One of my favorite small stories in all Holy Scripture highlights the brief encounter Jesus has with a woman he encountered as he traveled through the Greek region of Tyre and Sidon preaching the reign of God. I focus on a story that draws me into it with all my heart, and I find myself praying into the story as if it were mine. This small story is called a pericope, a snippet, one among many that interrupts but does not detract from the flow and urgency of the Gospel: pay attention to the loving purposes of God—NOW.
Jesus is in hiding. He is in foreign territory, a Jew in Gentile land. He has stopped to take a much needed rest, a breather, when the woman suddenly invades his retreat time. I feel suddenly drawn into the story with strong feelings I’d rather not heed that invade my own quiet . I'm drawn not to poor tired Jesus but to the woman, all alone on a dusty road, out of her mind with fear and need, believing her daughter to be possessed by a demon, and feeling the desperate powerlessness most anyone would feel when one’s own beloved child is near death. This woman has run out of resources. Yes, Jesus is her last resort. And yes, she is a Gentile, and Jesus is a “trespassing” Jew.
* * * *
I once felt this way when of one of my sons was near death and lying in the ICU after several surgeries for ulcerative colitis run wild enough that his colon had to be removed. There was promise for repair and construction of an ersatz colon, but the post-surgical remaining intestinal track had adhered. It was entirely stuck together, thus impassable. The surgeon operated again to cut all the folds apart one from another, restitch each separately, refold the lot, close up, then pray like hell that it all would hold well enough to enable digestion. Would my thirty-two year old son ever eat or drink anything by mouth again? Would he live? The surgeon was honest enough to say he hoped so. He hoped so.
I felt just like that Syrophoenician mother must have felt. I was possibly about to see my young son John die. I lived and worked in a place that felt like hundreds of miles away as I drove back and forth from Gloucester, Massachusetts to Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport Connecticut for weeks. I begged and pleaded and silently caved. My parish community prayed week after week for John. Just the thought of this prayer net sustained me, even though I knew only half of them would remember in spite of my incessant prayer nagging.
The Syrophoenician mother had no such support, so she turned to Jesus of whom she had dimly heard. She was not Jewish, but she decided to ask him anyway, so she knelt before him to ask for help. Jesus turned her down, saying he had come for his own people, Israel: “Let the children of the household be fed first. It is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” (Mark 7: 27) The woman persisted. “Yes Rabbi, but even the dogs under the table get to eat the family’s scraps, the crumbs under the master’s table.” (In Matthew’s version of this story Jesus turns her away again, and a third time.) Jesus, caught up short, turns to the woman: “For saying this you may go home, the demon has left your daughter.” The woman goes home and finds her daughter lying on a bed and the “demon” gone.
Had something stirred within this woman—something strong enough to cause her to stop begging and asking for the same thing over and over? I wondered. I did ken that she had uttered something so true, and so gospel, and so stunning that Jesus had changed his mind.
* * * *
My John survived, and my prayers were as intense as the woman’s in the biblical story, although after a while prayer-pleading felt rote—although annoyingly necessary when my heart’s desire was so strong and so persistent. I often visited John during the week when no one else was there. I just sat in a chair at the foot of his hospital bed reading without comprehension. I have no idea what book I read, but I remember I felt becalmed. Later John told me that occasionally he would open his eyes and see me sitting there quietly, and it gave him a sense of comfort.
My prayer-pleading became a steady, sturdy, silent hum.
Several surgeries later John came out of the hospital and began his long return to health. Surgery is one thing, multiple surgeries another, and recovery still another—mental and physical exhaustion and pain, not to mention the dramatic effects of ongoing post-traumatic stress hammering away in his mind and heart. Mine too.
With John’s permission I share an astonishing healing moment. The hospital chaplain, a friend of mine, and I stood at either side of John’s bed. She was Jewish, I a Christian priest. We decided to say together the one prayer we both knew by heart: Psalm 23. John told me after he was feeling better, that the moment of that prayer psalm was a moment when he did not care if he lived. But then his whole room filled with a very bright light. It lasted just seconds, and in those seconds, John said: “I suddenly decided to live. I wanted to live. I really wanted to live.” I will not dis-grace this moment with any analysis. It stands on its own, and I remain grateful. John is now fifty and a healthy and vibrant father of two lovely children. Amen. Allelujah!
We still can laugh about a time John came to visit us in Gloucester and we went to church. After church he commented: “Mom, how come so many people here know me? They say hello to me by name as if they know me?”
