ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

Freedom to Speak in God’s Presence

Sermon preached by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis at the Parish of the Annunciation, Oxford, 10 February 2008

Matthew 15: 21-28

Today we have heard the story of the Canaanite woman, and I can never hear or read that story without thinking of Fr Lev Gillet, the ‘Monk of the Eastern Church’. He pointed out that the woman in this story is the only person in the Gospels who manages to defeat Jesus.  She forces him to do what she wants. And when we think about the historical context of this story, and look at literature from this period, we realise that this story is unique – there is nothing like at that period, or indeed for some time after. This woman manages to get the Son of God to conform with what she would like to see happen.

There is, however, another way of looking at this story: as a kind of exploration which is carried out by Christ of the woman herself. Who is she? What is she doing here?

We know one thing. She comes after him. He is walking along with his disciples, and she cries out, ‘O Lord, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is seriously ill.’ Now this woman is not Jewish, nor is she a Samaritan, and yet she calls Christ ‘the Son of David’. We know, then, that she has been following him. She knows something of his reputation, because she calls him by a title that really has meaning only within Judaism.

Christ, however, says nothing: ‘He answered her not a word’. But she keeps crying out, and eventually the disciples say, ‘Send her away.’ In a very enigmatic reply, Christ does not tell them to send her away: he says, ‘I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ This statement is essentially ambiguous. What does it mean? On the surface it would seem to apply to the ‘lost’ among the Jews – but then you have to ask yourself why he has left Israel to go down to the coast of Tyre and Sidon, and to live among the people there.

The woman, however, comes now and actually ‘falls down and worships’ him. By this I think we have to understand that she simply prostrates herself on the ground before him, just as we do in church. And she says simply, ‘Lord, help me.’ Christ replies in an extraordinary way: ‘It is not meet to take the children’s bread and to cast it to the dogs.’ What a terrible thing to say! If you know anything about the Middle East you know that the dog is an unclean animal – the kind of thing you kick to get it out of the way. And she – and this, it seems to me, is the very heart of this passage – says ‘Truth, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their Master’s table.’

Christ’s words to her are extraordinary. Her words to Christ are even more extraordinary. She refuses to be crushed. She also refuses to get up and say, ‘I’m not a dog!’ She refuses to set herself over against the children of the House of Israel. She accepts all that she is. She is an outsider. She is a nobody. And still she asks that her daughter will be healed. At that point Christ says, ‘O woman, great is thy faith. Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.’ In other words he declares and accepts that he was sent to her – that the salvation that he is bringing to the children of Israel is also being brought to her. We must conclude that she too, in a sense, is one of the lost sheep of the House of Israel. That is, the House of Israel is greater than Israel itself, and ultimately it embraces all mankind.

What does Chrsit see in her? The first thing he sees, of course, is complete integrity – she is who she is. If I am a dog, I am a dog. But he also sees a combination of extraordinary humility and extraordinary boldness. And this is precisely the quality of parriseia in Greek. It is very difficult to translate into English. The text that we use – which is I think a suggestion of Fr Ephrem (Lash) – is ‘Freedom to speak in God’s presence.’ Now, to speak in God’s presence is no easy thing, yet we pray for this in the Liturgy, before we receive communion.(1) We, too, want to have that same quality of humility and boldness to approach God and ask for what we want.

Why was this passage appointed for the beginning of Lent? (2)– we are just coming up to the beginning of the Triodion. The reason is that the Canaanite woman is a model for us all. She has humility, saying, ‘Lord, have mercy’. We have only to think of the Jesus prayer, repeated over and over again: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner’. At the beginning of Psalm 50, which is the psalm most read throughout the Orthodox services, we say: ‘Have mercy upon me O God, according to thy great mercy…’ He also sees in her persistence, and we as we approach Lent we are also urged to be persistent, to do what we do again and again. She repeats the petition. We constantly pray in church. She is also an example to us in the way she prostrates herself before Christ. This is precisely the kind of thing that we do during Lent when we prostrate ourselves in church. We only prostrate ourselves during the week, and on Sundays we stay standing, but this woman, in throwing herself down before Christ  and asking for his mercy, is an example to all of us at this time.

So let us try to be like this woman. We do not belong to the House of Israel, narrowly defined. We belong to that greater House of Israel which Christ has created and is creating out of mankind. Let us be like her in throwing ourselves onto the ground before God in this period of the Fast. Let us be like her by repeating again and again ‘Lord, have mercy’, and let us imitate her in her desire to eat even of the crumbs that fall from the Lord’s table. We receive so much – God gives us so much – and it is so great that even a small crumb that falls from his table is capable of transforming our lives.

(1) Prayer said by the priest immediately after the Epiklesis, before the Litany before the Lord's Prayer
(2) According to the Greek tradition