Not for the dogs | a sermon

A sermon by Jamie Howison on Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 and Matthew 15: 21-28

Let me just begin by saying that this gospel reading for tonight includes some troubling textures. Jesus and his disciples have gone to the district of Tyre and Sidon, which is well north of any predominantly Jewish territory. The heat is rising for him amongst many of the Jewish leaders, and the demands on his time and his gifts are very high. This journey north may well have been for a time of respite, but it is important to note that they are now very much in Gentile territory.

There Jesus is approached by a Canaanite woman—a Gentile—who begs for mercy and requests healing for her daughter. She even calls him “Lord” and “Son of David,” which means she has at least some familiarity with Jewish thought… and with Jesus’ growing reputation as a source of life and healing. His answer? Nothing. “He did not answer her at all.” Not only that, but his disciples ask him to send her away, because her pleas are getting loud and troublesome.

“Jesus answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’” That’s not even addressed to this distraught woman, but rather just spoken to the disciples. Yet she is persistent, kneeling before him and begging for help. His answer should strike us as really troubling. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Dogs. That was a typical Jewish slur used for Gentiles, and specifically for Canaanites. Such words from the mouth of Jesus: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” (Peterson, The Message)

But she comes right back at him, with the sort of desperate confidence that might be wielded by a mother worried sick about the health of her child. “Yes, Lord,” she says, “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” “Woman, great is your faith!” Jesus says. “Let it be done for you as you wish.” And right away the daughter is set free of her affliction.

At this point we might all heave a great sigh of relief. Ah, you see, Jesus didn’t turn her away after all, the child is healed, the woman vindicated in her stubborn persistence. The word of the Lord, alleluia!

But what was that about? His silence, his dismissive comments about only coming to the lost sheep of Israel, his harsh words comparing her and her child to dogs? After all, seven chapters earlier in Matthew’s gospel, a centurion had come to Jesus and told him that he had a servant at home who was lying paralyzed and losing all hope. Jesus’ response? “I will come and cure him.” Just like that, he’s ready to go to the home of the centurion to heal the servant. This is for a centurion of all people; someone in the military employ of the occupying Roman Empire. If anyone was ever to be turned away, it would have been one such as this. Yet Jesus is quite prepared to go with him. And when the centurion then says, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed,” Jesus is so very struck by the man’s confidence that he pronounces healing right then and there.

But what in heaven’s name is so different between that centurion and this woman?

As one looks at the various commentaries on this story, some seem to be quite content with the sigh of relief—see, if all worked out—while others tend to take one of two perspectives.

The first perspective is to say that Jesus is engaging this conversation in a playful and almost ironic way, intending to draw out the woman and have her demonstrate what stubborn faith looks like when it is pushed against the wall. In this interpretation, Jesus was not interested in denying her request, but rather in raising it to a level at which he could praise her for it, right there in front of his disciples. This, however, strikes me as a bit of a dodge; an attempt to make sure Jesus never disappoints.

I think that’s a thin option, so I’d lean us toward the second perspective, which actually takes the scene at its word. The woman comes for help, and Jesus is, quite frankly, indifferent. Whatever led him to respond to the request of that centurion seven chapters earlier has now taken the back seat to his strong sense that he is present for the sake of Israel; that’s his primary mission. And he’s tired, and well aware of the building opposition amongst the Pharisees and other Jewish community members who are finding him difficult, challenging, and perhaps heretical… at least within their own frames of understanding. He has steeled his nerve against all that is to come, and there in the district of Tyre and Sidon he just needs some respite before the storm begins.

And then this woman comes, asking for help for her child. His silence is striking, but she persists. She begs for help, and he comes back and calls her a dog. No, no help for you, a Gentile, when the sons and daughters of Israel have such needs. But she comes back with that line about even the dogs being welcome to the crumbs dropped from the table, and it stops him short; absolutely and utterly short. As Richard Ward comments,

This Canaanite woman has named Jesus as “Lord” and “Son of David,” but when she declares her utter dependence on God’s Grace, Jesus’ tradition-shaped heart breaks open. “Woman, great is your faith!” he declares.

He is in fact moved—emotionally moved, but also moved forward beyond the confines of that day, and that rather focussed sense of his own mission. Here N.T. Wright comments,

The woman’s faith broke through the waiting period, the time in which Jesus would come to Jerusalem as Israel’s Messiah, be killed and raised again, and then send his followers out into all the world. The disciples, and perhaps Jesus himself, are not yet ready for Calvary. This foreign woman is already insistent upon Easter.

“This foreign woman is already insistent upon Easter,” which is really quite a statement. The Canaanite woman with her sick daughter and stubborn insistence that she can be helped—healed—by Jesus is pushing toward the other side of the passion and death, into the terrain of Easter and Pentecost, when the church will find itself opening its life and vision to all, whether Jew or Gentile.

Which means that in reading the text in this way—which many a credible biblical scholar has done, and many a preacher has preached—we are saying that the human Jesus could learn and grow along the way. We are saying he could get tired and impatient—and if you ever doubt that, read the Gospel according to Mark—and that while very much the true Son of God, he was yet fully human as well as fully divine. Do you suppose a fully human person was above learning and growing? Do you suppose a fully human person couldn’t be surprised by the persistence and love of a mother worrying over her child? Do you suppose a fully human person couldn’t stop, look again, and think a little differently about his assumptions?

And don’t you think that the fully divine Jesus was able to acknowledge a mistake, and embed a whole new way of thinking and being into the very heart of his life?

I believe that Canaanite woman with her passion for her sick child met the living God embodied in a very human Jesus, and that she opened his heart to the truth that his followers would hold on the other side of Easter, on the other side of the Ascension, on the other side of Pentecost. Her passion may have been for her child, but that passion also opened the human Jesus to a passion for the whole of humanity—Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free.

And I believe that as he looked at her and said, “Woman, great is your faith!” his smile was one of the grandest, his eyes sparkled with life, and his face filled with delight.

We’ll never know that woman’s name, but I believe that He knows it, and that God in Christ knows her. Fully, now, and ever.