Our Lord and
Saviour, Jesus Christ was never afraid to court controversy, or indeed to challenge
a religious hierarchy. Generally speaking it’s the Pharisees who tend to get
both barrels so to speak. Jesus has a problem with hypocrisy: when what we say
and what we do don’t match up. The Pharisees are so concerned with outward
conformity to the letter of the Law of Moses that they have forgotten what the
spirit is. While they stress the need for outward purity in terms of
hand-washing, they need to remember that what is far worse is how what people
think and say and do affects who and what they are. In their rigid outward
conformity they have forgotten that at a fundamental level the Law of Moses
needs affect our lives and to be lived out.
It is a great challenge to each and every one of us to live
up to this. It is both simple and difficult, and something which we all need to
do together, as a community, so that we can support each other, and help each
other to live out our faith in our lives. Otherwise we are the blind leading
the blind, valuing outward conformity over the conversion of the soul, more
concerned with appearance than reality and making a mockery of God and
religion. It is an easy trap into which we can and do fall, so let us be
vigilant and encourage each other not to fall into it, and to help each other
out when we do.
Likewise the healing of the daughter of the Syro-Phoenecian woman
can appear to be troubling at first: the Kingdom which Jesus comes to inaugurate
is meant to be a place of healing, so its initial absence is troubling. The
disciples can only see the woman as a troublesome annoyance, she’s making a
fuss. Jesus begins by saying that he has not come to help her – his mission is
save the lost sheep of Israel. So she begs him, ‘Lord help me’ His reply, ‘It
is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’ can seem at a
superficial level to be rude and dismissive. Yet it elicits the following
response: ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’
table.’ To which Jesus replies ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for
you as you wish.’ The girl is healed through the power of God, but Jesus’
initial withholding seems to be designed to show the centrality of faith in God
as a prerequisite for the pouring out of God’s healing love upon the world.
As opposed to the exclusive view of Jesus’ mission being only
to Jews, we see in this miracle that God’s healing love is for all, and the
Gospel, the Good News of Christ, is for everyone, and that if we have faith, if
we trust God to be at work in our lives then we will not be disappointed. We can
put our trust in a God who loves us, who heals us, and who saves us, who offers
freedom, healing and salvation for all, and who spared not His only Son for love
of us.
As we are fed and nourished with the Word of God, and with the
Sacrament of His Body and Blood, so that the healing love of God may be poured out
upon us, to restore us, to strengthen us to live out our faith together, not in
outward conformity, keeping up appearances, for the sake of propriety, but so that
we can be healed, and helped to live out our faith together. Let us enter into
the joy of the Lord, and encourage others to do so, so that they too may
believe and give glory to God the Father, God the son, and God the Holy Spirit,
to who whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory,
dominion and power, now and forever.
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