Thursday, February 11

TODAY'S MEDITATION

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2010 - FIFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

I KINGS 11:4-13

When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods, and his heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God, as the heart of his father David had been. By adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites, Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD; he did not follow him unreservedly as his father David had done. Solomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the idol of Moab, and to Molech, the idol of the Ammonites, on the hill opposite Jerusalem. He did the same for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. The LORD, therefore, became angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice (for though the LORD had forbidden him this very act of following strange gods, Solomon had not obeyed him).

So the LORD said to Solomon: “Since this is what you want, and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes which I enjoined on you, I will deprive you of the kingdom and give it to your servant. I will not do this during your lifetime, however, for the sake of your father David; it is your son whom I will deprive. Nor will I take away the whole kingdom. I will leave your son one tribe for the sake of my servant David and of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.”

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MARK 7:24-30

Jesus went to the district of Tyre. He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it, but he could not escape notice. Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him. She came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first. For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”

She replied and said to him, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”

Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter.” When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

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What are we to make of the dialogue between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman in today's Gospel? Jesus seems uncharacteristically rude to the woman. Perhaps he knew all along that he would heal the woman's daughter but wanted to test her first. If we look more deeply into the story, however, we can see a pattern that will be repeated in the birth of the Church.

Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospels that he has come first to the lost house of Israel. Only after the word is preached to the Jews can it be preached to the Gentiles. "Let the children be fed first." The woman's reply is ingenious. “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.” She is not asking Jesus to take time out of his mission, just throw her a crumb. In her response the woman is doing two things. She is accepting that she is not of the house of Israel and so, according to the Jews, "a dog" and she is also acknowledging her dependence on God. In the larger picture, when the children of Israel have rejected the food, the word, it is given to the pets, the Gentiles. The woman is asking for some crumbs ahead of time. We know that Jesus acknowledges the faith of Gentiles in his ministry (See the cure of the centurion's servant) so we can expect that he would respond to the woman's plea, which he does. On a deeper level the story is an illustration of the birth of the Church. After Jesus is rejected and the preaching of the Apostles rejected, the message goes out to the Gentiles and the Church begins to grow. Yet we can see that some of the Gentiles who show faith in Jesus receive some crumbs from Jesus even before the food is rejected by the children.

In the end, it is faith in Jesus that is important.

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Lord Jesus, it was the faith of the Greek woman that allowed you to cure her daughter. Help us to have the same faith in you that we may be healed on our sins and live as true sons and daughters of the Father.

Deacon Ed