In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Well, this morning I see if people are paying attention: Where does this morning’s gospel take place? Who said Sidon? Very good. Who didn’t say Sidon? [Laughter] Deacon, where’s Sidon found? South of Lebanon. What was Lebanon known as in antiquity? Phoenicia. See? It works out. This gospel is read in the Antiochian Patriarchate just before the beginning of the start of the Triodion. Next week we start into those parables from Luke which start to prepare for Lent.

The story of this woman—in today’s gospel she’s called a Canaanite woman, but that’s just a general, generic term for a pagan who lives in the Levant. The gospel of Mark just simply calls her a Phoenician woman—a Syrophoenician woman, since Phoenicia is part of Syria. This morning let’s talk about three things, reflect on three things. Point one will be Phoenicia itself; second, the woman, what the woman means; and point three, the children’s bread.

Point one, Phoenicia: “Jesus was in the district of Tyre and Sidon,” begins this morning’s gospel, and I think about four people paid attention. I’m glad the deacon was one of them, since he was reading it. [Laughter] “The district of Tyre and Sidon”: words like that should ring in our souls! Tyre and Sidon! All sorts of passages from prophecy should be merging up into our intelligence. Tyre and Sidon—what that means in antiquity! Phoenicia is the vital place where the Fertile Crescent meets the Mediterranean Basin, not just the geographical location but the vital place, vital in the sense of living contact, not just a geographical placement.

Three or four years ago—I can’t remember exactly—I was interviewed on state TV in Syria, and the person interviewing me—about an hour and a half interview, actually, which is pretty long by American standards—he welcomed me to Syria in the hope that I would take Syria as my second home. I think I rather surprised him and perhaps the audience, too, when I said, “I can read and write ‘Syria is my first home!’ I’m not identified by my Celtic blood, we Celts who spent antiquity engaging in human sacrifice. I am a Syrian!” “I’m a son of Jacob; a wandering Syrian was my father,” the way that great text in Deuteronomy 26 says.

Phoenicia, which is the western, southwestern part of Syria, is the place where the societies and cultures of the Fertile Crescent encountered and mixed with the more ancient civilizations of Assyria and Babylon. Everyone of you here this morning, you hear my voice and understand what I’m saying, every one of you owes a debt to this vital point. Writing began in Sumeria on the Persian Gulf. It took on the form of an alphabet in Phoenicia. We’re still using the Phoenician alphabet. All peoples who use the alphabet use the Phoenician alphabet. There is no other alphabet; we just have different ways of writing it or arranging the letters.

Phoenicia is the place where the art and skill of writing pass from the Sumerians all the way to Spain. Phoenicia was a land of trading. The merchants and sailors of Phoenicia went out and settled all around the Mediterranean Basin. They went through the Dardanelles and up to the Black Sea. From there they went into all the various rivers that feed into the Black Sea, starting with the Danube and going up to the Don. Phoenicia is what holds Asia and Europe together. I’ve often wondered if that isn’t one of the reasons why the Russians have such great affinity for the Syrians. It’s a relationship that’s thousands of years of old, the intense relationship between Russia and Syria. I believe it has to do with the Phoenicians who went up the Dnieper and the Don, all tied together.

Phoenicia was a land of commerce. The ships of the Phoenicians went all the way out through the straits of Gibraltar and down the west coast of Africa—2,000 years before Vasco da Gama did it. Think about that. Phoenicia was a land of commerce. What does “commerce” mean? Literally, “commerce” means mutual pricing: com-merces, mutual pricing. What’s what you have worth to you and what’s what you have worth to me. Trade, the thing that holds everything together: trade. It is why the Phoenicians created the banking center of western civilization. In antiquity, that was the banking center of western civilization.

The alphabet is what joined the Mediterranean world to the Fertile Crescent, and the Phoenicians gave us the alphabet. Indeed, until the more recent crisis in the Middle East, the city of Beirut was one of the major banking centers of the world. French was the language of commerce, and Beirut was, in large measure, a French-speaking city. It certainly was when I was there, back in the [Clears throat] very early ‘70s. I was there back before the civil war destroyed the city. Beirut was a kind of western Hong Kong.

