Verses 21-31
Chapter 64
Christ Surprised By Faith
Our Lord is now touching upon half-heathen countries, and about to give forecasts of his universal empire. Up to this time he has moved within given geographical limits, now he looks, and almost steps, over the dividing lines. It belonged to the religious genius of Matthew in particular to see beyond Hebrew boundaries, and to note every sign of the universality of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. It was Matthew who brought the Magi from the far east with their presents of gold and frankincense and myrrh. A man like Matthew could not have omitted that incident from his story, though the other evangelists take no notice of it. Not St. Luke but St. Matthew notes the case of the Canaanitish woman. Matthew is a silent man; there was next to nothing said about him: again and again he shows us in his noble Gospel how great and noble were the thoughts that moved and ruled his mind. There is nothing little in Matthew's conception of the kingdom of heaven. He does not beat off the men from the far east, saying, "You have nothing to do with this birth;" nor does he rebuke the Canaanitish woman he rather rejoices in those openings which show him light through their welcome rents, and Matthew says in effect, "This Master of mine shall rule from the east to the west, from the north to the south, and his house shall be large as his universe." Who knows but that as Mary was the mother of Jesus in the sense of bringing him into the world, so this Canaanitish woman may be the mother of Christ as introducing him into Gentile lands?
It is thus that individual names are lifted up in importance, and that small events are charged with infinite meaning. We know not what shall be the limit of the Amen to this prayer of hers. This supplication may mark the agony of a birth time. Jesus Christ is now very near the dividing lines: will this Canaanitish woman succeed in taking him over the boundary, and bringing to Gentile necessity, and sin, and pain, all the sweet gospel of heaven? Let us see.
The woman was both right and wrong, in her simple prayer. That indeed may be said about all our prayers, mostly wrong, however, in many instances. Her prayer was conceived in the wrong name, in this instance arising no doubt from her courteous recognition of historical facts, but she appealed to the Son of David. By no such narrow name can Jesus enter into Gentile lands. If Christ was not more than the Son of David, he had no message to heathen countries. Mark, therefore, how the story develops the life and purpose of the Holy Christ. How keenly the Saviour listens to every word that is addressed to him, and note how he will not answer prayers in the lump and gross, and how he will come to the human heart, along certain defined lines. There is no roughness in his method, there is no tumultuousness in the plan of this all-redeeming and all-healing Christ. When addressed by a Gentile suppliant as "Son of David," he is deaf. In other instances Jesus Christ had readily answered prayers that were addressed to him as Son of David, but the prayers in those instances were spoken by Jews. A Gentile, as such, knows nothing about the Son of David; some greater, broader name must be found, and what know ye but that now he will take upon him, in some sense hitherto not adequately realized, a name that shall enter into every language, and be at home in the prayers of the whole world?
Jesus Christ answered the woman not a word. In truth she had not spoken a word to him in his proper capacity. There were some things which Jesus Christ could not do in his hereditary capacity or merely local and ancestral name. There were divisions of kingdoms and properties which he could not attend to. Men must be brought to learn the exact scope and purpose of the mission of Jesus Christ in the world. We know what it is amongst ourselves for men to be limited in their official capacity: they can do certain things for us in their personal capacity which they could not do in their official function. As officers they cannot speak to us, whereas in their capacity as fellow citizens and sympathisers, they could address us the whole day long, and spare nothing of the language and music of their pitying and full love. When we address Jesus Christ as "Son of David," we must not rest there. To that local and limited title we must add some designation worthy of the purposes of his heart. We belong to the Gentile race. From the house of David we are excluded: Abraham knows us not: we must not therefore walk up Jewish staircases to these heavenly heights, but other ways must be found, and other ways have been opened for us, and as Gentiles we must move to the cross by methods which have been indicated from heaven.
In the light of these suggestions read our Saviour's reply, "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, as the Son of David." In other words "If this woman addresses me as the Son of David I have nothing to say to her. If that is all she knows about me, if she comes to me as a great Jew and a great descendant of an illustrious sire, I have no reply to make to her plaint." Whether there is any other way of coming, we shall see.
