’s promise and covenant. We’re told she’s of Syrophoenician origin, that she’s living in Lebanon, relative to today’s Israel. But, unlike the Romans and colonizers occupying Jesus’ homeland, she can speak Aramaic or Hebrew. It’s unlikely she has a husband. Maybe because of his age, he died soon after her child was born. Because if he were alive, he would be the one advocating for his daughter’s life. He would be leveraging what power he had – his manhood – to convince Jesus to act.
But the woman in Jesus’ day doesn’t have that kind of power: She’s just a mother of a little girl. She has watched her little one learn to laugh, learn to crawl, learn to walk, learn to talk, and learn to eat – each time with wonder and amazement, her respect and regard and wonder growing as quickly as her fondness for this precious child. She would do anything for her baby; her whole life is dedicated to the raising of her little girl.
You might imagine with me that, perhaps, sometimes, if the mother scrounges hard enough or begs long enough for loose coins, she can scrape together enough money to buy bread. Maybe sometimes the mother has no money but comes upon some leftover grains of wheat after a harvest, and she can do her best to crush it and make her own bread for the child, as much as she can manage, letting no grain go to waste, eventually kneading together every scrap of dough into a loaf or kind of pancake to cook beside a fire.
So how would she feel when her daughter chewed the bread to her heart’s content and threw crumbs, entire chunks, maybe the whole portion, on the ground?
Some parents, after all their effort making dinner, might get frustrated that their child sees no need to eat. But I think this mother might have realized that, despite all her worry that her child wouldn’t have enough, the child had all she needed and more. She had the dedicated love of a mother who would do anything for her. The child didn’t need to compensate by demanding more bread or crying for more attention.
A child’s crumbs on the floor are proof that God provides more than enough for what we need.
And now the woman’s daughter is ill. And because of this truth she has learned, the mother is not desperate, not without hope, and she finds this foreigner, this stranger, this Israelite man who calls her a dog, who is one and the same a man of God, a wandering preacher and healer, apparently. She wants him, even if he is so worn out that he fails to muster respect for her, even if he’s stopped believing in himself so much that he’s run to hide in Tyre, even if he’s unsure what God wants him to do next, she wants him and needs him to save her child, because to her, that’s exactly what God would want. God would want all of us to do everything we can imagine, and more than we imagine we can, to save the lives of children near and far. That is a fact of life.
What would you do if your loved one were ailing, and no one could help? To what lengths would you go to ease her suffering and even to restore her to wholeness? Would you believe, without question, that something could be done, because it’s not God’s will for any of God’s loved ones to suffer; it’s not right or fitting. Would you believe, deep down, that things will get better, because they must get better? You wouldn’t just sit back and affirm, with a false placidity, that no matter the trial and tribulation, you are fine.
Because of that conviction and hope from a woman lost to history, Jesus finds within himself the grace of God to be the Son of God. And the child is healed. And he no longer scoffs out of frustration at the needs of the people around him. And he quietly says to the next person he heals, simply, “Be opened.” And the man can speak again.
God’s grace is bigger than our expectations. It empowers us to be who we are needed to be – not expected to be, according to our own ideas or the ideas of others, but needed to be – to be who we have been created by God to be, to be who we have been called by Christ to be, to be who we are equipped by the Spirit to be.
And even when we’re tired and worn out, fed up and put off, if we welcome God to make of us what God will, then the hungry will be fed, the ailing will be healed, and the world will be transformed, one person at a time, because God’s grace exceeds every one of our expectations. And those who need God’s grace most seem to know to hope for it.
Will you hope for it, too? I pray you will. Amen.
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