1 Timothy 1.15-17

Matthew 15.21-28

This woman of Canaan is in distress. Her daughter is evilly possessed by a demon. She stands at the opening of hell. The terror of eternal aloneness stretches before her. Given the bond between a mother and her daughter, the mother stands, in her soul, with her daughter at the opening of hell. In those unseen depths, the mother knows that the only true LORD who can save her is the LORD Jesus.

But this bond between the mother and her daughter extends from the root of our nature, from the bond between Adam and the woman God built from his rib as bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh. And the bond between Adam and the woman God built from his rib is an image of the bond between man and God.

As we see in the woman’s distress, and in her crying out to the LORD, the primordial bond that unites man, woman and child together was not erased by the transgression; nor was it erased between man and God, for man was created by God as male and female in His Image. Man in his soul still longs for God, and God still longs for man: ‘Wisdom [the LORD Christ] has sent forth [His] servants calling with a loud proclamation: ‘Come, eat of My Bread and Drink the Wine which I have mingled for you!’ (Prov 9.3-4) ‘The Spirit and the Bride are crying out: ‘Let him who thirsts come! Let him receive the Water of Life freely given!’ (Rev 22.17) ‘I love those who love Me; those who seek Me diligently will find Me!’ (Prov 8.17).

This is the biblical backstory, the cosmic stage on which this morning’s Gospel unfolds. It says that Jesus departed to the region of Tyre and Sidon. Jesus is the Tree of Life who was in the Garden. In its biblical setting, then, what does it mean theologically that He departed? It means that He has come out of Eden looking for Adam, for He could not find him in the Garden: ‘Adam,’ He had called out, ‘where are you?’ (Gn 3.9)

Why did He come out looking for us? Why did this woman in her fear and distress come looking for the LORD Jesus? Because that primordial bond between God and man has not been erased. Created in the Image of God, which is Christ (Col 1.15), we are kin to God. Like the mother sharing in her daughter’s suffering, He suffers in ours, for we are His children.

How has He come out looking for us? He emptied Himself and clothed Himself in our flesh and blood so that He could share in our death (Phil 2.5-11, Heb 2.14-15) and depart to the region of hell and go looking for us in hell.

The woman, it says, came from that region and cried out to Him. Against its biblical backdrop, we see her as the fallen Eve, for she is called simply, ‘woman,’ like the woman God built from Adam’s rib (cf. Gn 2.23). We see her, then, as the fallen Eve drawing near Jesus, the Tree of Life, who has Himself come out of Eden looking for her.  

In the Garden, the woman came to Adam in greed and offered him the fruit of disobedience, and they fell into the dust of death. Here, the woman, standing before the eternal terror of death, finds Jesus, the New Adam, and offers to Him a heart broken by her daughter’s suffering. We see no trace in her of self-centered greed or entitlement. It has withered up in the distress of her maternal love over her daughter suffering from bondage to the serpent she gave herself to, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit working in this world in the sons and daughters of disobedience (Eph 2.2).

St Paul teaches us to see the woman’s daughter as an image of each one of us. He says: ‘We also were in bondage to the devil through the fear of death (Heb 2.15)], and we conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, gratifying the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we were by nature children of wrath just [like this woman’s daughter]’. (Eph 2.3)

This kind, the LORD says in another place, does not come out except through prayer and fasting. I think we see in this woman of Canaan what that prayer and fasting looks like that drives out of us the dark spirit of this world that works disobedience in us and opens us onto hell.

It is a prayer and fasting in which we come out of the world mystically, in the hidden man of our heart (1 Pt 3.4), and draw near the LORD as this woman of Canaan came out of ‘that region’ and drew near to Him. But, when we draw near the LORD through prayer and fasting, is He not silent to us just as He was toward this woman of Canaan? Why does He seem to ignore us when we draw near to Him if there is this bond between us and the LORD that makes us kin to Him (Jn 1.11), and if it is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance that He came into the world to save sinners (1 Tm 1.15), like this woman of Canaan’s daughter?

Can you see how the LORD, in His silence toward this woman of Canaan, is drawing her onto a descent to the heights of humility where she is found to be one with Him in the extreme humility of His Cross? And He is able to draw her onto this descent because she is persistent and resolved. For this descent doesn’t happen in a trice. It takes time, it takes persistence, it takes resolve. When He is silent toward her, and even when He compares her to a dog, she does not turn away from Him in anger and entitlement. She does not leave humility and prayer in order to judge Him or accuse Him indignantly because He ‘owes her’. She persists, and becomes even more fervent and descends to even deeper heights of humility in her prayer: ‘LORD Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!’

When it says, then, that she ‘came out of that region,’ we see her, theologically, coming out of the spirit of entitlement and anger, of laziness and sloth and drawing near Him in the humility of a broken, grieving heart. And, in the humility of her brokenness, when she answers, ‘Yes LORD, but even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table of their lords,’ she is saying, in effect: ‘Yes, LORD, I am not worthy that you should enter under the roof of my soul for it is entirely desolate and fallen in ruin. Yet, I believe that You came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first.’

Do you see? The prayer and fasting that drives the dark spirits out of us and unites us to the LORD is that prayer and fasting that produces the humility of a broken and contrite heart. The LORD is silent to us not because He is ignoring us but because He is leading us far beneath the emptiness of our outward beauty. He confronts us with our sinfulness and impurity not to shame us, but to reveal to us the hidden man of our heart where we are grieving and weeping for ourselves and for our loved ones and kinfolk, and for all those bound to us in the web of life because we are all filled with dead men’s bones and all uncleanness (Mt 23.27), and we are far, far away from God. We must acknowledge the ugliness beneath our outward beauty, we must admit the hidden grief of our soul so that the LORD can draw us out of the ‘region’ of our greed and vanity and our angry entitlement, and down to the heights of humility. For that is where we will find Him who, in His extreme humility, emptied Himself and partook of our flesh and blood so that He could share in our death on the Cross and find us in our death and the accursedness of hell.

If in our daily life we are walking the Path of the Church, then we are on the Path that is now taking us into Great Lent, ‘up to Jerusalem’ and down to the heights of humility, so that we can draw near the LORD in the Mystery of His Holy Pascha and hear Him say to us, as He says to the woman of Canaan this morning: ‘Great is your faith! Let it be done to you as you desire!’ For His desire is to find us with Him in the Joy of His Holy Pascha, the fear of hell chased away in our soul’s love for the God who first loved us and who by His death for our sake, destroyed death and has given life to those in the tombs. Amen!