Readings: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28
She called out to him from afar,
using a term that was alien to her
but seemed to mean a lot to the Jews:
“Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David!
My daughter is tormented by a demon.”
He ignored her;
nevertheless, she persisted.
He made clear that the salvation he brought
was not for her kind, but only for the Jews;
nevertheless, she persisted.
He compared her to a dog,
begging for food that was not hers;
nevertheless, she persisted.
She persisted because persistence
was the only tool she had,
the only weapon in her arsenal.
A Canaanite and a woman,
she was doubly disadvantaged,
by her race and by her sex,
in approaching a Jewish holy man
to beg a cure for her daughter.
She had no leverage,
no angle to work,
just sheer stubborn persistence,
and a capacity to absorb pain and insult,
and a deep, deep love for her child,
who was suffering so much.
And, seeing her persistence, Jesus said,
“O woman, great is your faith!
Let it be done for you as you wish.”
The unnamed Canaanite woman
joins the ranks of persistent women
who stories are told in the Gospels:
the woman with the hemorrhage
who, after years of medical abuse,
pressed through the crowd
to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment;
the sinful woman who,
despite shame and rebuke from bystanders,
bathed the feet of Jesus with her tears
until she heard the words,
“Your sins are forgiven”;
the widow in Jesus’ parable
who, through resolute nagging,
won justice from an unjust judge;
perhaps above all, Mary of Nazareth,
who persisted in faith:
from a most unexpected pregnancy,
through the suffering of her son’s cross,
to the joy of the resurrection.
Of course, in the Gospels and throughout scripture,
it is not only women who are persistent—
certainly a prophet like Jeremiah is a model of tenacity—
but in the ancient world in which Jesus lived
the near complete powerlessness of most women
made persistence a particularly important
skill for them to have,
a capacity to carry on
in the face of rejection and setback.
But the kind of persistence shown by the Canaanite woman,
shown by the woman with the hemorrhage
and the sinful woman at Jesus’ feet,
shown by the nagging widow and Mary at the cross—
such persistence is something that all Christians need to have.
For the road to God’s kingdom is long and difficult;
and if we are to follow the way of Jesus,
we cannot walk it
burdened by the baggage of worldly power
that might win for us quick and painless solutions.
God plays a long game,
and we must too,
for our goal is nothing less
than God’s reign of love,
which calls for us to live lives
of persistent faithfulness.
The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.,
in a sermon entitled “Loving Your Enemies,”
spoke of how, in struggling against racial segregation,
it was important not to relinquish what he called
“our privilege and our obligation to love.”
He continued, “While abhorring segregation,
we shall love the segregationist.
This is the only way to create the beloved community.”
This sort of love calls for persistence.
Addressing his segregationist opponents,
he said, “Throw us in jail,
and we shall still love you….
But be ye assured
that we will wear you down
by our capacity to suffer.
One day we shall win freedom,
but not only for ourselves.
We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience
that we shall win you in the process,
and our victory will be a double victory.”
To defeat your enemies, not by destroying them,
but by making them your friends
is a long, slow process of persistence—
a struggle to act out of love
and not out of hatred.
For us too, these are days that call us to persistence.
From the ongoing struggle for racial justice,
to advocating for the sanctity of human life
from conception to natural death,
to building a community that welcomes the stranger
and cares for its weakest members,
to enduring the trials of a global pandemic,
our times confront us with challenges
that cannot be remedied by hatred and violence,
though many are tempted by such remedies.
We Christians have a lesson
to teach the world about persistence.
We should be the ones who can show the world
that persistence is more than simply
white knuckling it through a crisis.
We should be the ones who can show the world
that persistence is the fruit of the Holy Spirit,
something brought about in us
by the grace of a loving God.
We should be the ones who can show the world
the beauty of persistence that springs,
not from confidence in our own power,
but from our confidence is the power of God.
Remember the Canaanite woman:
confronted with seeming rejection by Jesus,
she did not grow angry or lash out,
but resolutely acted out of love for her daughter
and her faith that Jesus could heal her.
In commending her faith,
Jesus commends her persistence
and calls us to emulate her.
So in facing the many challenges
that beset us in these days
let us act with persistent, grace-filled love,
let us walk with Christ
the long, hard road to the Kingdom,
trusting that God will bring to completion
the good work that he has begun in us.
And may God have mercy on us all.
