Not Entitled
More of her, please
Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matthew 15:28)
A PROLOGUE
I recently posted the following on social media:
Not doing Psalm 37 very well this morning.
That’s the Psalm that tells us to refrain from fretting about evildoers, because God has their number and stewing about them will mire us in evil, too. Well, I was fretting and stewing plenty over the last few days.
You’ve probably watched the sickening display from Massachusetts, which I’ll not embed here. The news wasn’t remarkable — too many states have embraced abortion at full term (infanticide; murder) as an entitlement. The fresh hell was 1) the ghoulish behavior of the attendees and 2) the claim of the signer to be a Catholic Christian.
I think I’ve mentioned before that a Judge where I used to live offered education on domestic violence, the key finding in her experience being that abusers all operate from a sense of entitlement.
That weighed on my mind as I watched the barbarism in Massachusetts. Signing it into law conveys a right, an entitlement not just to end a life but to jump around and celebrate the act like drunk sports fans.
A PROBLEM
The entitlements are proliferating. You can kill if you can claim a cause… or if you’re just cute.
You can kill if you are emotionally disturbed.
You can kill if you are mentally incompetent.
You can kill if you’re dangerous but you represent a cause the judge likes.
I’m sure there are more entitlements available. They seem to reproduce like rabbits.
The significant point here is that most people — the vast majority of people in those categories — don’t kill others. People with causes, cute people, emotionally disturbed people, mentally incompetent people, even most of the dangerous and coddled people, don’t kill.
Those who kill have crossed a line. You shall not commit murder is as basic a divine law as we have. Killers assume an entitlement to do what they do and then to gather enablers to excuse it, which is what is slopping over the news and social media these days, and over our lives.
A PROCLAMATION
Which brings me ‘round to this Sunday’s Gospel, about a marginalized woman with no sense of entitlement.
Matthew calls her a “Canaanite,” certainly an anachronism lumping her in with pre-Israelite pagans (Mark 7:26 skips the hyperbole, identifying her as a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth.) In any case, she’s not entitled to the attention of a Rabbi and the blessings of the Chosen People.
Yet she approaches Jesus, pleading for an exorcism for her daughter.
Jesus does something that Rabbis do — he discourages her. (This is not about gender; a Rabbi would act in the same way toward a male outsider). It is a test of sincerity, and a rejection of any human sense of entitlement. He discourages her three times,
Silent treatment — he did not answer her a word.
“Not my table” — I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Insult — It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.
But her love for her daughter and zeal for her deliverance is stronger than any need to maintain her own status,
She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
It’s not her problem that brings God’s favor. All people have problems, many of them dire. What is blessed is her faith, her trust in the reality, goodness, and power of God, and her recognition of God in Jesus. She has no sense of entitlement. Her desire is rooted in love, seeking nothing for herself, only deliverance for her daughter.
Jesus proclaims her an exemplar of faith. Like several others in the New Testament, the hero goes unnamed. No entitlement to our brand of glory, but now entitled by grace to live forever in the glory of God.
The world is a better place when people like her are admired and imitated. The presence of Christ, who took on unentitled flesh, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, is reflected into the world by people like her.
May those of us who claim Christ as Lord renounce our entitlements, the sinful desires of the flesh that draw (us) from the love of God, and instead
not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting (our) opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. (2 Timothy 2:24-26)
In a similar vein of thought, I've long considered the organization, The Human Rights Campaign, and that we're due for an organization called The Human Responsibilities Campaign.
Well said. Thank you.