Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “True, Lord,” she said. “Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment. Matthew 15:21-28
I said last time that there were a couple of questions which might help us to make sense of this puzzling story.
The first was: Why was Jesus so reluctant to heal the woman’s daughter? And my suggestion was that it was to do with timing: Jesus, during his earthly ministry, was mainly concerned with his own people – he was the Jewish Messiah for the Jewish people, and the non-Jews, the Gentiles, must wait till the time was right.
This led to a challenge: how careful are we to keep in step with God as we live out our lives? Are we guilty of either running before him or lagging behind him? – either can be disastrous.
The second question, the more important one, is: What caused Jesus to change his mind? We read in verse 28: “Then Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.’ And her daughter was healed at that moment”. What a contrast to verses 23-24!
The key, of course, is those simple words: “Woman, you have great faith!” Jesus’ reluctance melts away when he is confronted by her strong and determined faith.
This is part of a pattern in the Gospels: great faith delights Jesus’ heart and moves him to action. A very similar thing occurs with the Roman centurion in Matthew 8 – the man whose faith, quick-witted and sparky, “amazed” Jesus. In a sense, once we have grasped this truth we have grasped the essence of such stories. So we are challenged to ask ourselves: what kind of faith do I have?
That seems straightforward enough, but even now there are one or two other questions which pop their heads up.
First, does this mean that we too should routinely expect miraculous healings in response to our faith? There are Christians who say, “If only you had more faith you too would see wonderful supernatural answers to prayers”. Are they right?
No, I don’t think so. It’s certainly true that in the Bible we find many examples of miracles in answer to prayer. But the fact is that these miracles tend to occur in clusters – Moses and the exodus, for example; the ministries of Elijah and Elisha; supremely, here, the ministry of Jesus; the events of Pentecost and the early part of Acts. But the suggestion that the Bible has miracles on just about every page is simply not true.
Indeed, there are clear instances where Spirit-filled Christians obviously didn’t expect miraculous intervention.
No-one could accuse Paul of weak faith. Yet in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 he accepts that God is not going to take away his “thorn in the flesh”; in 2 Timothy 4:20 he tells Timothy that “I left Trophimus ill in Miletus”; and in 1 Timothy 5:23 he advises his young friend to “stop drinking only water, but use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses”. He clearly doesn’t expect miraculous intervention.
Perhaps we can sum it up like this: We mustn’t doubt that God can do miracles in our day. But neither must we presume that he will if only we have enough faith. God cannot be manipulated, not even by great faith!
A second question arising from Jesus’ treatment of the Canaanite woman: How do we square his delight in her faith with his teaching a couple of chapters later that “faith as small as a grain of mustard seed” can move mountains (Matthew 17:20)? Is there a contradiction here?
Again, no, I don’t think so. True, Jesus does commend both the woman and people like the centurion for their “great” faith. We should all be keen to develop a greater faith. But it seems that what particularly delighted him was the nature of that faith – the way they both looked him in the eye, so to speak, and stood up to him; the way they refused to take no for an answer.
The Canaanite woman is a wonderful mix of humility – “all right, Lord, let’s agree that I’m little more than a dog” – and what I can only call boldness bordering on cheek – “but we dogs do have a habit of snatching up the scraps, you know!” In modern parlance you might say that this is one feisty woman.
Whether that’s right or wrong, I think her faith can only encourage us to be… what word shall I use?… a little bit brazen. When did you or I last “amaze” Jesus with our faith? Are we, perhaps, rather tame when we draw near to God in prayer? Think of the way Job stood boldly up to God! And what about those moments (eg, Psalm 44:23) when the psalmist roundly tells God it’s time he woke himself up!
Of course we must always be reverent. But the Canaanite woman shows us that God’s shoulders are big enough to cope with a bit of our passion! Is it time we followed her example?
Father, thank you that even when in need of rest and quiet Jesus was still prepared to minister to the needs of those who came to him in faith. Thank you that you are never too busy to hear our prayers. Give us, we pray, the kind of faith the woman in the story had! Amen.
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