Homily offered by Dcn. Michael Schlaack on the Sunday of the Canaanite Woman
The abundant grace from God can sometimes be seen as a special gift intended only for us and our own personal use. But like prayer, it is something that will grow in value when we use it as a means for blessing others. The grace we receive, and the strength of our prayer life are both directly related to our growth in faith as we give away those blessings in order to fully actuate God’s plan for our world. We are called as Christians to give in order that we may receive.
This truth is displayed in our lesson this morning from St. Matthew. We can easily assume that Jesus was being mean to the poor Canaanite woman, denying her the blessing she begged for. As a loving parent, the woman would go to any length necessary to get her daughter the help she needed. But this Gospel account provides us with two examples of traits necessary for realizing and benefiting from God’s blessings: First, that our faith is strengthened through perseverance; second, that the grace we receive must be passed along.
There is no doubt that the Canaanite woman was persistent in her pursuit of a cure for her demon-possessed daughter. While we do not know the exact extent of this possession, we can understand that it was severe enough to warrant the mother’s persistent begging for help. So distracting were her pleas that even the disciples asked Jesus to send her away (Matt. 15:23).
We can certainly understand how the disciples felt: they likely weary of traveling from their home country to the foreign land. While in their homeland, they were constantly criticized and challenged by the Pharisees and scribes who came from Jerusalem to find some fault in Christ and His followers. Because of this continual harassment, Jesus found it necessary to go to the one place where He could possibly find peace from the “righteous” religious leaders: the district of Tyre and Sidon. Maybe in this foreign land, beyond the influence of the Jewish leaders, Christ and His disciples would find some rest. So, it was no surprise that the disciples were getting just a little tired of the woman’s relentless nagging. It would seem they could pass peacefully through foreign territory, but apparently the reputation of Jesus proceeded them.
The persistence of Canaanite woman was enough to finally get her a face-to-face encounter with Christ, but the response was probably not what she expected. Before she could receive the answer to her prayer, she had to confront a question that many of us must face as well: How strong is your faith? If any of us were ever required to give an accounting for our belief in Christ, would we be able to answer like the Canaanite woman? It would have been very easy for her to be put off by Jesus’ remark, although it was not meant as an insult to the woman but rather a statement fact. As Jesus made known to her, He was sent to the lost sheep of Israel (Matt. 15:24). What right did this foreigner have to partake in the blessings reserved for the chosen people? But because of her belief and her abiding faith, her daughter was made whole. As St. john Chrysostom points out in his homily on this passage,
“Do you see how this woman too contributed not a little to the healing of her daughter? For to this purpose neither did Christ say, Let your little daughter be made whole, but, Great is your faith, be it unto you even as you will; to teach you that the words were not used at random, nor were they flattering words, but great was the power of her faith” (St. John Chrysostom, Homily 52 on Matthew).
This is also our part in the healing process of others, for St. James teaches us that to “pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16). But righteousness comes only through faith.
We can fall into error by believing that certain people are somehow not worthy to partake in the same blessings that we receive as Orthodox Christians. The Church needs to pray for everyone and extend the blessings of God’s love and forgiveness that we receive to others, even those who may be “foreigners” to the Orthodox faith. And that is the second lesson from today’s Gospel that needs to be understood: God’s grace can never be fully understood and appreciated in our own lives until we are able to pass it along. We cannot inherit the Kingdom if we selfishly hoard all the grace God gives us and refuse to pass it along to someone else in need. Throughout the Gospels Jesus consistently teaches and demonstrates this important fact. Jesus could have just as easily made the statement that He was sent to the lost sheep of Israel and left it that. He could have listened to His disciples and sent the annoying foreigner away. But the woman proved that she was ready to receive the grace of God by the depth of her faith, which was demonstrated by her persistence and willingness to humbly accept whatever God would give her. She never gave up her prayer to Jesus because she understood His power. In her humility she knew that she was not deserving of God’s grace, but she was willing to partake in even the scraps—the crumbs from the Master’s table—knowing that even a tiny piece of God’s grace was enough to satisfy her needs.
We cannot always tell whether the grace we give away will ever bare any real fruit for God’s Kingdom, but we are still commanded to give. In Ecclesiastes, King Solomon teaches us to, “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days” (11:1). This “spiritual bread” of God’s grace that we receive we must be willing to give away, without any expectation, because we did nothing to earn it. As Jesus commanded His disciples: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give” (Matt. 10:8). The disciples were chosen not because they were especially holy. They were not chosen because they were great theologians or rich rulers. They were chosen by Christ from the most common of people and by the gift of the Holy Spirit they were able to change the world! In many ways, they were quite similar to most of us: Common people who were willing to be used by Christ to accomplish uncommon, extraordinary things. But what that takes from us, just as it did from the Apostles, is a willingness to give away the grace we received. Storing up this treasure in our earthly warehouses will only cause us to lose the grace we thought we had. By giving it away we will be able to multiply the blessings we receive and help to spread the Gospel to the rest of the world. St. Paul wrote: “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12).
What does all this mean for us today? Quite simply: To gain, we need to give. To increase our riches, we must give them away. Jesus told us: “Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you” (Luke 6:38). This is the promise that we need to live by. Why are we going through the expense and effort to expand our church building? Are we doing it so that we will have more room for just ourselves or is it with the intention to fill the additional space with even more worshipers of Christ? Unless we embrace the full measure of the evangelical zeal that we see demonstrated in first century, we will just end up with big, empty building; a memorial to how selfish we were with the grace that God had poured out on us. There are many people out there who we may not consider to be part of the “lost sheep” of our own faith tradition, who are willing to accept the smallest scraps of grace that we are willing to offer. It may not seem like much to us, but to those who are not as rich in the faith, these scraps of grace may be a spiritual meal.
Giving much to receive even more is another one of those great paradigms of Orthodox Christianity. It is an activity of faith, just like persistent prayer. In both cases, we may never know what the end result will be: Will God grant our petition? Will the grace we give away ever bear fruit? We may never know. Several of the Apostles would experience martyrdom without ever seeing the fruits of their labor, but they still persevered and continued to work tirelessly for the Kingdom, even to the point of pouring out their life blood. But like Christ, they understood that the grace they received needed to be passed along. Jesus taught that the vine that produces fruit will be pruned so that it will produce even more fruit (John 15:2). We should expect to lose a little to gain a lot.
As we continue our Christian journey, let us always remember the simple, stubborn faith of the Canaanite woman and the lessons that her encounter with Jesus provide us when dealing with the difficulties in life that come our way. Pray with passion and persistence, allowing the silence of God to increase our faith as we wait for His answer. Then, when we receive that blessing, be ready to pass it on, giving liberally of the grace that we receive, remembering that it is a gift that becomes more valuable to us and the rest of the world when it is given away as freely as it was received.