Matthew 15:21-28
21 From there Jesus took a trip to Tyre and Sidon.
22 They had hardly arrived when a Canaanite woman came down from the hills and
pleaded, "Lord, Son of David! My daughter is cruelly afflicted by an evil
spirit." 23 Jesus ignored her. The disciples came and complained,
"Now she's bothering us. Would you please take care of her? She's driving
us crazy." 24 Jesus refused, telling them, "I've got my hands full
dealing with the lost sheep of Israel." 25 Then the woman came back to
Jesus, went to her knees, and begged. "Lord, help me." 26 He said,
"It's not right to take bread out of children's mouths and throw it to
dogs." 27 She was quick: "You're right, Master, but beggar dogs do
get scraps from the master's table." 28 Jesus gave in. "Oh, woman, your
faith is something else. What you want is what you get!" Right then her
daughter became well.
Food for thought
Is Jesus testing you and your faith? It is strange.
Very strange, that Jesus should ignore someone's prayers. Why would Jesus
ignore us? He ignored the woman in the gospel! What is it that Jesus is
teaching us this time? What is he trying to tell us? What is the lesson?
To Jesus came a woman who had a daughter who was
grievously afflicted. She must have heard somehow of the wonderful things which
Jesus could do; and she followed him and his disciples crying desperately for
help. And Jesus paid no attention to her; he ignored her. Or did he?
Let's notice something: the woman came to Jesus
BECAUSE of her daughter, not because of her own faith. "Mercy, Master, Son
of David! My daughter is cruelly afflicted by an evil spirit." It is as if
she said, I have come because of my sick daughter. If my daughter was ok, I
wouldn't come to you. If I had no problem I wouldn't come to you, she seemed to
say.
Like this woman, some of us don't come to Jesus or
to church or to prayer by faith, but because of our problems; some people don't
need Jesus except when earnestly hard pressed by a situation or a problem. Many
people pray really hard when they are pressured by life's pressures.
This woman WAS BROUGHT TO JESUS; she didn't come on
her own. Under such circumstances, Jesus had only one option: to awaken true
faith in the heart of this woman. Thus, the apparent ignoring. (Mt 7:6)
"Do not give that which is holy (the sacred thing) to the dogs, and do not
throw your pearls before hogs, lest they trample upon them with their feet and
turn and tear you in pieces." Jesus had warned us.
And the woman got the message. She understood that
Jesus was cultivating her faith. It was a faith which grew in contact with
Jesus. She began by calling him "Son of David"; she came to Jesus the
man, she ended with Jesus the Lord. She came begging for her daughter, "My
daughter is cruelly afflicted by an evil spirit", she ended begging
for herself: "have mercy on me." She came talking to Jesus standing,
she ended talking to Jesus on her knees. Many of us are yet to make this
woman's faith journey; we deal with Jesus as if he was another human. JESUS IS
GOD.
Jesus, as it were, compelled the woman to approach
him, not in terms of her daughter but her own. Like this woman, some of us
think that it is the others that need the Lord, that are sick, that must pray;
many a wife thinks that the problem is with her husband, and the husband thinks
it is with his wife. But Jesus knows the truth in us; he knows that we are
all sick, we are all wounded, we are all struggling.
Jesus wants us to know what he knows about us. That
is precisely what Jesus wanted to awaken in the woman before he could grant her
request. He wanted her to know what he knew about her: that she is as sick as
her daughter. When this happened, her daughter too got well. If and when we
stop pointing the finger at our daughter, our spouse, our neighbour, our
colleague, as being sick, and instead say, IT'S ME LORD, HAVE MERCY ON ME,
Jesus will say to us, "Oh, wo/man, you have great faith. Let your wish be granted."
It's
me, it's me, it's me, O Lord,
Standin'
in the need of prayer.
It's
me, it's me, it's me, O Lord,
Standin'
in the need of prayer.
Not my
brother or my sister, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin'
in the need of prayer.
Not my
brother or my sister, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin'
in the need of prayer.
Not my
mother or my father, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin'
in the need of prayer.
Not my mother
or my father, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin'
in the need of prayer.
Not my
stranger or my neighbour, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin'
in the need of prayer.
Not my
stranger or my neighbour, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin'
in the need of prayer.
No comments:
Post a Comment