Radical faith

Did you notice something a bit unusual in today’s Gospel?  (Mt 15:21-28)  This may be the only time in the Gospels that Jesus loses an argument!  I guess he really was fully human!

When his disciples first report the Canaanite woman’s request, Jesus is emphatic:  No way can he cure her daughter, his mission is only to the lost sheep in Israel.  We’ve heard this before.  When Matthew describes Jesus sending the 12 disciples on their first mission, they are not to go to pagan territory or visit Samaritan towns, but instead to tend to the “lost sheep of Israel.” 

When the woman personally asks Jesus, he seems to insult her and her people, referring to them as “dogs!”  Yet, she reminds Jesus that even the dogs receive food from their masters.  Jesus is out of arguments.  He relents and cures her daughter.   

Matthew uses today’s story of the Canaanite woman to show a transition in Jesus’ outlook from a very particular mission to the people of Israel to a universal mission of teaching all nations.  And what shifts the perspective?   Jesus finally sees the faith that he seeks in all of us, and he finds it not where anyone might have expected it, among one of the chosen people, but in a Canaanite woman.  And it was not just a simple profession, but a radical faith that transcended all conventional bounds; a radical faith that stood up against the stiffest challenge; a faith which could draw all people to Jesus.

The woman’s challenge, on a personal level, was just as daunting as that faced by the Hebrews as they first approached the Promised Land.  As we heard in Numbers, they were impressed by the land, but intimidated by the size, strength and defenses of its occupants.  They lost faith in God’s power.

The Canaanite woman had no business approaching Jesus for anything.  In a sense, she was an anti-Hebrew, a member of the very people who were ancestral enemies of the Hebrews.  Yet she kept faith.

She was a woman who, in the culture of the time, had no right to address any teacher directly.  Apparently, she had no with no support from the male members of her family.  She certainly had no support from the male followers of Jesus.  Yet she kept faith.

Jesus himself rebuffs her in what seems like a particularly cold, cruel and sarcastic tone.  Yet she kept faith – a truly radical faith.  And this radical faith changes everything.   This radical faith is the faith that saves.

For most of my life, though, I didn’t really get it.  Okay, I knew that my faith was important.  Without it, I could not be saved.  Without it, I would never be with God in heaven.  But that was it.  Have faith, get into heaven.  Now, I can get on with the rest of my life.

But how do I know if I truly have the radical faith of this Canaanite woman?  St. Paul has a clue for me.  St. Paul knows that the effects of faith are much more immediate than changing our ultimate destiny.  Radical faith in Jesus changes our lives in the here and now, just as the woman’s daughter is immediately cured.  Radical faith is transformative, both on us and, ultimately, on the world.

When we live with a radical faith in Jesus and allow the Holy Spirit to guide us, we are transformed, for Paul explains, “…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

While that certainly sounds attractive, here we stand, two thousand years later, in a world torn apart by hatred, by unspeakable violence, and by war; divided by religion, by race, by class, by as many ways as the human mind can conjure; a world where millions of people are killed each year, perhaps because they were too inconvenient, too old, too dependent, too criminal, or simply in the way of war.  How can this be?

Have we lost touch with the radical nature of the faith shown by the Canaanite woman?  I know that if I am honest, at least part of the solution – and the only part that I can directly control – lies in me; lies in my often conventional, rarely radical faith.

I hear Jesus say “love your enemies,” “pray for those who persecute you,” and “forgive seventy-seven times.”  You can’t get much more radical that that!  Yet when someone hurts me or my family, prayer and mercy are rarely my first reaction.  Instead, I easily lose my temper and strike back in some way.  A perfectly natural thing, I might even argue a perfectly just and prudent thing.  Yet it renounces the faith that Jesus seeks in me.  How much power does Jesus have if my faith is not radical enough to transform retribution into reconciliation, violence into virtue, hatred into love?

Pray with me that all of us grow in courage and grow in faith, the radical faith of the Canaanite woman, the radical faith that teaches all nations the saving power of Jesus Christ.