NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 20 in Ordinary Time Year A

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Today we're going to follow Jesus healing a Canaanite or Syrophoenician woman. Just to fill in a little bit of the background of what happened since last Sunday. Since last Sunday, Jesus and the disciples crossed the sea in the boat — the boat where Jesus had sent forth his disciples with the ark himself within them as the Lord — to the other side. Now they are in the promised land, and the first people who Jesus seeks to preach to and cure are his own people, the people of Israel, who should now be living free in the promised land. But alas, they're not. They're bound down with all sorts of purity laws and restrictions, and the authorities from Jerusalem come to make sure that these are being observed, and give Jesus a hard time about this. And he gives them a hard time back, saying, teaching them to not understand that it's really from within — things that come from within, not things from without — that are capable of making somebody holy, and therefore genuinely participants in the Israel of God. Including the great line: "You hold fast to your traditions, thus make void the word of God." So he's very strong in speaking to his own people here. But he hasn't yet got into the pagan parts — the parts which Joshua hadn't completely conquered. He'd let several of the nations, the five nations, still remain. And so there were pockets of people from all the previous experiences of population displacement, both at the time of Joshua if it ever happened, but also at the time of the Assyrians and the other invasions. Massive people displacement was the standard way of reducing resistance to the new rulers. So pockets of people who did not know the word of the Lord. and did not know the law of Israel. And it's from one of these pockets, from one of these border people, very close to Israelite territory, Hebrew territory, now Jewish territory, but from without, that this woman comes. A Canaanite, Syrophoenician woman whose daughter is demonized. Brief thought before we go any further. As myself a single parent of a problematic drug-dependent child, let me say there's no such thing as simply a demonized daughter or son. Codependency is the name of the game. We have a great deal of work to do. Part of our being cured is a certain form of separation and being set free — being both set free. And it's interesting to see how that possibility is raised in this story. The woman cries out a great deal, complaining that her daughter is badly demonized. The translation — I don't know why they just say "tormented by demons" — she says she's cackled, then she's really badly demonized. She is... what is going on about this? She's crying and making a great deal of fuss. But it's interesting: she says, "Have mercy on me." In other words, why am I suffering so much? Again, anyone in a codependent relationship will understand something about this. But she says, "Lord, Son of David." In other words, here she is — she's deliberately come over into Jewish territory, she's thoroughly respectful of the one who owns the territory, and recognises that this is he: "Lord, Son of David." Now if you're the disciples, you're uncertain at this stage whether this is just another demonized person claiming that it's just a daughter who's being demonized, or whether this is a prophetic person. You're not quite sure. Typically, the kind of people who say about Jesus "Lord," or "Son of the Most High," or "Son of David," are either prophets or people with demons. Very rarely do ordinary people say these things. Indeed, Peter himself won't recognise that Jesus has alluded to a bit later on, and he'll do it in deeply pagan territory. But so she's crying, and Jesus doesn't answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." In other words, they are thoroughly disturbed by this. They really don't like it. Notice that he's not doing anything about it, but they don't like it. And incidentally, the term "send her away" – the Greek term could just as easily mean "please sort her out so that she'll go away." It's not necessarily just "get rid of her." It's "sort her out so she goes." And it may well be that much more – at least slightly more generous – attitude. But even so, it's not a very friendly attitude. And now I wonder whether Jesus isn't actually going to do something much smarter than seems to be the case. He listens to the woman shouting. He hasn't intervened. He hasn't made any determination on whether she's of the demonized or of the prophetic sort. He sees the disciples are fed up. He sees they want to get rid of her. So he answers them something which is strange enough, is playing to their feelings: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." That of course is what he's been doing. He's been re-enacting Joshua across the sea, putting right the things that Joshua hadn't quite completed. So you'd have thought that the disciples at that stage would say, "Oh yeah, that's okay, we'll just somehow get rid of her." But by this stage she's come up and knelt before him. Now please notice: she wasn't there when he told them, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." That was for their benefit. That was for the benefit of the disciples. And I suspect that it's at least as much how they are going to react to all this, and what they are going to learn from this, that this story is about. But she comes and she kneels before him. So we're talking about something very peaceful, very Respectful, saying, "Lord, help me." And it's a much simpler word. It's not the "have mercy on me," which might be drama queen — it's "Lord, help me." It's a very simple, very humble word. And he answers, and it's not clear that he's half saying this for the disciples and half saying this for her: "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the house puppies." The translations always say "dogs." It's a very special word for little domestic dogs — house puppies. In other words, in as far as he's making a reference that she might get, to the relationship between Israel and the nations, it's recognising that they're not dogs. They're house puppies. They're insiders. There's a certain sense of being an insider and being one of the nations whom Joshua allowed to stay. So he's saying something, yes, to her, but very much in the hearing of his disciples. And this is where she gets it right, with an extraordinary turnaround of what he's saying — and maybe, as I say again, this is as much for the benefit of the disciples as for anyone else. He said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." Actually, the word is not "crumbs" — it's "swabs." We have napkins or serviettes with which we clean our mouths after being at table. Not so. They would use swabs of bread to clean their mouth after eating at table, and then throw the swabs on the floor. But of course the house puppies, the domestic dogs, would love that and would immediately go for it. So she's referring not to accidental dropping but to deliberate discarding of something that's a sign of being satisfied and having come to the end of your meal, and therefore is a leftover for the dogs. And so she's saying — she's taking the image of the house puppies and running with it. And she's running with it in a very elegant way. "Even the dogs eat the scraps. Even the house puppies eat the scraps that fall from their master's table." In other words, she reveals that she herself is very much on the prophetic side rather than on the demonised side. She knows what she's asking, she's asking respectfully, and she's actually playing David back to David's son, because she's almost quoting, certainly paraphrasing, Psalm 17 – or 16 in the Septuagint version, the Greek version, which is the version that she as a non-Israelite would have known: "O Lord, from few things from earth separate them in their lives, and with your hidden things their belly was filled. They were fed with sons and they left the remains to their infants." She's playing back: you are the son of David. This is what David said. Rather than treating us as enemies, as those who should be thrown out, you actually fill them. So fill me, let me be one of those who's being fulfilled, and my daughter as well. So Jesus is very struck by this. He makes no secret at all of the fact that one of the house puppies has spoken up, and is beginning to break through, hopefully in the presence of the disciples. So they'll get this and they'll remember that he came for the house of Israel. The house of Israel has house puppies. The house of Israel's house puppies are beginning to come in. It's for the disciples not to have a "get rid of these people – sort them out and get rid of them" attitude. They're going to have to learn to discover that there are many people like the Syro-Phoenician woman who are going to become insiders in the house of God, because they know who it is who is amongst us and who it is who is setting us free from our co-dependencies, our demonised relationships, our inability to be good and holy by purity and by ritual. In the midst of all of this, our Lord is allowing us to be filled and to go away free and whole. then we found this one, and that was it.