8 November 2011

Psalm 78:1-39; Neh. 9:26-38; Rev. 18:9-20; Matt. 15:21-28

The prayer continues to recount the history of the people, right up to the present day, and the summation would be, the more things change the more they stay the same. The leaders acknowledge that their current situation, they are slaves in the land the Lord gave them and the fruit of the land and their labor goes to foreign rulers, is due to sin. The statement, “Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly” is the most important admission we can make. Our sins are to blame for whatever difficulties we may be in and yet in all this, the Lord is righteous in His dealings with us. The most prominent word to describe the Lord in this prayer is “mercy” and in the historic liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer (Rite I) it is the word most often used to describe God’s dealings with His creation. We see mercy, mercies and merciful so many times in the Eucharist it is clear that this is who He is because it is what we need. We can’t cry out for justice because of our sin, what we really need Him to be is merciful, not just because our sins deserve the covenant to be broken and they deserve death. He is a wonderful, merciful savior.

This Syro-Phoenician, Canaanite woman knows what she needs, mercy. She pleads not that she is deserving of Jesus’ attention and assistance. Her plea is based entirely on His willingness to show undeserved favor, the definition of mercy, on her daughter. She claims no standing to ask for such a thing, her request is based solely on His willingness to act on her behalf but it is also based on the belief that He is able to do something about the situation. She denies any standing or claim on Him but is willing to humble herself before Him, comparing her situation as an outsider to the covenant to the dogs at the table looking for crumbs. In the liturgy the final thing we do prior to coming to the table is join her in our prayer, “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table but you are the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: We admit that because of our sins we are unworthy but Jesus’ love has made us worthy, He has had mercy and He will have mercy.

The command from heaven regarding Babylon’s demise is “Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her!" In the eyes of the world there is something here to mourn and yet God says don’t mourn, rejoice. If we think back to the Sermon on the Mount we will begin to see that Jesus has always taught us to mourn while the world rejoices and now we are instructed to rejoice while the world mourns. Our eyes are not to be fixed on the world, it is under judgment. We are here to give directions to a new creation, a heavenly city, our true home, and we can’t do that if we are captivated by this world. We can’t judge with our eyes, only by the Spirit of God. This world is passing away and we cannot set our hopes by anything that can be seen with our eyes. Its passing is not to be mourned but welcomed so that the new can come. Mercy is seen in that we will be with Him in that new creation. Let us not be like Lot’s wife.