Phoenicia, therefore, in the Bible, what does it represent? It represents commerce and the sustained acquisition of wealth. Phoenicia was the trading post of the ancient world. Now, is that a good thing? I believe so! I’m a believer in prosperity. I’m a believer in prosperity! But also, the unbridled pursuit of prosperity is dangerous. The prophets speak about this. The New Testament speaks about this. There’s a danger posed by the unbridled pursuit of wealth, and this is why the biblical prophets, when they speak of Phoenicia, it’s almost always in negative terms, all the way from Elijah in the ninth century to Ezekiel in the sixth, all of them joined in a common critique of Phoenicia.

Perhaps the most dramatic symptom of this spiritual ailment was the sacrifice of children. The Phoenicians somehow had the idea that Baal—Baal, their god: “the lord,” that’s what it means—they believed he was pleased with the sacrifice of children, so they sacrificed their children in great numbers on the altar. And why? To improve the gross national product. Does that sound familiar? The sacrifice of children for economic reasons. You can see why the prophets of the Bible are so negative against the Phoenicians. You can see why, in that first great ecumenical gathering on Mount Carmel, Elijah had a rather dramatic solution for the Phoenicians. This is what Phoenicia represents.

Let us come to number two, point two. Isn’t it ironical that today’s Phoenician woman in the story is concerned about her daughter? Her daughter is possessed by a demon. When you think about the ancient Phoenicians as child-sacrificers, here is this Phoenician woman coming to Jesus, and she is concerned about her daughter. We do not know this woman’s name. Oh, I suspect some monk on Mount Athos probably knows it, but I don’t know the woman’s name. [Laughter] But we do know the names of several Phoenician women in antiquity, don’t we? We certainly do! Anybody who’s read Virgil and, in my time, that meant somebody who had reached the junior level of high school—anybody who’s read Virgil has heard the name Dido.

Dido of Carthage was a great-niece of Jezebel. Jezebel’s more famous daughter, I suppose, is Athaliah. What these women have in common is all of them were worldly women, women of power. Two of them were very cruel women. Athaliah, if you recall, was worst of all. She’s the one that systematically murdered all her grandchildren. Nobody wanted to go visit Grandma back in those days! [Laughter] They didn’t spend Thanksgiving with Grandma. She systematically murdered all of them.

This is a different kind of Phoenician woman. This Phoenician woman is not powerful and not cruel. She is a woman in need, and this circumstance forces her to become what? A woman of prayer. She is one of the Bible’s great models of persistent prayer. She humbles herself in prayer. Matthew includes a detail that’s not in Mark’s version: she flings herself at the feet of Jesus. Her prayer is desperate and pleading. She may be a wealthy woman—we don’t know—but her wealth is of no avail given the affliction of her daughter. So she throws herself at the mercy of Jesus; she completely loses all self-respect. She’s quite content to be called a dog for the sake of her daughter.

“Son of David,” she cries out, “have mercy on me!” Son of David. She’s not a Jew, but she prays explicitly to the Jewish Messiah: Son of David. This woman is among the first Gentiles to place herself completely at the mercy of the Jewish Messiah, something that all of us here do: place our entire life and destiny at the mercy of the Jewish Messiah. She becomes a model for all of us to imitate her prayer, assimilate her prayer, embody her prayer. She becomes a constant model of prayer that is persistent and pleads for mercy.

In the ninth and tenth Conferences of John Cassian, he presents two lessons, of an ancient Egyptian monk by the name of Abba Isaac. Those are Conferences 9 and 10 of Cassian’s Conferences, written in the early fifth century. Abba Isaac says that the way of constant prayer is over and over again to be saying the words of the 69th psalm (or 70th psalm in Hebrew): “O God, come to my assistance. Hurry up and help me.” “God, come to my assistance; hurry up and help me!” You know why I like that prayer? It’s so dreadfully simple!

I find it impossible, frankly—I’ve always found it impossible, even though I’ve been praying the Jesus Prayer many, many times a day since I was 18 years old—it has never seemed to me that that was really the proper path, or the completely proper path, to constant prayer. And why? It takes too much thought; it requires a great deal of thought. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Think of it! That is a very complicated prayer! The full affirmation of the whole Creed: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” You can’t pray that on the run! What you can pray on the run—and most of us all the day long are on the run—may I have a show of hands on that? Okay, most of us all the day are on the run.