The bitterness of her trial gives the right tone to the woman's prayer. She prayed a second time. Jesus Christ himself amended his own prayer upon one memorable occasion. He allows us to amend, enlarge, simplify our supplications. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, "Lord, help me." Sorrow abbreviates our prayers, sorrow teaches us true eloquence. When the heart is in the grip of a deadly agony, it knows how to pray. In our ordinary, and more or less conventional public worship, we must, have order and method, by which the public can be guided. Beyond all such arrangements there lie the innumerable plans and methods of approach to heaven, known only to the heart in its keenest pangs. There are times in which no man can teach another how to pray. Bursting out of his throbbing heart will fly the great desire, in appropriate speech and tone. Unless we have had experience of that kind we are not in a proper mood to discuss the possible prevalence of prayer: questions to which this inquiry respecting prayer belongs, are not to be discussed with cold intellectualism. When your child has been grievously vexed with a devil, when the last hope of your life has been blown out by a sudden and most cruel wind, when you are climbing up steep places and the loose stones are giving way in your hand, you will know whether prayer is a necessity of life or a recreation of the religious fancy.
Our prayers are forced out of us, and being forced out of us by some mighty impulsion which cannot be adequately described in words, they seem to take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence. When men feel the bitterness of sin, they will find right names for Christ. Understand more and more clearly that Jesus Christ is not to be approached as an intellectual or historical problem with any hope of solving the great enigma to the content of the mind. Herein is much time wasted, and temper often greatly exasperated, that men think they can subject the Son of God to arbitrary vivisection. We see him only now and then. We may speak about him in the deepest sense and with proper tone only occasionally. He is with us always as a vision of the heart and an inspiration of the will, but for the purposes of explanation in words to others, it is only seldom in a lifetime that a man has the responsibility of such an occasion. We must feel Christ rather than understand him, we must wait for his coming rather than surprise him by our intellectual agility and resoluteness. When we feel the bitterness and the burden of sin, we see the cross, as in the darkness we see the stars. No man should speak about Christ except from the point of earnest conviction of sin and an impelling necessity of the soul to find out who he is and what he can do. He is not a subject for essays and for deliberate and clever discussions; he cannot be subjected to the scrutiny of criticism to which historical characters of another kind easily yield themselves. Christ is the angel that comes to the heart, the Messenger that finds his way to us along the intricacies and difficulties of our sorrow, the Saviour that visits us in the midnight of our hopeless guilt.
He is always born in the nighttime. Under the pressure of penitence and broken-heartedness you will know by what names to address Jesus Christ then you will know whether he is God or Man; you will never be able to settle that question by dry intellectual processes, but when the heart wants him, cries for him, must die without him, it will dictate to the head the appellation which is worthy of his dignity and his power. All these mighty cries of blind men, troubled souls, needy women, show what kind of man is expected in one who claims to be the King. Jesus Christ was promised as a King, a Ruler and a Mighty One, who should have the nations under his feet and sway them with omnipotent majesty. When he came along the common lines of human history, entering into cities and habitations, men who were in great need and distress, showed by their prayers what a true king must be. He must bring with him something more than a crown, something more than royal regalia, something more than court and pomp: he must bring help. A king is an irony if he be not beneficent above all other men. A king mocks our social helplessness and our social poverty if he be not the princeliest giver, the man whose heart is a great treasure-house, out of which are handed, night and day, donations to make life richer and gladder. Thus do we learn from sorrow what we never could learn from mere genius. The world felt the kingship of Jesus before it could assign that royalty its technical name. Early in the pages of his history, the lame, the halt, the maimed, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, were crowding around him, saying, in mute eloquence, "A king must help, or he is not a king." So is sorrow an expositor, and so is agony one of the world's greatest preachers.
Jesus Christ abased this Canaanitish woman, but we never find him subjecting any human creature to abasement without his disclosing a gracious purpose of exaltation. Jesus answered, "It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs." This is one of the passages which no criticism can explain. We ought to have heard the tone in which Jesus Christ himself delivered the words. To feel their import properly, we should have seen the expression of his face when he uttered the rugged and severe reply. The printed page is poor when it undertakes to make representations of this kind the illuminating smile, the explanatory tone, the subtle music, the step towards, the help nearly given what can the printed page make of these? Was he quoting a proverb, was he reminding the woman of one of her own sayings, was he bringing to her memory something she had said about other people? It is thus that Christ takes the sword out of our hand, and gives us to feel the sharpness of its point. Happily, though we cannot enter into the whole atmosphere of the reply, and thus find out its mitigations, we know what happened immediately afterwards, and that subsequent action must be taken as the light and exposition of all that went before.
