Scripture Passage: Matthew 15:21-28
"It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." That’s what Jesus says to the woman pleading for Jesus’ mercy on her daughter who is tormented by a demon. Not one of Jesus’ disciples or any Jewish onlooker is surprised by Jesus’ words for she is a Canaanite woman. Jewish-Gentile relations in the first century Mediterranean world do not allow Jesus, a Jewish man, to speak to a Gentile, especially a woman. When Jesus says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” he equates Jews to God’s beloved children and Gentiles to dogs, not lovable pets of the home as they are now but wild dogs, animals who get in the way. When the unnamed woman first calls out to Jesus, he ignores her entirely. Again, Jesus’ disciples are not surprised by Jesus’ silence for any conversation would violate social boundaries, but the disciples are annoyed by her persistent call for mercy. When finally Jesus addresses her, he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Right and good, Jesus, the disciples likely think. She is not an Israelite; she is not a sheep of this shepherd Jesus.
What do we do with Jesus’ harsh words? Three times, he insults her, belittles her, demeans her. This is not the Jesus we know and love. Even though she respects him. Even though she calls him “Lord, Son of David.” Even though she implies he has the power to rid her daughter of a demon, implies he can exert power over natural elements. Even though, at the end of this story, Jesus recognizes her faith, a declaration that he makes only twice in the gospel of Matthew, the other time when the centurion, also a Gentile, asks for the healing of his servant.
What do we do with Jesus’ harsh words and even harsher silence? Of course, biblical commentators aplenty provide solutions, suggest Jesus is vocalizing the prejudices of those like him to call our their sin, suggest the point is that Jesus finally heals the Canaanite woman’s daughter and ignore the rest, suggest that Jesus is illustrating his own point from the previous teaching about what comes out of a person’s mouth defiling them. We seem eager to rescue Jesus from his historical context. I wonder, truly, if the Canaanite woman helps Jesus understand his own ministry with greater clarity. Seven chapters earlier, he responds to the Gentile centurion’s request for healing, but perhaps a Gentile woman is just one step too far. Perhaps she helps him see the limits of his own ministry—and then helps him overcome them. While I would grieve the limits of Jesus’ own understanding, I would rejoice that Jesus, once called out, recognizes his limits and chooses to grow in openness, love, grace.
This bodes well for us, followers of the one who could grow in his own divine capacity. If Jesus, Lord, Son of David, can err and then grow and change, so can we.
But first, we name our errors, what we’d like to do over without trying to explain it away, like the commentators aplenty would like to do.
In 2001, I served for a year in Lutheran Volunteer Corps and worked at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness and illness on the west side of Chicago. Entering Interfaith House was like entering a different world, one where my experience of life, instead of normative, was the exception. Me, a little white girl from small town Minnesota who had just graduated from an expensive liberal arts college. Most of my co-workers, black folks from the south and west sides of Chicago who joked that they were nearly homeless, the shelter paid so poorly. One day, I ended up in the office of the program director. I was there because I had been accused of being racist, wanted to report the ugly words of my co-workers, and be assured that I was just fine. The program director asked me, “Do you think you’re racist?” I told her no, but I had that uncomfortable feeling that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, the feeling that seemed to indicate I was wrong.
We all have things we’d like to do over. For me, at that moment with the program director in 2001, I wanted to take back the racist things I said and still to this day, I wish I could see and understand more fully my white privilege.
This morning, our errors, our areas of growth, personally or systemically may feel overwhelming, but the good news demonstrated by Jesus is a capacity to grow, to grow in openness, love, and grace. We are not forever stuck in the place where we currently stand. We get to have do-overs. We get to change our minds. We get to let go of old, unhealthy patterns. We get to believe new things about ourselves, our neighbors, and the world. We get to wash our face each morning and remember our baptism, remember that we are God’s beloved. And even if we would rather stubbornly hang onto the things that trip us up and make our lives harder, if we won’t allow ourselves to be helped or listened to, the really good news is that God in Christ meets us with dignity, compassion, and grace. For Jesus grows through his encounter with the Canaanite woman. She helps him understand the height and width and depth of his mission that included not just people like him, Jewish people, but Gentiles as well, women bold enough to cry out for mercy on behalf of their daughters. And it’s not that he deigns to heal her daughter, not that he shows her pity. He not only preserves her dignity and shows her grace, in the end, Jesus praises her faith.
Jesus met a woman who needed him, and he met her where she was. They both walked away changed. Thanks be to God! Amen.