Striving with God

When we hear the word ‘Israel’, we probably think of a place or a country in the Middle East. We forget that it is actually, first and foremost, a name and one that belongs to religion and theology. “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed”(Gen. 32. 28). Jacob wrestling with God becomes Israel. All the promises of God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob become the promises to Israel, the people of God who will be known as ‘Israelites’. Not the same thing as ‘Israelis’ which is a modern term for citizens of the state of Israel.

 

Jacob changes from being a figure of deceit and cunning – tricking his brother Esau out of his birthright and deceiving his father Isaac – to becoming the figure of faith and insight into the truth of God. His vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder extending from the earth to heaven is complemented with his wrestling with God and being renamed Israel, meaning “one who strives with God.”

 

This is more than simply a matter of tribalism. Through Israel – as with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – all nations of the earth shall be blessed. God is not simply the property or possession of any one group or identity. Perhaps nowhere is that more profoundly seen than in the encounter between the Canaanite woman and Jesus in the lesson read this week in Chapel. As I like to say, we do not possess the truth, the truth possesses us.

 

The Canaanite woman is from outside Israel, a non-Israelite. Yet the encounter will reveal her as a true Israelite because she strives with God, not against God. She has a powerful hold on the truth which she perceives in Jesus which she will not let go. She comes seeking him and seeking from him the healing of her daughter, “grievously vexed with a devil.” Not a healing of the body but of the mind or soul. It may not be the language of the therapeutic culture in terms of mental health, but it speaks to the ways in which we in our minds can be obsessed, even possessed with thoughts that are destructive of human personality. She senses in Jesus the power of God that alone can heal her daughter; an insight into the nature of God himself as Creator and Redeemer, of Jesus as Lord and Saviour. One who knows us better than we do ourselves.

 

She will not be put off in her quest. She is the image of humble perseverance and faith. But the encounter is quite disturbing because the scene is equally a critique of Israel, meaning the people of Israel pictured here in the disciples. The dialogue with the Canaanite woman reveals a distorted or mistaken view of the vocation of Israel. To put it bluntly, the dialogue criticizes the idea that God can be owned by any one group or another. In other words, the insight of the Canaanite woman is that God is the God of all human beings, not just some. Her insight is about the universality of God.

 

At first glance, it seems so hard. She cries out to Jesus as Lord and Son of David seeking mercy for her daughter. “But he answered her not a word.” No response! Then the disciples try to send her away because her importunity is annoying. What Jesus says here expresses the thinking of the disciples which is at best a partial truth. “I am not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” At once rejection and a refusal of her request, it must seem. The disciples assume an exclusive view of God which misses the deeper mission of Israel which is for all people. Yet that can only be through Israel. The woman at this point kneels before him and simply says, “Lord, help me.”

 

His answer seems unbearably hard and harsh. It sounds like utter repudiation. “It is not right to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs,” he says, as if she were a dog?! But then what is really meant by “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and by “the children’s bread”? The whole scene challenges our assumptions. For she does not deny what Jesus is saying but reveals its deeper meaning and truth. She even does him one better; not just dogs but little dogs! “Truth, Lord; yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Amazing.

 

This is a brilliant insight into Jesus as God with us and for all humanity, a wonderful witness to God as the Creator and Preserver of all life. In a way, the whole dialogue is a commentary on two petitions in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and “Give us this day our daily bread.” Both have to do with the radical nature of God as the source and end of all life. This is something upon which she has a deep hold and will not give up. Her words occasion Jesus’s wonderful words to her, words of joy and healing grace. “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” Her daughter, we are told, “was made whole from that very hour.”

 

This strong woman embodies the true meaning of faith, of what it means to wrestle with God, striving to break through into the heart of God. Faith is active not passive. Yet she breaks into the heart of Jesus because Jesus draws out of her what she knows and seeks. Faith is a kind of knowing, indeed, essential to all knowing. Her desire seeks what God seeks. She breaks into the heart of Jesus because he wills that his heart be broken into and opened to view. Thus, this non-Israelite woman’s faith complements the insight and faith of another non-Israelite, the Centurion at the Cross. A Roman soldier, he sees Christ crucified and out of his mouth, like the Canaanite woman, come the wonderful words of faith and understanding. “Truly this man was the Son of God.”

 

She holds on to what she sees in Jesus and will not be put off. She perseveres in the pursuit of truth and its meaning for her and her daughter. Her humble perseverance is a marvelous image of faith seeking understanding, a true Israelite indeed. One who has grasped the truth of God and what that means for the healing and salvation of our wounded and broken humanity. Through her perseverance the heart of God is revealed to us. “O woman, great is your faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” Her insight into the care of God for the whole of creation, even the little dogs, shapes one of the prayers of the Church’s liturgy known as the Prayer of Humble Access. We come to God, not presuming upon ourselves but knowing that we are not worthy to gather up the crumbs which fall from our master’s table. That humble faith  provides us with all we need for the journey of our souls. Such perseverance and faith is essential to the life of students, striving to learn, wrestling with the ideas and concepts that are before us..