How will the woman reply? She will stand upon her dignity. No heart that is filled with agony has any dignity of a petty kind to stand upon. She will be offended. She might have been if her child had not been grievously vexed with a devil, but love keeps the temper sweet. She will be struck dumb, having no reply to words so clear and final. We look from Christ to the woman, wondering what she can possibly reply. Her answer is before us, and is it possible for any answer to be keener in its wit, tenderer in its pathos, more hopeful in its sentiment? She said, "Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table." He inspired that answer himself: that eloquent reply was part of the exaltation which he meant to assure and confirm. No grander answer was every returned by human lips. There is nothing in the eloquence of Christ himself superior to this flash of the heart's wit, This illustrates what is meant by inspiration, How did Jesus Christ reply to this method of putting the case? He replied instantly, with the whole gospel in his tone, with all the love of his heart beaming, burning in his transfigured face, "O woman, great is thy faith." He always recognised the operation of faith in human life. Nothing seemed to surprise the Son of God so much as the exercise of faith. We cannot define faith in any adequate terms: it is not a dictionary word. Faith is the sixth sense, faith is the religious faculty, faith is the power that takes all other senses and glorifies them, faith is the step into the invisible which the soul takes in its supreme moments of inspiration. We have lowered the word faith by trying to intellectualise it: it has come within the purpose of some men to attempt to explain faith the explanation had better have been left alone, for it does but spoil what it attempts to illumine. We know what faith is when the heart is in the right condition. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness. This is not a merely intellectual process, and does not therefore come under the laws of merely intellectual inquiry or anatomy. Faith is the supreme act of the heart, and is not to be explained until after it has been done. When a man has given himself wholly to the Son of God in some great passion of sacrifice, the minister it may be, or a friend, stands near him and says, "Now, that is faith."
It is a word that comes after the action and not before it. Wit is a partial gift, eloquence belongs to but a few, poets are born, not made but faith is the universal possibility. Herein is the one word which belongs to all languages. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Men are saved by faith that is in Christ. The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith on the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Lord, increase our faith. Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
Can we believe for others? Is there an operation of proxy in the kingdom of heaven? This woman is not praying for herself alone, she is principally praying for her absent child who is grievously vexed with a devil. Where the child cannot herself believe, does the Lord Jesus accept the mother's faith as the child's act? Into questions so difficult we cannot enter with any hope of complete illumination still the heart says that we can almost believe for other people. Your mother wants to stretch her godly faith round about your blasphemy, so that you may be saved. Your father wants to include you within the amplitude of his faith, for he calls your unbelief a devil, and in many a secret prayer to heaven he says, "My son is grievously vexed with the demon of unbelief." It is impossible to resist the operation of this law of inclusion: we cannot question that we all receive benefits from heaven because of the religion of other people. Ten righteous men spare the city, the house of Potiphar is blessed for Joseph's sake, the ship tossed upon the sea is spared because of the prisoner Paul who is on board, and many of us are today reaping the crops which our fathers sowed in seed. Pray for your child: be yours the big faith that surprises God then who can tell what answers may be returned? for Jesus answered and said unto the Canaanitish woman, "Be it unto thee even as thou wilt." He gave her the keys of the kingdom and said, "Use them after thy liking."
Then he passed on, and came nigh unto the sea of Galilee, and went up into a mountain and sat there. And the people allowed him to sit there, combining ease with dignity, taking rest, and contemplating the city with all its sin and pain, from a distance. It is not so that the tragic story reads. No sooner had he sat down than great multitudes came to him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at the feet of Jesus. We belong to him most when we are in our deepest, most abject helplessness. He does not say, "Take away these burdens and leave the mountain free for my enjoyment" no, he was king, and a king must give, a king must identify himself with his subjects, royalty must sympathise. And Jesus healed them, so that they who were borne up the mountain as burdens, left it with agility and delight and thankfulness. Then was there great rejoicing among the multitude: they could not deny the wonderful works that had been done. When we see dumb men speaking, lame men walking, maimed men whole, and the blind seeing, it is surely impossible for us to betake ourselves to some mean intellectual explanation of these marvellous and astounding disclosures of power. The people yielded to the natural instinct, and the mountain throbbed again with the resounding song and shout and jubilance of those who beheld the revelation of the kingdom of gracious power.
Jesus Christ is doing greater works today, and today the world should be filled with the music of gratulation and thanksgiving unto God. Were not some of us blind and do we not now see? How few years separate between our present condition and one that we dare scarcely recall because of its humiliation. We were as sheep going astray, but we are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. We were defiled and unclean and polluted and corrupt, but we are washed, we are cleansed, we are sanctified. If it is a great thing and no man would question its greatness to see the maimed made whole, and the dumb made to speak, it is a greater thing to see a bad heart turned to righteousness, and to hear blaspheming lips opened in loyal prayer. Such are the continual miracles of the grace of Christ.
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