“MADE WHOLE BY CHRIST THE BREAD FROM HEAVEN”
Saint Matthew 15: 21-28
Reminiscere: 28 February Anno Domini 2021
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
Shawnee, Kansas is not 1st century Palestine. This is not Jerusalem, Judea in the physical and actual sense that Jesus “went thence” from…accompanied by Saint Matthew, this morning’s scribe, and the other Disciples. This is a land of gentiles. You are not Jews from a straight lineal descent of David or Abraham. If it had not been for God’s Grace (Mercy) and The Christ’s Work, Suffering, Death, and Resurrection “for you” you would remain damned foreigners—unclean and in outer darkness.
But Jesus came! The Son left His uncreated co-majesty with The Father and The Spirit, and came in flesh and blood. He came to go and search, to find, all His lost sheep—no matter how foreign, filthy, and frothing at the mouth with demons they were. He came for you by first “departing into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.” That area was not the so-called “Holy Land” of Canaan, of God’s chosen people. That area was of unclean Gentiles. The woman of the text is called a “Canaanite” because she is not a blood-Jew. She is also referred to as a Syro-Phoenician.
A good, decent, and formal, Rabbi (a teacher of God’s Law) would not even talk to someone like that.
We poor sinners take hope and joy that no matter what we’ve done, or left undone, Jesus comes for people just like us—not just “old Adam” sinners, but Canaanite sinners.
Color, race, ethnicity, country of origin matter not to the Savior: “for God so loved the world.”
Also, Jesus is confronted by a woman…a strange woman. This was an effrontery which was not allowed. She was noisy, assertive, bold even, in her communication. No wonder those good and pious Disciples wanted to give her the “bums rush.”
Jesus never judges one by appearances, how they look, the color of their skin, the way their name is spelled or sounds; Jesus looks to one’s confession—what one says, for words proceed from one’s heartfelt beliefs.
Unlike the majority of people Jesus was surrounded with, especially during His time in Jerusalem’s Temple, really especially during His last 72 hours, this poor woman was a believer! She, like all of you, though not Jewish, was a real child of Abraham and thus a child of The Father. Saint Paul makes clear that the real “Israel” are those that receive Christ’s Person and Work, by Grace through Faith. Listen to her faith, for it is yours as well, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou Son of David…”
If your life hurts, and it does, if you can’t fix all that is broken, and you can’t; you can pray this perfect short petition every day: “O Lord, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” Why, you did pray it, sang it, in this morning’s Kyrie Eleison.
This indomitable woman prayed what you need to pray for—deliverance from the devil. Her daughter was “grievously” vexed with a Satanic demon.
And while we’re not given the details, we need to confess our own sins in the knowledge that we too, all of us, our vexed with devils. Not Baptized + Saint who remains in The Word will be possessed, but all Saints will be daily vexed. We sin exactly because Satan and his horde of hell-hounds are always nipping and scratching at us. Thank The Lord that your own level of “possession” is not as grievous as the young girl. But also remember that unrepented sins lead one to dark and dangerous dominions. Remember that those who do not eat, starve away and become sick…die of malnutrition.
Be as the woman, knowing from whence cometh true food. “Truth, Lord” (for is not Jesus The Way, The TRUTH, and The Life?) “yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.”
That woman was a woman, yes. But that woman as “woman” is a type of Christ’s Church, His Holy Bride, all of you! Those crumbs are from bread—the staff and staple of life. Jesus is that bread, that Incarnated God in The Flesh, Bread from heaven.
True faith is not what you do but what you receive, what you “eat” and “drink.” This is the good news!
You were the dogs, those ceremonial unclean and despised curs. But in Jesus, you are now with the young girl, with your fellow Canaanite woman, you are the children. And your faith is made great and you are made whole from this very hour.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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