The Second Sunday in Lent

“Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed
with a devil. But he answered her not a word.”

Last week we talked a bit about silence.

In the Gospel, Jesus had ventured into the desert for 40 days and nights to face temptation by the devil. The wilderness into which he entered was arid, empty, dusty, and silent. Wind, perhaps, blew sand around and rustled whatever desert vegetation was there, but besides the whispers of the tempter in his ear – silence.

I said that silence is a clarifying thing for us, and more often than we think we too need to retreat into it. That silence and solitude help reveal to us our innermost thoughts and feelings, give us a chance to block the temptations and distractions of the world and listen more intently for God.

The temptation for us, most of the time, the temptation that was put before Jesus in the desert is always – at its core – the same: to obscure words of the Virgin Mary, be it unto me according unto my will. The devil is not really all that creative and once we see his temptations for what they always are – to think that we can take the place of God – we come to see their absurdity, but they are nonetheless always alluring. How much is written nowadays in the world of self-help and pseudo psychology that tells us that having the life we want is simply about making it a reality. Will it enough and you will get it, hustle harder and everything you want (all the kingdoms of the world) will be yours.

The silence of the desert and the silence of the wilderness of this season of Lent is meant to give us a chance to quiet those thoughts, to hear clearly those tempting words whispered in our ears but freed from other distractions to see them for what they are. Remember how solitude and wilderness had shaped all of those monastics that fled to the desert for wisdom, what silence gave to them and to us?

This theme carries through in our collect today in which we pray God to keep us in body and soul defended from adversities, recognizing that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. Faith, in a most basic sense, I think, is of course about trusting in God but also about trusting in our own inadequacy without God. I said several weeks ago, talking about the Prayer of Humble Access, that some misinterpret the prayer to be saying that we are wretched and unworthy when really the prayer reminds us that it is God who makes us worthy, something we can’t do ourselves.

To have this knowledge of ourselves as not-God is to have humility, to know who and what we truly are.

Silence though makes a reappearance today in our Gospel in this harsh story about the Canaanite woman. Jesus and the disciples had just arrived at the region of Tyre and Sidon which were gentile (non-Jewish) regions within the holy land itself. To most Jews this was a land of darkness, of idolatry, people who did not follow the one God, it was a place and a people not to be trusted or even dealt with, a minority to avoided. The Jewish relationship to these people is summed up in the disciples response to her approaching Christ – “send her away”.

She’s come to Jesus no doubt having heard of him and his miracles, knowing that even some who have brushed his clothing have found healing, so she comes on behalf of her daughter who is possessed by a demon, begging Jesus to help her and her child.

And what does she receive but silence.

Last week we spoke of silence in a positive way – that we need it, that it helps us to pray and clarify the desires of our hearts, it gives us space to listen for God and what God is saying to us. But what about that silence with which I imagine we are all more familiar?

That silence that comes when we ask, or beg, or plead God for something and receive nothing, a silence that is like this deafening silence the Canaanite woman was faced with in the Gospel, “But he did not answer her at all.” What must that silence have been like for her? What has that silence been like for you?

However devastating that might have been, Jesus just keeps layering it on, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” which is to say, “I have not come to help the likes of you.” More silence, and then he calls her a dog.

Our own journey through the wilderness of Lent has so far been shaped by readings that give us a sense of what torments and hazards we face on the way – all through our lives – as we look towards the resurrection. They’ve shown us the pitfalls and the dangers, but also the medicine to every ill, Jesus himself.

Today isn’t any different but with the curious and perhaps even difficult reaction of Jesus to this woman. It doesn’t feel like the Jesus we know from other parts of the Gospel. And the easiest thing for me to do now, to keep a long sermon short and to give you take-home, is to simply say as others have that it’s the Canaanite woman’s persistence in faith that heals her daughter and returns her to wholeness.

Jesus, as God, surely had foreknowledge of how this event would go, and so his silence is simply a trick to bolster the Canaanite woman to be persistent and not to give up in prayer or faith until she got what she wanted. It’s a common interpretation of this difficult passage but sounds suspiciously like those self-help books I talked about moments ago – if you will it, it is no dream.

What is most remarkable about this passage is not the healing of the daughter but the quiet and easily overlooked healing of the mother that is brought about by Christ’s silence and refusal. When Jesus says to her that it’s not right to take the children’s food (the Jews) and throw it to the dogs (Gentiles), she responds without anger saying, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

The image might make us think of cute puppies lapping up toast crumbs, but the thrust of it is really an image of slaves scrambling for the bits that drop from the mouth of the master, the downtrodden kneeling on the floor waiting for even the possibility of a crumb.

What is this response but a recognition of what she is not, and recognition of her dependence on God? It’s not a coincidence of course that the Prayer of Humble Access uses similar language about crumbs.

Jesus’s silence brings her to know and admit frailty and her dependence on God – it makes her whole, which in turn makes her daughter whole.

We have all known the moments, or maybe the long periods in our lives when we, like the Canaanite woman, have asked but heard only silence, those times of great uncertainty and anxiety, when everything we know and everything into which we have put our trust seems to hang in the balance as we wait for God to respond. In these moments the temptation to distrust always grows within us.

Jesus’ silence before the woman in the gospel remind us that those periods of anxious silence and painful and fearful waiting, of coming face to face with the temptation to distrust are always ways towards a deeper understanding of truth and a greater trust in God’s mercy.

Without silence, without this period of uncertainty and anxiety, the woman may not have come to know her own humility or dependence on God. The encounter is not about teaching us to be persistent, but about teaching us to trust in God even when God seems silent.

Just as we should make time for intentional silence in our lives – when we make the space to listen, we must be attentive to those moments when God seems absent, deaf to our prayer, and silent in repsonse. It is also a silence we must listen to, live in, and by trust and humility come to know that and how God is at work even in the silence.

Amen.