The Syro-Phoenician Woman … a modern icon by Brother Robert Lentz, OFMPatrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the Tenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity X). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the life and ministry of John Mason Neale (1866), Priest, Hymn Writer (7 August 2024).
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Matthew 15: 21-28 (NRSVA):
21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22 Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ 23 But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ 24 He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ 26 He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ 27 She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ 28 Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.
This morning’s reflection:
The story of the Syrophoenician or Canaanite woman in the district of Tyre and Sidon and the healing and restoration of her daughter is told in both Saint Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 15:21-28) and Saint Mark’s Gospel (Mark 7: 24-30), part of the Gospel reading we are going to hear on Sunday 8 September as Trinity XV (Proper 18).
I tried to provide this morning’s Gospel reading as a contextual fulfilment of Jesus’ reference to the ‘judgement … for Tyre and Sidon’ in Matthew 11: 20 a few weeks ago when I was reflecting on the Gospel reading on 16 July (Matthew 11: 20-24 (16 July 2024).
The story of this insistent, persistent Greek-speaking woman is one of my favourites in the Gospel, and when we come across her story again next month, I shall discuss once again how I have found comparisons Jocasta and her daughter Antigone in The Phoenician Women (Φοίνισσαι, Phoenissae, the tragic play by Euripides.
But, while I might want to name these two woman, mother and daughter, Jocasta and Antigone, they remain without names in both Gospel versions of this story.
Woman are named regularly throughout the Gospels, of course. We may think of the Virgin Mary, her cousin Elizabeth, the elderly Anna in the Temple, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, Mary the wife of Cleopas, Mary and Martha, Joanna the wife of Chuza, Susanna and Salome the mother of James and John.
But there are so many women in the Gospels who remain unnamed, alongside the Syrophoenician or Canaanite woman and her daughter, including the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the woman who anoints Jesus in Bethany, the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet in the home of Simon the Pharisee, the sisters Jesus refers to in Matthew 12, the bride at the wedding in Cana, Peter’s mother-in-law, the widow of Nain, the woman bent over and healed in the synagogue, the daughter of Jairus, the woman who touches the hem of the garment and is healed, the poor widow offering her two copper coins in the Treasury of the Temple, Pilate’s wife, the weeping women of Jerusalem …
In his genealogy of Jesus it is interesting to note that, unlike Luke, Matthew includes five women. The choice of these five women has particular significance in Saint Matthew’s genealogy. A reader knowing that Matthew was anxious to prove the royal ancestry and lineage of Jesus, might have expected the women he selected for special mention would have been queens, or perhaps the daughters of important kings, mighty warriors, or great prophets. Instead, the author of Matthew’s Gospel selects five women who were on the margins of society. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary were not the sort of women one might want to boast about in some imaginary Biblical version of Burke’s Peerage or Burke’s Landed Gentry.
Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary are the sort of ancestors often overlooked by ancestor-searchers. But they challenged the Jewish restrictions on marriage to Gentiles and challenged the very definition of Jewish-ness that depends on a mother’s authentic Jewish identity. By those rabbinical definitions of Jewish-ness, which were beginning to develop at the time the Gospels were written, we could not regard Perez, Boaz, or Solomon, or for that matter David and the whole line of kings of Israel and Judah as authentic, ethnic Jews.
Jesus takes the stories of marginalised women, Samaritan women, gentile women, divorced women, widowed women, women who are single mothers, women in difficult marriages, women whose children are seen by men as problems, women who are anonymous to the men near them, women who are invisible to the men around them, and Jesus notices them, recognises, identifies their needs, affirms them, and palces them centre stage.
Detail from the ‘Sarcophagus of the Crying Women,’ from Sidon, now in the Istanbul Archaeological MuseumToday’s Prayers (Wednesday 7 August 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Understanding each other by walking together’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from the Right Revd Eduardo Coelho Grillo, Anglican Bishop of Rio de Janeiro.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 7 August 2024) invites us to pray:
God of every people and every tribe, we ask for your forgiveness and guidance. Forgive us for the colonialism that stains our past, the ignorance that allowed us to think that we could claim another’s home for our own.
The Collect:
Let your merciful ears, O Lord,
be open to the prayers of your humble servants;
and that they may obtain their petitions
make them to ask such things as shall please you;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
God of our pilgrimage,
you have willed that the gate of mercy
should stand open for those who trust in you:
look upon us with your favour
that we who follow the path of your will
may never wander from the way of life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Lord of heaven and earth,
as Jesus taught his disciples to be persistent in prayer,
give us patience and courage never to lose hope,
but always to bring our prayers before you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Iokasti, a restaurant in Koutouloufari in Crete … are there comparisons between Iocasta and her daughter in ‘The Phoenician Women’ and the Greek-speaking Syrophoenician or Canaanite woman in Saint Matthew’s Gospel? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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