Friends, I wasn’t going to do a homily today since it’s my last day of vacation. But I got a message from a friend who was troubled by the Gospel, and I realized it’s so commonly misunderstood that it can be troublesome. So that said, I’ll just make a few important points.
First of all, let’s just agree that Jesus was always going to help the Canaanite woman’s daughter. Probably even before the Canaanite woman asked. He’s God, after all, and he knows our needs. And we dare not accuse Jesus of being unchristian! So some might tell you he did that to test her. Well, that might be comforting if you love a God who has nothing better to do than test us and make us dance for him. But that’s not our God.
Instead, I think he wanted the Canaanite woman’s faith to be noted by the people looking on, including the disciples, and perhaps even by the woman herself. Because the Canaanites were a people that were presumed to be faithless and have no claim on the grace and mercy of God (as if any of us do!). The Canaanites were the inhabitants of the Promised Land, which was given to the Israelites after being led of of Egypt by Moses. So the disdain for them was long-standing by this point.
But Jesus notes her faith as opposed to the faith noted elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel. In just a couple of chapters from now, Jesus will berate the “faithless generation” that included the scribes and Pharisees. And just last week, Jesus chastised Peter for being “of little faith” when he pulled him up out of the water. Contrast that with what he says about the Canaanite woman: “O woman, great is your faith!”
All of this begs the question for us: where are we on the journey of faith. For most of us, it probably depends on the day. But are we bold enough of faith to implore God’s mercy when we have no claim on it? When our sins have been dragging us down and we’ve been committing the same ones over and over? When we aren’t where we think we should be in our lives? When we feel like we’ve disappointed almost everyone? When we’ve disappointed ourselves?
In those moments, are we of enough faith to call on the Lord and implore his mercy? Because if we are, God is ready to answer us.