In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God is One

The Gospel for today from St Matthew, Chapter 15 is very dramatic—a big scene witnessed by many people. A woman who is not Jewish asks Jesus Christ for mercy for herself and for her daughter who is seriously ill. Christ ignores her and tells her that He has come only to “the house of Israel”—to the Jews.  However, she keeps on asking for help. The words she uses are words that each of us can use every day about any situation in our lives, “O Lord, help me.”

Jesus Christ does not readily agree to help her. In fact, he insults her. He calls her a dog, because she eats meat which has been sacrificed to idols, which makes her spiritually unclean. Christ tells her, “It is not good to take the bread of the children, and to throw it to dogs.” She replies with humility and insight, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat from the crumbs which fall from the table of their masters.” Jesus Christ is impressed by her perseverance—her determination to achieve something even in the midst of setbacks—and He says to her, “Woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish. And her daughter was healed at once.” Children, can you think of a time when you persevered, when you kept on until you got something you wanted? What happened? . . .

The early Church Fathers offer two exciting interpretations of this Gospel passage. First, St John Chrysostom points out; and I quote: “Christ went out of His borders, and the woman also went out of her borders, and so it became possible for them to [meet] with each other.” In other words, Christ went out of Jewish territory; and the Greek woman went away from her home in the Syrian part of Phoenicia and sought out Christ. This was very much a missionary encounter in which Christ was reaching out to someone who was not Jewish; and the woman was seeking to receive the healing of her daughter that she knew Christ could offer. I’ll return in a moment to this idea of a missionary encounter, because today we celebrate the missionary work of two Greek brothers from Thessalonica, Saints Cyril and St Methodius, who in the ninth century brought Christ to the Slavs of Eastern Europe.

Second, an African Church Father, Tertullian of Carthage, who lived from about 160 A.D. to 225 A.D., has pointed out that in this Gospel text Christ is promising to women the same respect and dignity given to men. Tertullian wrote (and I quote): “You as women have the very same angelic nature promised as your reward, the very same . . . respect as men. You have the same dignity in making moral judgments. This the Lord promises to women [end of quote].” In stating firmly and without qualification that women “have the very same angelic nature promised [to men] as [their] reward,” Tertullian is referring to the Gospel of St Mark, chapter 12, verse 25 in which Christ states that when women “rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”

This God-given equality between a man and a woman, between a boy and a girl, is also stressed by St Matthew in chapter 22, verse 30 and by St Luke in chapter 20, verses 35 and 36. Then in Galatians, chapter 3, verses 27 and 28 St Paul says to all Christians throughout the centuries (and I quote): “All of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for [we] are all one in Christ Jesus.” Those words from St Paul are especially true in this church at St Aidan’s in Manchester, where we come from many different backgrounds and experiences of life. Today instead of saying “slave or free,” we might well say “refugee” or “native citizen.” Whatever our geographic origins or former beliefs, we can all offer to each other the same respect and dignity that Christ has given to each of us in baptism.

Like Jesus Christ and this Greek woman seeking the help of Christ, we too can choose to move outside the borders of our own experience, outside of our own culture and present knowledge. Back in the 9th century, St Cyril, whom we commemorate today, and his brother St Methodius faced that same choice. The Synaxarion, the Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, that we read each Sunday morning during Morning Prayers, tells us that St Cyril was an intelligent and remarkable student who was offered major academic posts. He learned the Bulgarian dialect as well as Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic.  No one else in Constantinople then knew all those languages. At that time, in Bulgaria the missionaries who were already there were achieving very little, because, as the Synaxarion says, they “preached in Latin and celebrated a liturgy that was incomprehensible, resulting in few conversions” and little impact.

When St Cyril was asked to go to Bulgaria to use his linguistic talents and Christian experience to reorganise the missionary work, he agreed; but, as the Synaxarion tells the story, he “asked for some time in which to prepare and, turning to prayer as was his custom, he begged of God the revelation of a script [a written alphabet] that was capable of rendering the sounds of the Slav language in an acceptable way.” God honoured his request and showed St Cyril a new alphabet which enabled him to translate the Gospel readings for the whole year, the Divine Liturgy, the Book of Hours and all the psalms into the local Bulgarian dialect. With this very intelligent use of the Slav language, in less than three years Saints Cyril and Methodius working together were able to gather “more than a hundred disciples, who in their turn,” as the Synaxarion says, “spread the Good News throughout the kingdom.”

That is exciting, isn’t it? Both St Cyril and St Methodius were outstanding students who worked very hard—a situation that is true for many of the students in this church and those who are listening on Ancient Faith Radio to “A Voice from the Isles.” St Cyril and St Methodius both prayed very regularly and only agreed to respond to the many requests for help that came to them when they were convinced that a particular work was something God wished them to do. Although the work in Bulgaria of these two saints was attacked and ultimately destroyed, they still established the Bulgarian Church which “became the seed of a rich Byzantine [Christian] tradition that [reached] Russia after the conversion of St Vladimir.” Furthermore, the Slav script that the two saints created was popularised by their disciples as the Cyrillic alphabet—named in honour of St Cyril—and used today in Russian, Bulgarian and other Slavonic languages. When Bulgaria became a member of the European Union on the first of January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official written script—the third alphabet—of the European Union, following the Latin script and the Greek script; and Cyrillic is written today by more than 250 million people throughout Europe and Asia. The work of St Cyril and St Methodius and their disciples ultimately blessed many people, enabling much better communication among people and with God.

Each of us now, young or old, can indeed stay within our own cultures and live a full and purpose-filled life in which we genuinely follow Christ. However, each of us can also choose to communicate the beauty of belief and action in Christ to others. As students, whatever our ages—and old people like me can still be students—we can study and pray and listen for signs of what work the Lord has for each of us to do. Those few crumbs that the Greek woman begged from Christ became the loaves of commitment to Christianity for millions of people throughout the world. That written language that St Cyril began has empowered millions more to understand the Divine Liturgy, the Bible and the work of Christ.  Perhaps there are some of us today in this church and listening on Ancient Faith Radio who will discover that God has missionary work for us to do in countries that are not yet our own.



And so we ascribe as is justly due all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen

Father Emmanuel Kahn