What we can pray is: “I need help, and now! O God, come to my assistance! O Lord, hurry up and help me!” [Laughter] Over and over again! And Abba Isaac goes through all the circumstances of life and shows how this is always the appropriate prayer, all the time, all day long. “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.” So we’re always relying on God and not relying on ourselves. You see, how we pray is a secondary consideration. We pray in any way we can. Sometimes people will say, “I’m just too tired to pray.” What about, “Lord, I’m kind of tired!” It seems to me that’ll work. “I’m very tired. Come to my assistance! Hurry up and help me!”

How we pray is largely determined by the circumstances in which we find ourselves, but we always need the assistance of God, all the time. It can become a prayer of desperation. I wonder how many of us here know about desperation. I’m looking, but I don’t see any looks of desperation in these faces, but sometimes we are in absolutely desperate circumstances, or sometimes may be always. Terrible things happen to us! Neighbors move in next door and undermine the foundations of our homes, don’t they? We’re put in those circumstances. Prayer takes on a special quality then. We may be having trouble with our children; we’re losing control of our children, especially as they move in the teen years and start to declare themselves disciples of Thomas Jefferson and write a declaration of independence. [Laughter] It can be just desperate.

Often our prayer is desperate. I know that some of us here this morning are dealing with situations at home that are extremely difficult for various reasons, with relatives… We feel desperate! “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.” We pray as we can, and often our prayer is a prayer of desperation, and that is what we see. “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter has a demon and I am unable to help her.” And then Jesus says, “Is it proper to take the children’s bread and feed it to dogs?”

Ah, that’s point three, the children’s bread. What is the children’s bread? The children’s bread is the bread, the daily bread provided by our Father. In this morning’s reading from the second epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul quotes the Prophet, “I shall be to them a Father, and they shall be to me as children.” What do we ask of our Father? “Our Father, give us this day our daily bread.” What is “our daily bread”? It is everything we need to be your children. It summarizes all our needs: “our daily bread.” This is the manna in the wilderness. In that wilderness, Israel learned to be the children of God, depending entirely on the daily provision of heaven. It’s the bread that falls from heaven. It is God’s gift. It’s the lechem shemaim, the bread of heaven.

The rabbis went to great speculations on this. The rabbis were particularly eloquent about how this bread gets in heaven. They talk about the millstones of heaven which grind the flour. They talk about the ovens of heaven which bake the manna. I don’t know about you, but I love that image, because to do all that, you have to have lots of angels that make the bread and send it down in just bits, crumbs, as it were, and we feed on it. We depend on that bread every day of our lives, beloved in Christ. We need that bread. It’s why we pray for that bread. The word that’s used for “daily” also means “from above.” It’s our heavenly bread. It’s a provision that God gives us from on high. It’s not necessarily just the bread of this earth.

Unlike the ancient Phoenicians, we know that our primary task in this world is to take care of children. That’s our primary task in this world, is to take care of children. That’s true of married people; it’s also true of single people. Our primary task in this world is to take care of children. A society is well-formed and well-nourished that gives nothing priority over the care of children. The very notion of an unwanted child is the worst indictment of any society.

What today’s gospel tells us is that God does not have unwanted children. The children’s bread, as Jesus uses that expression, means God’s special provision for the children of Jacob, and this is symbolized in the daily provision of the manna. And what does the Phoenician woman today say? Look at her prayer. Jesus talks about the children’s bread; now look at her prayer. “May I have some of it, please. Let me eat of the very crumbs that fall from Israel’s table. I know that I am not worthy to be called your child, but have mercy on my own child. My own child suffers from a demon.”

Right now, beloved in Christ, in this society, almost every child suffers from a demon. They’re surrounded by the demonic; they’re surrounded by the enemy. Their whole institutions, if they were set up for the sole purpose of destroying children, they did it. “In fact,” says this woman, “this demon has been devouring us Phoenicians for centuries. This demon has already determined the outlook of everything we as Phoenicians stand for. Have mercy on me, Son of David, for I am a sister of Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel. But spare my child. Save us and redeem us for thy name’s sake. Cast me not away from thy presence. Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.”

This is a prayer, beloved, pleasing to God. It’s a prayer that claims no privilege. It pleads only to partake of the covenant God made with David. This prayer prostrates itself at the feet of Christ. This is what it means for Christians to pray.